How do you know what you know?

[Libre]

Read the threads. So many strong opinions. No, not opinions - let's call them convictions. They are convictions because those that advance them are certain that they are correct and those who disagree are obviously A) stupid sheep or B) evil liars.

Frothy said he has two "otherwise intelligent" friends who are anti-vaxxers, and another who is convinced of the conspiracy regarding chem trails.

How is it, do you think, that an otherwise intelligent person adopts a clearly fallacious (to you) viewpoint?

If you see zero merit in somebody's position, then you don't understand their position or are unwilling to admit they might be right. That they see things that support their opinion that you don't - that's all. You are as subject to confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, ignorance of pertinent data, and false assumptions as they.

Did you ever find that, after being ABSOUTELY SURE of a thing, you suddenly learn something new or have a new thought - and change your mind? I used to do this so much I gave up on being sure of stuff. Yes, I can arrive at what I BELIEVE to me MOST LIKELY and that's about it.

It is true that a "rogue issue" (I'll call it) can insert itself into the mind of even the most skeptical and analytical thinkers. It can happen. No proof or evidence of something, completely fictitious, preposterous idea, yet the person insists it's true.

But let's face it, most of the time, there are confounding facts on all sides of any issue - making the actual "truth" of the matter very hard to discern. Nearly anything COULD be true - and without possessing omniscience, you can't completely discount almost anything.

I don't know.
And I mean that. I don't know much of anything about anything. I think about things all the time yet I never get to a feeling of certainty about pretty much anything. Any reasoned side of any argument can be convincing to me. There are only possibilities and MORE possible possibilities.

Yet, so many are so sure of themselves: there is NO climate change; there is NO supreme being; there is NO danger in vaccinations; there are NO chem trails; YES THERE ARE!; life does NOT begin in the womb; YES IT DOES!; etc.
WHO KNOWS??!?!?!

One question for you:
Are your fingernails growing? I mean right this very instant. Are they? Are you sure? How do you know? Can you prove it?

Ok - everyone go back to arguing now.

 

[sneuberg]

Are your fingernails growing? I mean right this very instant. Are they? Are you sure? How do you know? Can you prove it?

Fingernail grow an average of 3 mm per month. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nail_(anatomy)#Growth

Thats about 1.44 nm per second

Interferometers can measure down to 1 nm http://www.explainthatstuff.com/howinterferometerswork.html

QED

 

[The_Doc_Man]

A lot of what we know comes from schools. A lot more comes from family. Given the variety of schools and families in the USA alone, this presages a very wide variety of different viewpoints shaped by environment as well as the personalities of those doing the teaching in whatever form it occurs. We are exposed to a lot of influences from a lot of people. The question is, how do we choose those ideas to which we cling so dearly?

OK, vague-sounding, right? But I actually have a point to make. What we know comes from those teachings - but the stuff that we emphatically know, that we KNOW deep down to our cores, comes from how much we TRUST those who did the teaching. If the person who teaches us is someone we trust, for any reason, we KNOW that this person would not lie to us or mislead us. Therefore, we tend to believe that person without question or pause. Similarly, if a person gains our distrust, then we kind of sort of maybe have an idea of what that person said, but we tend to disbelieve or at least take it "with a grain of salt" (Lat. cum grano).

If you really trust your religious parents or for some reason really trust your spiritual leader (priest, parson, minister, mullah, rabbi, shaman...), then your religious beliefs were not necessarily founded on truth but rather on what those trusted persons told you, which they though was true. So if THEY believe, YOU believe - whether we are talking God, Jehovah, Allah, or (for shamanistics) the Great Spirit of the Desert.

This is perhaps why people have such a hard time giving up their beliefs - because it requires them to sever a bond of trust and to entertain the idea that they were wrong when they trusted a particular person. The stronger the bond of trust, the harder it is to break down the learning barriers. Since religion in the USA comes primarily from one's parents (and I'm guessing this is true in other parts of the world), the strength of that bond of trust might be nearly unbreakable.

Now, as an aside, how ANYONE in his/her right mind could follow Scientology, which was created out of whole cloth by a known huckster, grafter, and (bad) science-fiction writier. The (dis)honorable L. Ron Hubbard was a hack writer but he somehow gained fans, who in turn somehow decided that his fictional religion made sense to them. Rather obviously, I do NOT trust L. Ron, so I can't accept his religion. I just don't see how anyone who knew about him COULD accept that drivel. But I digress...

