4um: The wonders of the bozo filter

Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
Editorial
See other Editorial Articles
Title: The wonders of the bozo filter
Source: [None]
URL Source: [None]
Published: Jan 24, 2020
Author: Anthem
Post Date: 2020-01-24 20:34:50 by Anthem
Keywords: None
Views: 1133
Comments: 32

Just to let those of you who may be visiting and don't know about it. This site has a "bozo filter" which allows you to screen out comments from trolls. The great thing about it is that it cleans up the "Latest Comments" list, so trolls don't even show up there.
It helps when there are trolls like Liberator and FormerLurker who are determined to clog up the "Latest Comments" page with idiotic trash.
Got to "Setup" then clik the tab "Content Filters" then put in the name(s) of the troll(s). Shazzam! They no longer appear anywhere. Enjoy!
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 18.
#4. To: Anthem, FormerLurker (#0) (Edited)
I've done my share of challenging the flat earth myth almost all over at LF. Though he strongly advocates flat earth, Liberator is no troll. He honestly believes it.
Though it can be a bit frustrating challenging flat earth ideas as there is so much wrong with it and its arguments, it's also interesting, I think, to explore the thought processes of the advocates along the way, both as they defend of flat earth as well as their response to global earth evidence.
I'm satisfied in knowing that there are far worse things in life about which to be mistaken and for that reason, I can get along fine with flat earthers. Sure use the bozo filter as inclined. There's also an "Ignore Thread" feature for turning off all attention to specific articles. A good way to get away from flat earth discussions that get long winded.
And I think FormerLurker has spoken adequately in his own defense.

Pinguinite posted on 2020-01-25 3:01:05 ET Reply Untrace Trace Private Reply
#11. To: Pinguinite (#4) (Edited)
Though he strongly advocates flat earth, Liberator is no troll. He honestly believes it.

I can't believe any honestly intelligent person would believe such absurd nonsense.
These people deny there is such as thing as gravity. They know nothing about science, yet tell us all the scientists on earth are lying, for yet some unknown and undefined reason.
You'd have to shut your brain off to jump on the flat earth bandwagon.
No, I don't think Liberator believes what he says. He doesn't appear to be a rabid nutter to me.
The truth movement has been infiltrated by people such as him, all for the purpose of discrediting any real truth that is presented. 9/11 truth is just one of those movements that have been infiltrated.
Look up "Flat Earth Psyop" and see what you find.

FormerLurker posted on 2020-01-25 22:48:26 ET Reply Untrace Trace Private Reply
#12. To: FormerLurker (#11)
When I first heard that someone was promoting the idea that the earth was flat in our own time, on the internet, I was amazed. I watched a video or two of someone arguing the earth was flat just to see where the hell they were coming from. I remember one has this guy illustrating the our "supposed" heliocentric solar system with coins on flat surface, and in the middle of that presentation, he goes off on some tangent about coinage of the middle ages. But at the end, he concluded that it wouldn't be possible to see the same stars in the winter as the summer because the earth would be on the other side of the sun, conveniently ignoring the fact that space is 3 dimensional, not 2.
I decided either the guy promoting it was a loon, or he started this flat earth advocacy as a social experiment to see how many people he could start believing it. I still don't know which.
But.... one thing I come to believe myself, is that the power of the human mind to believe things that are not true is waaaay underrated. It's why we (people in general) have such very diverse and strong beliefs that vary so dramatically. We especially see it in politics in conservatives/liberals, and with what we call Trump Derangement Syndrome where people believe he's the anti-christ. Remember election day in 2016 where people are crying and news pundents are lamenting the end of the world. Rachel Maddow soberingly assuring us that, no, we didn't die and go to hell, that we were still alive, and Trump won the election.
Muslim extremists believe things so strongly they will blow themselves up thinking an orgasmic paradise awaits them for all eternity. And of course, as we know, countries of whatever predominant faith remain that faith generation in and generation out, as kids simply accept what their parents taught them as gospel.
We all have that defect in tendency to believe things that are not true. I don't exempt myself from the disease either. Certainly flat earth is a more extreme example, but... as I said, there are worse things to be wrong about in life than the shape of the earth.
I've conversed a lot with Liberator. He's most certainly a Bible believing Christian (a factor that I think contributes to his flat earth belief, though I think he denies that), and being the Christian I believe that he is, I think it safe to say that he would not advocate flat earth unless he honestly believed in it.
And... life goes on. Yes, being a scientists by nature, I see flaws in every flat earth argument I take time to consider. Yes, it's an amazing thing to behold, when someone presents it so adamantly, and I've certainly done my fair share of attempting to dispel it. But really, the primary force that shapes for us what we choose to believe is not logic. It is emotion. And I say that as a logically minded guy. For that reason, when someone is emotionally locked onto a particular belief, no amount of logic is going to sway that person. And that's true or all of us, not just flat earthers.
So I say, debate them as long as you want, but when you're done, live and let live.

