User talk:Cmonk

What is going on? World Blogs Clogs Elections The Bar (talk) (talk) (talk) (talk) (hic) Welcome to RationalWiki, Cmonk! 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!

DiamondDisc1(talk) 04:42, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Wow, great moves!

Because of your edits to and time on the wiki, Autopatrolled has been added to your user rights. This lets you bypass most of the abuse filters, bypass the CAPTCHA, and edit more frequently. If you have questions, bleat ask away.

We hope you enjoy your newfound POWER — and these external tools:

• Google Scholar Button ^{(Chrome, Firefox)} searches your highlighted text in Google Scholar. Easily check academic citations!
• web.archive.org and archive.today, among other tools, can save permanent copies of webpages. Never lose a crank website or racist Tweet ever again! Reverend Black Percy (talk) 10:41, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Since I'm lazy

You got a Steam account, Skype, anything like that I could add you on? If you don't want to post it here in public, e-mail it to me! All the best buddy, Reverend Black Percy (talk) 20:16, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Discord is fine too, if you got it! :) Reverend Black Percy (talk) 21:30, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I sent you an e-mail. Cheers! ^{— Unsigned, by: Cmonk / talk / contribs}

Sysop

Because of your edits to and time on the wiki, Autopatrolled has been added to your user rights. This lets you bypass most of the abuse filters, bypass the CAPTCHA, and edit more frequently. If you have questions, bleat ask away.

We hope you enjoy your newfound POWER — and these external tools:

• Google Scholar Button ^{(Chrome, Firefox)} searches your highlighted text in Google Scholar. Easily check academic citations!
• web.archive.org and archive.today, among other tools, can save permanent copies of webpages. Never lose a crank website or racist Tweet ever again! Christopher (talk) 14:33, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Submitted for your consideration

Considering your valiant jousting against the stillborn arguments of that cdesign proponentsists, I thought you could use a "break", as it were. So, I dug this up for you — just some fairly recent food-for-thought on the whole process of arguing in a circle with a crank, freshly written by me as I'd just been through that process with a fluoride truther. I hope it finds you well, and maybe it even lends you some insight (or spurs you on to reflect and lend me some). All the best, Reverend Black Percy (talk) 22:12, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Also, I'm sure you've read it before, but just in case — here's the obligatory foreplay to the above link. All the best, Reverend Black Percy (talk) 22:13, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Initially I was looking forward to a scientific debate, but it didn't really go as I expected. About the bias thing, I have been thinking about that since the beginning: what if I am mistaken? But he is the one claiming impossibility (I only claim that I don't know), he hasn't provided any reference (although he clearly has some medical knowledge, which is why I avoid saying that he is wrong unless I have some justification), and unless he can provide a logical proof (highly dubious on this subject) there is really not much to say, which is why we keep going in circles. If I make a reasoning mistake, please feel free to notify me or intervene in the discussion. --Cmonk (talk) 22:25, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Post-debate impressions

Long story short: the OP invented his own personal definition of "Darwinian" evolution which is somehow random (he probably also has his own personal definition of random, I don't know); for unexplained reasons (maybe none), he believes that the observation that biological systems have biological functions is evidence against (his version of) Darwinian evolution of such systems.

Regarding his motivation, at first I thought maybe it was to "engage the enemy on their own turf". That would require a lot of self-confidence, making it all the more difficult to interact with him. This idea seems compatible with the territoriality that he consistently displayed throughout the conversation. But it is also possible that he considers himself a skeptic trying to "debunk Darwinism".

I had decided since the beginning to focus on the science part and ignore everything else. It seems to me that he was convinced that his "science" was indestructible, and expected his "opponents" to give up and go instead for his belief system where he actually cannot lose. As long as his self-confidence was high, dialogue was impossible, he was just preaching. I actually started to think he was a troll until my negative comments finally started to breach his mental shield (this moment).

Having a common ground made some kind of dialog possible (in this case, he really wanted to appear scientific). However, it took me a while to figure out his logic, which I attempted to reveal here. However, that message seems to have closed the dialog and then things went downhill. I could probably have extended the conversation by attempting a targeted rebuttal to his final "point", but I could see that I was getting sloppy and decided to end it instead. It was a bit odd to see his negative reaction to AronRa whereas earlier he admitted to enjoying potholer54, although not necessarily the associated discussions. He did not "waddle off in contentment".

In this discussion you suggested 4 stages: (1) JAQing off, (2) Gish gallop, (3) Moving the goalpost, (4) Pseudoskepticism. If I had to describe what happened in those terms, I would say that he actually started the whole thing with (2) and then stayed on (4), and only went for (1) in the last part of the conversation. I did my best to prevent (3) all along by focusing the conversation (at the cost of giving up on immediately addressing potentially important points). --Cmonk (talk) 16:44, 23 April 2017 (UTC)