This breach of trust (sometimes appropriately called a breach of faith) is also why it takes a LOT of pain and terrible events for someone to renounce the beliefs instilled into them during childhood. I know that when the Biblical "house of cards" finally fell apart for me, I had to revisit a LOT more than just religious teachings. My father's racial distrust wasn't helping me at all, but there I was fortunate to have found some forgiving friends of other races so that I could overcome my Dad's hatred.

This is why I finally turned towards science. I realized that taking something on someone's unsupported word wasn't always right. Science doesn't trust... it repeats the experiment to see if it comes out reliably. Then it publishes the method to allow others to try it for themselves - i.e. don't trust my unsupported word, go out and verify it for yourself. Here's how I did it. See if YOU can do it.

Libre, it's a good question. I hope my answer makes sense to you.

 

[kevlray]

Science has it flaws too, mostly because we really have a vague idea what is going on at the sub-atomic level. So really what is energy, why and how do the forces at the sub-atomic level exist?

Another example, we spent several hours at a hospital the other day because my wife was having severe chest pain (not heart or stomach related), none of the several pain medications they gave her was making a difference, thus it was just hit or miss with the meds. It finally got better, but I am not 100% sure the last medication they gave her actually helped.

 

[Libre]

Doc Man I think a lot of what you wrote is correct.
In fact it proves my point.
We don't KNOW.
We were taught in school or at home - or elsewhere - what the "teacher" (anyone) thought was true. For whatever reason, we trust the teacher. So we adopt what they told us as true despite the fact that we have no actual knowledge of it. We prefer to advance a concept as the TRUTH over doubting a cherished figure from our past.
I have found myself in the very uncomfortable position of trying to uphold an argument against a bevy of assailants and the only real faith I have in my argument is the faith in the person that said what I am now saying.
And I've seen my arguments crumble, in such situations, because I could not support them with independent facts, apart from what my cherished teacher may have said. Staunch opponents of a concept are unlikely to accept YOUR faith in the person that told you such-and-such was absolutely true.

Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace.
Everyone says so.
It says so on the book cover.
So he must have actually written it.

Yes, all this proves my point.
We don't know. We believe some things because we trust the source. Other things we can prove to ourselves analytically. To say fingernails grow at a particular rate at any particular time is repeating something we were told from a supposedly reliable source - I don't dispute it but it is not something we can verify for ourselves and KNOW is true.

And how much of the universe can we verify for ourselves? Pitifully little.

 

[Frothingslosh]

So basically, you're not just resurrecting Agrippa's belief in philosophical skepticism and refusing Kant's refutation of his position, but taking it to an extreme that very few modern supporters have been willing to embrace by rejecting the underlying foundation of all science: the proven concept that the universe and everything in it can be measured, modeled, and eventually, predicted. People have been arguing - and refuting - your point since the the Greek Classical era.

Not only should you read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, but perhaps you should look into "Knowledge, Ignorance, and True Belief" by Pierre le Morvan or Peter Klein's book Certainty.

And even outside philosophy, the very fact of human science and technology proves right up front that things CAN be known and CAN be predicted. If that weren't the case, we would never have been able to, among other things, explore the solar system by throwing machines in such paths that they do orbits around multiple objects in order to gain speed before finally reaching and orbiting their destination. Slingshotting would NOT work if you couldn't precisely predict not only where each planet will be at any given time, but their precise gravitational strength and velocity. Large buildings could not be constructed without a precise understanding of all of the strengths, pressures, and weaknesses involved in building them. Chemists couldn't do their jobs without precise knowledge of the interactions between the atoms and energy.

If you try to argue that senses cannot be trusted, then let me point out that you are, yourself, relying on your senses to 'prove' your point.

And also, just let me point out that the statement you're putting forth - that nothing can be known with certainty - cannot logically be true, as in being true it would have to itself be a certainty, while all that is required for it to be invalid would be for there to be the POSSIBILITY of knowledge.

 

[Libre]

You brought a lot of "stuff" into the discussion - stuff about Kant and philosophy, engineering and traveling to other planets - but you didn't address my question:
Are your fingernails growing?
And now I have a second question based on your statement:

If you try to argue that senses cannot be trusted, then let me point out that you are, yourself, relying on your senses to 'prove' your point.

Second question:
Can you trust your senses to answer the first question?

You can throw books and philosophy and space travel into the discussion if you want to. But how do you KNOW?