Pinguinite posted on 2020-01-26 0:57:22 ET Reply Untrace Trace Private Reply
#18. To: Pinguinite (#12) (Edited)
I've conversed a lot with Liberator. He's most certainly a Bible believing Christian (a factor that I think contributes to his flat earth belief, though I think he denies that), and being the Christian I believe that he is, I think it safe to say that he would not advocate flat earth unless he honestly believed in it.

Which Christian denomination preaches flat earth in this day and age?
I know 500 or so years ago the Roman Catholic Church used to torture people until they confessed to heresy for disagreeing with their teachings, and then they'd finish torturing the victim to death as punishment for their "crime".
Galieo was fortunate and actually given a mild punishment for his crime of discovering the earth was orbiting the sun. He was simply confined to house arrest for life.
Fortunately for the world they halted the practice and no longer believe the sun revolves around the earth and have opened their eyes to scientific facts.
Thus however are the dangers of fervent religious fanaticism, where facts be damned and you MUST follow their dogma or be condemned to suffering and death. If these folks had it their way this would still be true today, and we would still be living as peasants in the Dark Ages subject to horrific torture for having a different viewpoint as theirs.
It's one thing to have a religious belief and worship the God of your choice. If some people want to believe the little baby Jesus is sitting on a cloud in heaven somewhere, so be it.
But claiming the earth is flat is equivalent to claiming fire is wet and water can burn down houses. It's not just a false belief, it's an outright contradiction of reality.
I would compare a flat earther to a person who glues his eyes shut then claims that light doesn't exist, and that it's a lie fabricated by the Masons. The person CHOSE to glue his eyes so he would not be able to see, just as flat earthers CHOOSE to close their eyes to truth and instead believe wild and absolute nonsense they find on YouTube.
As is woefully apparent they have ZERO understanding of anything related to science, math, or engineering. Yet they claim all those things are lies.
For example, they don't believe gravity exists, yet they can't tell you why an object falls to the ground when dropped.
If gravity didn't exist neither would we, not in our current form at least. We wouldn't be able to walk as we'd be floating around everywhere. Maybe we'd have wings. But then again if there were no gravity there'd be no air either as it would escape into space. Neither would there be water as that would have escaped into space as well.
So we flat out (excuse the pun) wouldn't exist, neither would any form of life that required air or water.
But they refuse to understand that most fundamental fact.

FormerLurker posted on 2020-01-28 16:46:30 ET Reply Untrace Trace Private Reply
Replies to Comment # 18.
#28. To: FormerLurker, 4 (#18) (Edited)
[Galileo] was fortunate and actually given a mild punishment for his crime of discovering the earth was orbiting the sun.

