Trainwreck

So Anoh mentions to me that a friend of his is going to debate with me over "global warming, Bush, and the sports-crazy world setting the stage for fascism", otherwise known as "basically everything I mentioned on the forum".

I find something unsettling about it because it's always a bad sign if someone disagrees with all of what I say - usually it means they hate me personally and are just looking for an excuse. But, I rationalize, my opinions do tend to tie together and they're generally along liberal lines, meaning that he could just be Republican.

Anyway, this was on January 4th. Anoh says his friend will start a thread tomorrow or so.

He doesn't give the account name, and I wonder if that means his friend is starting an account just to argue with me, but I figure I'm just being paranoid. I avoid names a lot too when it's easier, and besides, if you want to stay out of drama, and your friend hasn't actually moved yet, maybe he's not naming the friend in case his friend wants to back out and doesn't want me to have grudge over it.

Interestingly, at least one of Anoh's already-on-FFN friends hates me, meaning if this is that person or a mutual friend, my mostly unfounded suspicion about this being over something personal becomes less unfounded.

By the time I email back, it's January 6th, and the friend hasn't shown up. Eh. I mention this, wondering if the friend has backed out (as being convinced of my rightness after rereading the threads seems mildly implausible).

I'm told he's preparing something.

Whenever I hear this, it's a bad sign. I don't "prepare something" when dealing with a random person I want a discussion with. I lay out my basic side and wait to see what they say. I wouldn't prepare something that takes days and days of work unless I had a massive grudge against them and was trying to cause problems.

Anoh adds he doesn't know the friend's penname, just his real name, meaning a) Yes, the guy is getting an account just to bother me and b) there is a really, really good chance he's a mutual friend of the other one that hates me.

It is really creepy when the world justifies your paranoia.

Anoh says the guy should put up a thread Monday, which will be the 8th.

I email back, asking if the guy has a grudge against me - if I know in advance, it's easier to decide how to respond. (People with grudges will not accept any fact you say because they don't care and it's you speaking. It's best to confront them immediately about this, politely, and work it out. However, doing the same thing to someone acting similar, but without a grudge, makes them understandably touchy because you're acting like the only reason anyone could disagree is personal issues.)

I'm told there's no grudge, which so far is the first time I hear something positive. So okay, this guy wants to argue with me about everything I've said, particularly topics I don't consider debatable AND am tired of arguing, and okay, he's gotten an account just to bother me, but hey, he's not doing it out of a grudge. I can deal with this.

Monday comes and goes. Still no thread. I again hope it'll just be dropped, because the alternative is the friend is still preparing and as I explained, that is ominous.

Finally, on the 10th (Wednesday, two days after the the latest time), a thread shows up.

The poster is Whitetip. Who joined January 4th, as in, the same day Anoh told me about this whole thing.

Whitetip doesn't lay out his argument. Instead he asks for mine. The way he frames it is pretty polite. I feel a bit iffy about "I also took note that the main way that you defeat someone in a duel of intellect is by baffling them by a verbose argument which they cannot understand, so they feel as if it is necessary to believe you." because I really do argue these things as a pastime, and he seems to be bringing this to me personally rather than just for the sake of debating. But it's pretty reasonable, and if he sees me dealing with his friend this way, especially if he doesn't agree with my points and thinks I'm just confusing people, it's completely within reason for him to dislike that.

Now, like I said, I really don't want to argue this. It's like arguing if fire is hot as far as I'm concerned. I'm willing to because I feel obligated, but if you come to me to argue, lay out your own damn argument. Especially if YOU object to MY argument, because I have no clue what you object to. Global warming is the centrist position, okay? There are a good half-dozen other positions. Some people think it's getting colder. Some people think it's staying the same temperature. Some people think it's getting warmer but global warming is still wrong, and even there, they're divided into different camps, with some saying it's part of a natural cycle, some saying it's about to get colder, some admitting global warming but saying it's not human caused.

Also, if you spend as much time reading debates and arguing, you notice that the junk science people always want to poke holes in your argument but can't present anything on their own.

But he hasn't done anything wrong yet, and he claims to have done research, which is a treasured rarity, and, well, if he's Anoh's friend he's probably a lot younger than me and might just be repeating what his parents say and there's no reason to jump someone for that.

So I'm polite. I just ask for his argument. I can figure out what camp he's in and if (okay, how much) he's working with bad information, and respond accordingly. It's a lot cleaner that way.

Three days go by. It's now the 14th. Whitetip posts just to say he's really busy and can't reply right now, but he will soon.

This is plausible but not really likely. I let it slide.

Nowehre appears and asks me if I think global warming has any solutions. (Silly Nowehre, believing a topic titled "Global Warming and Whatnot" was about global warming in general)

Damn, I think. If I reply Whitetip will be able to argue with that and put off actually thinking up his own argument.

No, I think. I'm just being paranoid. Whitetip's been perfectly reasonable and it's not fair to hold it against him that he wanted to go after my argument first. That's normal online and it is a lot easier, and he hasn't done anything wrong. Besides, I'll just reply directly to Nowehre, it won't be about how global warming is happening, and I already asked for his actual argument.

I throw some stuff out - I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about our ability even if I'm not sure about our decision-making, and I mention actual projects, some internet suggestions and my own random ideas.

Kazundo's Advocate shows up to call the discussion political. This depresses me a bit.

Then Whitetip reappears to show how foolish it is to be bothered just by someone calling global warming science political.

Also, to once again prove that you can't go wrong by assuming the worst of people.

I discover I was incorrect to be paranoid. Whitetip didn't just attack my non-argument comments to Nowehre.

For that matter, Whitetip didn't just appear within a few hours, despite the previous delays, the moment there was something to attack, as if he was waiting for a chance like that.

Nor did he just open with "And, to think..I was actually beginning to think that you were a sane person, Farla.." proving that yes, this was some sort of grudge, yes, he was never intending to be civil, yes, I shouldn't have tried to think he was a perfectly nice person who was just mistaken because god forbid he give anyone that courtesy, yes, I shouldn't have tried to assume the best of him...

But his actual responses...

This is the point I'd like to say something about wanting to cry, but I really don't. There's this sort of dead feeling that there's no point in anything. I tried to be mad about how his teachers could have let him be this ignorant, and I just thought calmly, huh, the world would be better off with them dead. There are probably other people like that too. The world would be better off with them dead. I tried to find it funny, even just in a hysterical kind of way, that he never even realized that asphalt gets hot in the summer, and I just thought, he's human. He's human and you're supposed to recognize humans by being intelligent, that's why we like dolphins and monkeys and raccoons because we see them as being like us, and we're supposed to be clever and observant and smart.

We're supposed to be able to figure these things out. God, I was this observant as a little kid. I was able to understand hot and cold when I was barely old enough to speak. I did this whole thing with blocks and explained to my parents back when my vocabulary was too limited to even make a complete sentence.

Asphalt gets hot. The white lines of paint are cooler.

Hot. Cold.

How can people be like this? How can they be people?