You said:

Large buildings could not be constructed without a precise understanding of all of the strengths, pressures, and weaknesses involved in building them. Chemists couldn't do their jobs without precise knowledge of the interactions between the atoms and energy.

I disagree that there is anything close to "precise knowledge" even today, much less centuries ago, when large buildings were being constructed and chemists were busy at their jobs.

Knowledge is a fleeting thing - it is not a commodity that one can save, add to, invest, and withdraw.

People have been arguing - and refuting - your point since the the Greek Classical era.

If it's been argued for that long then I guess the jury must still be out on this one.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Libre, after a while we will run out of hairs to split (perhaps part of Zeno's Paradox), but I think you are missing one important aspect of it, so I will add a point and clarify my own personal position.

I agree that I can never TRULY AND COMPLETELY know many things, but I can learn enough that the odds of my being wrong very significantly diminish. I might have based those odds on trusting someone or on actually doing the experiments and analysis - or both might be approximately equal factors.

I might never have actually seen (at the molecular level) that certain types of organic chemical reactions proceed via the "nucleophilic insertion" mechanism, but I deeply trusted my professor of Organic Chemistry who said they did. On the other hand, I DIDN'T trust years of published literature on the state of vanadium oxide in strongly acidic aqueous solution - because there, I did my own experiments and found a mechanism for the formation of heteropoly anions that showed that the literature of the 1920's to 1930's contained errors of based on incorrect assumptions of the state of hydration of vanadium in the +5 oxidation state.

On the other hand, when people tell me about God and I look analytically at their evidence, that trust factor isn't there and my odds of accepting that belief have (over the years) dwindled to a vanishingly small number approaching zero. Do I know for a hard and absolute fact that God doesn't exist? No, but the odds are against it (in my book).

All we can ever do is consciously or unconsciously apply the "Principle of Diminishing Returns" to the amount of effort we put in our beliefs. Once we reach that point where we feel that the odds are good enough for our answer to be right, we stop looking. Perhaps that is an element of how we "know" something.

It is also why I moved over to a more "Zen" belief. I don't always ask "WHY" about something. I ask the more complex - but more pragmatic - question, "So... here is this something. It exists. What should I do about it?" As a researcher, if the something does not appear to be researchable (by me) then I file it away as an observation and go on about the rest of my business because, once that decision is made, I know enough about the something to follow the Beatle's advice - Let It Be.

 

[Libre]

Well, now that you mentioned Zeno - I'll say that he was the guy who raised the questions - and disputed the hard won knowledge - and pissed everybody off.
They had no way to answer him. It takes calculus to even approach an answer to his paradox, and even then it doesn't quite satisfy.

Among other things, Zeno claimed nothing in the universe can move.
Zeno posed problems to the ancient Greeks (who were legendary problem solvers) that could NOT be answered until centuries later, when more advanced math was developed. And I'm sure he could still ask those kinds of difficult, probing awkward questions, that lie somewhere on the boundary between reality and imagination.

Hairs can be split indefinitely, as far as I'm concerned.
It's the only way to improve and refine knowledge. Keep looking deeper. Keep looking in between. Once you're satisfied you've got the whole thing worked out, and no further divisions in the hair are possible - that's when you stop learning.

 

[Frothingslosh]

Libre, I'm bringing up philosophy because that's what you're arguing - specifically, you're arguing the ancient Greek concept of 'philosophical skepticism', the belief that nothing can truly be known. And no, the jury isn't really still out on this one, save in the same way that the jury's still out on Obama's birth certificate or the idea that Bush did 9/11 rather than al Qaida.

Descartes, in particular, did a particularly elegant refutation. Of course, it was part of his proposed proof of God's existence, but that doesn't mean 'cogito, ergo sum' is wrong.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

It's the only way to improve and refine knowledge. Keep looking deeper. Keep looking in between. Once you're satisfied you've got the whole thing worked out, and no further divisions in the hair are possible - that's when you stop learning.

Unless, of course, you reach satiety on a problem and decide that you have a good enough answer such that it is time for a different question.

Interestingly enough, your comments about splitting hairs indefinitely (in the context of Zeno's Paradox) is a case of question-begging. But remember that I am both a theorist AND a pragmatist. When I no longer care because that hair has been split to the sub-molecular level, it's time to find a new hair.

 

[Libre]

Unless, of course, you reach satiety on a problem and decide that you have a good enough answer such that it is time for a different question.