Refs. here | here | here | here | and here:
Galileo did not discover that the earth goes around the sun, nor did he prove it. At his time there were two theories about the universe, the most common of which was the geocentric theory based on Aristotle and Ptolemy. This theory taught that the earth was the center of the universe around which the sun and other bodies revolved. The other theory was the heliocentric or Copernican theory which held that the sun was the center of the universe and that day and night were due to the rotation of the earth. This theory was named after a Catholic canon, Nicolaus Copernicus, who published a book on it 21 years before Galileo was born. ... If the Catholic Church wanted to condemn Copernicanism, she had plenty of opportunities to do so before Galileo’s time. ... Johannes Kepler, a contemporary of Galileo, wrote a work supporting the Copernican theory. In 1596, the Protestant Faculty of the University of Tubingen unanimously condemned Kepler’s book as damnable heresy, because they believed it was contrary to Scripture. As a result he was forced to flee his country. He [was] given a teaching position in astronomy in a Catholic university by the pope himself.
Galileo [likewise believed that the sun was not just the fixed center of the solar system but the fixed center of the universe.] ... [Moreover, he] was a bit of a hothead who loved to ridicule his opponents. He wished to force his theory on all others even though he well knew that he did not have [definitive] proof of it. ... In fact, Galileo erroneously believed that the tides were proof of the earth’s rotation [and] could not prove his hypothesis scientifically [to negate Kepler's moon-gravitational assertion]. ... Even today, we do not [customarily] speak of beautiful earth spins, but of beautiful sunrises and sunsets.
Galileo could have safely proposed heliocentrism as a theory or a method to more simply account for the planets’ motions. His problem arose when he stopped proposing it as a scientific theory and began proclaiming it as truth, though there was no conclusive proof of it at the time. Even so, Galileo would not have been in so much trouble if he had chosen to stay within the realm of science and out of the realm of theology. ... Theologians were not prepared to entertain the heliocentric theory based on a layman’s interpretation. There is little question that if Galileo had kept the discussion within the accepted boundaries of astronomy (i.e., predicting planetary motions) and had not claimed [his insistent opinions to be decisive] truth for the heliocentric theory, the issue would not have escalated to the point it did. After all, he had not proved [the] theory beyond reasonable doubt.
Many scientists opposed [Galileo], including the renowned Lutheran astronomer, Tycho Brahe. Lord Bacon, hailed by Protestants as the Father of Modern Science, was also unconvinced. Besides being bad science, many people, Catholic and non-Catholic, felt [his contentiously postulated theorem] was an attack on the Scriptures. We can hardly blame the Holy Office [of Catholicism] for [holding] to the common interpretation of Scripture until it should be proven otherwise. They were quite willing to have heliocentrism taught as a hypothesis [until Galileo's abrasive presentments of it as if theologically indisputable caused Copernican books and similar others to be indexed as forbidden for Catholics to read without permission].
The controversy over Scripture was due to certain passages that speak of the sun moving. ... Both sides to the debate should have followed St. Augustine’s wise advice: “We do not read in the Gospel that the Lord said: 'I send you the Paraclete [Holy Spirit] to teach you how the sun and the moon go.' He wished to make Christians, not mathematicians.” St. Augustine also warned against reading hastily our own opinions into the Scriptures and fighting for them as if they were the teaching of the Bible. Galileo himself, in his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, said, “The Bible was not written to teach us astronomy.” In the same letter he quoted Cardinal Baronius: “The intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go.”
The issue was not whether it was acceptable to assert that the earth revolved around the sun. The issue was the assertion (which Copernicus never made but Galileo did) that there was sufficient scientific evidence to prove it, which, at the time, there wasn't. ... The Church was trying to preserve scientific integrity against a scientist whom even the scholarly critics now admit didn’t have his evidential ducks in a row. ... Unfortunately, he did not give up his determination to force his theory on others, nor his attacks on his opponents. In spite of his critical attitude toward his opponents, Galileo found no reason to reject his Catholic Faith. He remained Catholic [and his] two daughters became nuns
============
2 YouTubes with more on the subject of Galileo, if anyone is interested. I was surprised to learn, for example (at 11:27-12:06 of the first video and at 1:16-1:46 of the second), that some notable inventions are attributed to him (such as an automatic tomato picker, which might be agriculturally beneficial here and elsewhere throughout the world):
The Galileo Case Ep 4: Dr Thomas Woods: The Catholic Church- Builder of Civilization - YouTube, 25.25 minutes | Published on Jan 23, 2012 by Sensus Fidelium | Dr Thomas Woods on what really happened regarding Galileo
The Galileo Case 2-3.mp4 - YouTube, 8.5 minute version | Published on May 26, 2010 by commodianus | Is the Catholic Church the enemy of scientific progress? Thomas Woods takes the most famous attack on the Church and shines light on the truth.

GreyLmist posted on 2020-01-29 12:34:00 ET Reply Untrace Trace Private Reply
End Trace Mode for Comment # 18.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest

Freedom4um