User talk:(InsertOpinion)

What is going on? World Blogs Clogs Elections The Bar (talk) (talk) (talk) (talk) (hic) Welcome to RationalWiki, (InsertOpinion)! Check out our guide for newcomers and our community standards! Tell us how you found RationalWiki here! If you are interested in contributing: Read what our articles are intended to be Check out the to-do list See our help page and Wikipedia's formatting cheatsheet If writing a new article, consider writing up a draft And most importantly: Pull up a goat and have some fun!

Greetings, (InsertOpinion), and thank you for joining the trusty yogurt of the internet! I hope you enjoy your time here. Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 12:45, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you Misanthrope, soon I hope to be initiated in the mysteries concerning the hilarity of the word goat. Meanwhile I'll try to add my two cents to the wiki (InsertOpinion) (talk) 12:51, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Ways to contribute

You've asked Spud how to contribute. Here's some suggestions:

• Go to RationalWiki:Contents or Category:Categories and find a (sub)category about a topic you like or know something about, then find its "stub" subcategory - that one contains very short articles ("stubs") that could benefit from expansion.
• Or keep clicking on Special:Random (the "Random page" link in the menu on the left of every page) until you see something dumb, wrong or incomplete and fix or expand it.

Have fun. --ZooGuard (talk) 12:50, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the info ZooGaurd, but I was more referring to what 'belongs here' on Rationalwiki and what not. I joined because the Netherlands article IMO required some expansion, which I as a Dutch national was happy to give, but is there, as an example, place for an article on a Dutch 'medium' which nobody in the US or UK ever heard of but was influental/controversial in the Netherlands? What or who determins if something is 'on mission' or important enough to be on the Wiki? (InsertOpinion) (talk) 13:13, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

We don't really have any limits on how obscure an article's subject can be. So long as the medium is known in the Netherlands, feel free to write an article about them here. Also, we already have a handful of non-English articles here just for this purpose, so if you think your article would be more effective written in Dutch, go ahead and do so. Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 13:17, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

I responded to what you wrote on my talk page but I'll say a few words here too. It's good that you're concerned about our mission and you seem to know what you're doing. Your English is perfectly understandable, although not error free. If I notice a pattern of mistakes, I'll let you know. But, as the others have said, just dive in and go for it! Spud (talk) 16:04, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you all very much for reacting. I'll keep an eye out for anything related to weed and whores the Netherlands and the EU. (InsertOpinion) (talk) 21:59, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

There's RationalWiki:What is a RationalWiki article?, which aspires to be a useful guide - David Gerard (talk) 13:00, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll check it out (InsertOpinion) (talk) 13:13, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

"Is this a joke or something?"

Welcome to the joys of wikispam. If you have ever looked at Special:RecentChanges, you may have noticed a lot of newly registered accounts with strange names that don't make any edits - those are spam accounts intercepted before they can post anything.--ZooGuard (talk) 12:25, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

LogicMaster777

Just a warning: reductio ad absurdum doesn't work on LogicMaster777 - they are perfectly content to accept absurdities as long as doing it allows them to keep their arguments intact. So, no, they probably don't believe in friendship, either. :) --ZooGuard (talk) 16:23, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

What a character he/she is! It almost kind of scary :P (InsertOpinion) (talk) 16:31, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

As you may have already seen, LM just keeps rehashing the same stuff over and over despite having already received perfectly good and valid answers and/or objections as can be seen by a quick perusal of Debate:Is the government a religion? My guess is that LM has now switched to essays to allow his/her crap to appear all by itself in all its "glory" while the (many and valid) objections are relegated to its talkpage.

As alluded to by ZooGuard, LM has claimed that, for instance, corporations are religions, since they fit LM's (silly and homespun) definition of the latter (apparently tailored to reach the conclusion that states are religions).

However, what's arguably the most annoying thing about LM is his/her continuous insistence that (s)he is the only one who understands the topic, that only LM's (homespun and flawed) terminology should be accepted, and that anyone who disagrees is just a brainwashed "statist"/"statheist".