Unless, of course, you are not seeking to find a solution for a specific problem and are embarked on a quest to simply improve or increase your knowledge.

Libre, I'm bringing up philosophy because that's what you're arguing - specifically, you're arguing the ancient Greek concept of 'philosophical skepticism', the belief that nothing can truly be known. And no, the jury isn't really still out on this one, save in the same way that the jury's still out on Obama's birth certificate or the idea that Bush did 9/11 rather than al Qaida.

Oh, so the concept of 'philosophical skepticism' has been debunked?
I hadn't heard.
It's nice that somebody finally discovered the true answer to the question. So now, it is definitely a known fact that things can be definitely known.
Whew!
Kind of sounds a little circular but, hey, if that's what THEY say then it must be true because THEY are never wrong.
I was worried that the question would never be answered, and that we would never know whether or not things could be truly known.
That's a relief - I feel much better about it now.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Libre, this is EXACTLY why I've chosen a more Zen-like attitude. "It is. What should I do about it?" If the answer is "Nothing" then I do nothing.

And in some cases, the answer CAN be definitively known - to me. I.e. I've learned enough. I know definitively that it is enough for me. I know definitively that it is time to move on. Any other answer would lead me to the curse of inaction through indecision. It is the curse that I see in folks who wait for divine inspiration. They want a SIGN that God wants them to do thus-and-such - but unless they suddenly develop a case of confirmation bias and imagine that an ordinary event IS their sign from God, they would wait forever, a la "Waiting for Godot."

 

[Frothingslosh]

Huh.

I thought I was the one here most likely to overreact.

Yes, as far as I'm concerned, Descartes has thoroughly refuted philosophical skepticism, and Kant, Klein, le Morvin, and others have only reinforced that.

I mean, hell, this is shit I covered in introductory philosophy classes when I was in college. Your refusal to accept any points put forth by anyone else doesn't make you correct; it simply shows you as being completely closed-minded on the topic and makes me wonder why you even bothered MAKING this God-damned thread. Obviously, you're apparently as willing to actually have an actual discussion here as Murderboy is over on the atheism thread.

 

[Libre]

Huh.

I thought I was the one here most likely to overreact.

Yes, as far as I'm concerned, Descartes has thoroughly refuted philosophical skepticism, and Kant, Klein, le Morvin, and others have only reinforced that.

I mean, hell, this is shit I covered in introductory philosophy classes when I was in college. Your refusal to accept any points put forth by anyone else doesn't make you correct; it simply shows you as being completely closed-minded on the topic and makes me wonder why you even bothered MAKING this God-damned thread. Obviously, you're apparently as willing to actually have an actual discussion here as Murderboy (sic) is over on the atheism thread.

Eh? This is a civil discussion. I think you're in the wrong place.

First of all, you don't know what "overreact" means. At no time has my tone become any more animated than at any other. You're the one that's suddenly going off the deep end.

Second of all - it's good that you went to college. Some people continue thinking about stuff even if was covered in an introductory course. You may not be such a person but I am.

I don't see the call to get all huffy and puffy on me - and actually pretty insulting. Where do you get off copping that attitude with me?
I asked a question - one that certainly has no definite or universally accepted answer - despite your bullheaded insistence of the same.

I didn't ask how may feet are in a statute mile or what Avogadro's number is. I asked an abstract question - one that you yourself have said has been debated for centuries - oh, until Descartes, Kant, and Frothingslosh all put an end to it because they have already provided the one and only answer.

It's a question that fascinates me - so I thought I'd raise it. I expected only a discussion - not a definite answer - and didn't think anyone would be so pompous as to not only advance one but then adamantly insist that it's the ONLY one.

If you think the discussion is a waste of time then kindly remove yourself from it. You had your introductory course, your mind is made up, that's that. And that's fine. But your arrogant and belittling attitude is insufferable.

Stuff it.

 

[Kraj]

If I may be so bold as to attempt to smooth this over...

Libre, first let me say I agree it's a fascinating question and I'd like to add my ideas on the topic. I struggled with this during the "I'm a teenager and learning how to make decisions for myself, while my parents and teachers declare that this means I think I know everything" phase. The conclusion I came to is I did not need to know everything, but enough to make good decisions for myself. I see that idea as being applicable to your dilemma.

Allow me to put Doc Man's point about splitting hairs and Zen-like approach another way: certainty is asymptotic. Even with infinite time certainty will never reach 100%, but it will get infinitely close. In other words, as knowledge increases over time the degree of certainty increases but never to a state of absolute certainty. However, this also means investment of time and knowledge has diminishing returns. When the degree of certainty is 99.9%, there is not much to be gained by making it 99.999% For example, one could argue the possibility of random cosmic events causing the sun not to rise tomorrow, but if you spent your entire life taking a daily tally of whether the sun rose, would it have any measurable impact on the certainty of whether the sun will rise tomorrow? You say that the point to stop learning is when you are satisfied that hairs cannot be split any further, but immediately prior you claim hairs can be split infinitely. That suggests that the appropriate time to stop examining a topic is subjective and arbitrary: it's when you feel satisfied that you've gone far enough.

My next encounter with this idea of uncertainty was DesCartes' argument against the senses, and the possibility of the great deceiver. While I don't dismiss the value of DesCartes' ideas nor the genius of his famous argument, I'm a pragmatist at heart. I think that certainty is found by considering contradictory evidence. (And people who live in a state of absolute certainty invariably do so by rejecting the notion that contradictory evidence might possibly be true.) The difficult questions in life usually have mountains of evidence pointing in different directions. Returning to the sunrise example, are there conceivable scenarios where the sun doesn't rise tomorrow? Is it even possible something we have no knowledge of whatsoever could be the culprit? Sure. We do not have absolute certainty the sun will rise. But we also have zero evidence to suggest it won't, and every shred of human knowledge thus far supports the assumption that it will. So, as far as how it applies to your life and how you make decisions, will you say with certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow? If your inclination is to answer no, then consider how that will impact decisions you make today. As Doc Man said, what are you going to do about it? If you can identify a difference then that lack of certainty is useful. If you cannot, then consider why you choose uncertainty over certainty when there is no apparent reason to do so. Why continue contemplating whether the hair might be further split after you are satisfied it can't?

The flip side of this coin is that uncertainty is useful when it drives discovery. There is a high degree of certainty, for example, that Pi is an infinitely irrational number. However, it will always be possible that it has a repeating pattern of incomprehensible and unprecedented length. Such a discovery could have a tremendous impact on maths' ability to predict the universe, and so people keep endeavoring to calculate new digits of Pi.



Now then, indulge me in a moment of finger-wagging: Frothingslosh's initial post was not particularly tactful and I wouldn't blame you for feeling slighted by it. However, he makes a very fair point that if you are truly contemplating the answer to your question, what better place to look than the work of well-respected authors who have already put a great deal of time and energy into the same questions? That does not mean you must agree with their conclusions, but what better source could there be to find the evidence and logical arguments that are relevant? If someone points you towards an excellent source of knowledge on a topic that interests you, why would you not want to learn that information? Would you hack your way through uncharted jungle before checking whether the paved road gets you where you want to go?

That said, let's be real. Your response to him was aggressive, sarcastic, and dismissive. Your claim that "At no time has my tone become any more animated than at any other." is quite false, regardless of your intent. Given the abysmal level of discourse typically found on the internet, it's not exactly a bad assumption when it seems like someone is being a dick, that they're being a dick. However, if you're interested in this thread being one of civil discourse with smart people who disagree with you, then you need to holster that assumption and also accept when your own bad behavior is pointed out. When someone disagrees with you, if you can't tell the difference between those who are genuinely interested in constructive discussion and those who just endlessly spew their own opinions, then you do not have an open mind. If you can, then engage the former and forgive their transgressions (they probably didn't intend to be rude either!), and ignore the latter.

 

[Libre]

Please excuse me then, Frothingslosh. I apologize.

Felt to me that I was the one being dismissed but I'm letting that go. I got some good replies and the point of the thread was not about fact finding - but about raising a question that might get a discussion going. Is it inappropriate? As far as I'm concerned it felt like - well, you came and asked a question and you got your answer sonny so what more do you want?

Food for thought - start a new thread - bored at work.

The degree of certainty one needs to consider a problem solved depends on some practical considerations. If you reach a 99.9% solution - that could be a good time to declare the problem solved. If it's carpentry or auto repair and you're close to within tolerance, I don't say you should continue hunting for the 100% solution.
On the other hand, a tiny difference between the observed and the predicted orbit of the planet Mercury drove Einstein to develop his theory of relativity.

Newtonian mechanics are all anyone needs to solve most of the problems engineers will encounter, at least on this planet. If we went with the 99.9% solution there, we wouldn't have relativity. But surely they have it all worked out NOW. Not so fast, quantum mechanics and all that. And even that is getting old. Looking between the hairs has led to gigantic breakthroughs.