Almost equally annoying are the constant demands for "evidence" which, when obliged, are followed by variants of "That's not evidence in my opinion" (think of creationists demanding to see a crocoduck) and loud proclamations that LM is the only one pursuing a "rational" and "logical" enquiry.

Futhermore, LM doesn't actually seem to understand many of the concepts (s)he employs, including the fallacies (s)he accuses others of committing (e.g. LM thinks it's an ad hominem to call him/her a moron for continually adhering to moronic arguments and definitions despite receiving numerous corrections - you can also search the state/religion debate for LM's use of ad baculum, reification and "anthropomorph").

As if all that wasn't enough, LM has a raging persecution complex because (s)he thinks it's censorship (another concept (s)he apparently doesn't understand) to collapse his/her long rants about "statism"/"statheism" on the talkpages of various RW articles.

In sum: Arguing with LM is pointless in terms of actually getting anywhere, so only engage if you like a good row for the hell of it. ScepticWombat (talk) 11:20, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

I wasn't planning on actually arguing with the aptly named Master of Logic. I thought: maybe he/se just needs a friend or something like that? Or you know, discuss some lighter things in stead of the same stream of bullshit. He/she just seems so tense and antagonistic, and I wonder why (Tell Me What To Think) _{and (I'll tell you what to feel)} 13:16, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

The eternal question: Why do people do what they do (or anything at all)? Yeah, it's quite a puzzle, but I suppose LM might get a kick out of playing his Galileo gambit'esque "fighting against the sheeple"-efforts.

I've long thought that at least some of the appeal of conspiracy and fringe theories alike is that they allow their adherents to see themselves as the "chosen few"; little Fox Mulders who really know that "the Truth is out there". Hell, sometimes a fringe theory may even be correct, or at least closer to the mark than the majority view. Anyway, I guess it's a bit like the appeal of cults/religions who make their member their members feel special by telling them that they are part of the "elect" who really "get it" or something along those lines. ScepticWombat (talk) 14:49, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Did you ever try EST? I don't think it's so much about feeling special, as it is that you're under a lot of pressure to undergo a transformation before you leave. People can pinpoint the moment when it happened, just as a lot of Christians say they can pinpoint the exact moment when they were saved. I'm not sure what the word is for that type of experience, other than maybe "popping" (like popcorn), in that it's an instantaneous and irreversible change from one state to another. Landmark makes sure that while people are still riding high off the emotions of the experience, they are presented with limited-time tuition discounts for other courses and opportunities to recruit others. Landmartian (talk) 14:55, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

What is EST, Landmartian? I can't find a satisfying account on google. And ScepticWombat, yeah, I recognize that 'ingroup' feeling in a few of my old friends who at some point turned 'conspiracy-theorist'. It's not about the facts; it never was. I can bust all the illuminati and banking nonsense he posts on his Facebook wall, it'll never change his opinion, because his beliefs aren't based on facts anyway. I also recognize this emotion of religious-like 'conversion' to a simple and all-encompassing truth, I see this in conspiracy theorists, but just as well in people who fear the 'islamisation' of the Netherlands. At some point they 'woke up', and now they're in the know they're better then us. (Tell Me What To Think) _{and (I'll tell you what to feel)} 15:11, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

It's exactly the similarity between EST's "transformation" and Christian salvation (or similar "wow!"-stuff) that I tried to hint at with the EST link. You suddenly realise that you really get it and this creates a high, which, in the case of cults and religions, can be sustained by reinforcement among their members. From what I know of EST, it seems to draw on something akin to gnosis (our article mentions Zen whose concept of satori is pretty similar) along with various "teambuilding" and/or pop psychology and marketing techniques in a package tailored for the "Me generation".

Nevertheless, one strong attraction of gnosticism and similar types of thought is exactly that you can possess some sort of "secret knowledge" or "insight" (subtext: Unlike the great unwashed hordes of sheeple). This is why I find Universalists, especially the "No-Hellers", fascinating, but it also suggests to me that this very indiscriminate view of salvation is probably one reason why Universalism is a rather marginal strain of Christianity (we all want to feel "special", after all). ScepticWombat (talk) 15:25, 25 February 2015 (UTC)