Hey, if you think I'm being repetitive or stubborn you're probably right.

And you're right I should check out what Decartes had to say about it.

 

[Steve R.]

Now then, indulge me in a moment of finger-wagging: Frothingslosh's initial post was not particularly tactful and I wouldn't blame you for feeling slighted by it. However, he makes a very fair point that if you are truly contemplating the answer to your question, what better place to look than the work of well-respected authors who have already put a great deal of time and energy into the same questions? That does not mean you must agree with their conclusions, but what better source could there be to find the evidence and logical arguments that are relevant? If someone points you towards an excellent source of knowledge on a topic that interests you, why would you not want to learn that information? Would you hack your way through uncharted jungle before checking whether the paved road gets you where you want to go?

That said, let's be real. Your response to him was aggressive, sarcastic, and dismissive. Your claim that "At no time has my tone become any more animated than at any other." is quite false, regardless of your intent. Given the abysmal level of discourse typically found on the internet, it's not exactly a bad assumption when it seems like someone is being a dick, that they're being a dick. However, if you're interested in this thread being one of civil discourse with smart people who disagree with you, then you need to holster that assumption and also accept when your own bad behavior is pointed out. When someone disagrees with you, if you can't tell the difference between those who are genuinely interested in constructive discussion and those who just endlessly spew their own opinions, then you do not have an open mind. If you can, then engage the former and forgive their transgressions (they probably didn't intend to be rude either!), and ignore the latter.

I do not know to what degree you have been following the responses by Frothingslosh over various topics. My anecdotal experience is that his responses to viewpoints that he does not agree with have been adversarial on several fronts. Demeaning ad hominem style attacks. Misquoting the comments of the other person in a negative manner. And, any evidence that you present to support your position is refuted by Frothingslosh as being unsound. Eventually Frothingslosh unilaterally concludes that he is the only one making the "intelligent" analysis, which tends to squelch the conversation. As such Frothingslosh does not appear to be genuinely interested in constructive discussion and/or open to considering opposing views as being valid.

Thanks for tiptoeing into the minefield to help smooth things over!

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Newtonian mechanics are all anyone needs to solve most of the problems engineers will encounter, at least on this planet. If we went with the 99.9% solution there, we wouldn't have relativity. But surely they have it all worked out NOW. Not so fast, quantum mechanics and all that. And even that is getting old. Looking between the hairs has led to gigantic breakthroughs.

The difference between Newtonian mechanics and auto mechanics is that auto mechanics know there is a tolerance limit on the machine tools used to make a piston or bearing or hinge, and that once they are within tolerance, it is OK to stop tinkering. The auto will run just fine as long as you don't wrap it around a tree or something like that.

On the other hand, the Newtonian mechanics didn't believe that there was ANY tolerance limit in the thing being measured, though of course there were such limits on their measuring tools. If you are satisfied that the tolerance limit on your measuring tool is that you will get an answer that is not more than X from the correct answer but you see a measurement that is 3X away from your prediction, that is outside of the tolerance you assume for the thing being measured. I.e, even allowing for your imperfect tools, if the observation is outside of its predictable limits, there is something wrong - hence Einstein's curiosity over the orbit of Mercury.

Then again, this talk of auto mechanics and Newtonian mechanics reminds me of one of my favorite movies of all time - Forbidden Planet - in which Chief Quinn comments about how "any quantum mechanic would love to work on THIS equipment..." Sorry, sometimes I digress.

 

[Alc]

I do not know to what degree you have been following the responses by Frothingslosh over various topics. My anecdotal experience is that his responses to viewpoints that he does not agree with have been adversarial on several fronts. Demeaning ad hominem style attacks. Misquoting the comments of the other person in a negative manner. And, any evidence that you present to support your position is refuted by Frothingslosh as being unsound. Eventually Frothingslosh unilaterally concludes that he is the only one making the "intelligent" analysis, which tends to squelch the conversation. As such Frothingslosh does not appear to be genuinely interested in constructive discussion and/or open to considering opposing views as being valid.

Thanks for tiptoeing into the minefield to help smooth things over!

The first paragraph deliberately insults and antagonizes the person and, at best, prolongs the perceived issue.

The second paragraph thanks someone else for trying keep the peace.

If you genuinely wanted to "smooth things over" you'd have omitted everything apart from the last eleven words.