rationalskepticism.org

Nevets wrote:I am bringing up this subject, as it has came to my attention that many members participating in the good fight to establish "good" and "rational" opinions, over that of the irrational opinions spread by Fake news sites and propaganda spewing machines, such as alternative news, complete with their alternative reality, and conspiracy theories, and possibly religious delusions, do not cite any sources whatsoever in their arguments.

With respect to this website, it is actually standard practice to cite supporting sources for arguments.

However, that's only really done in more serious discussions. Frankly, your threads just don't warrant that level of substance.

I provided an example here:

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/relig ... l#p2736957

Spearthrower wrote:

Nevets wrote:But what is the truth about Thor? Why did Norse people have to be tough? And why did they have to become travellers?
It likely comes from the "The Hamburg culture", created around 15,500BC,

The Hamburg culture or Hamburgian (15,500-13,100 BP) was a Late Upper Paleolithic culture of reindeer hunters in northwestern Europe during the last part of the Weichsel Glaciation beginning during the Bölling interstadial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburg_culture

Your argument is that the belief in Thor, the warrior culture, and the activity of going Viking is related to the Hamburg Culture from the Palaeolithic.

Your citation merely points to the Hamburg Culture, showing that such a thing existed. What your citation doesn't do is establish any support for your contentions about the worship of Thor, the presence of a warrior culture, or the Viking period or its purported relationship with the Hamburg Culture.

So your source is actually completely worthless and has no bearing at all on anything relevant. You may as well not have cited it because it's not doing anything at all. This is the case with all your 'citations' and it's clear to all of us that this is because you're just not aware at all of what you need to do.

This is just one single example - but nearly every single post you've written on this forum could be used as an example. Your 'sources' are not sources at all - they're show with no substance; they never support the argument you're nominally citing them to support. As such, you're not actually citing any source at all - you might as well not be doing it. So people here are actually meeting you exactly on par with your own performance; you're putting in no effort, so why should anyone else?

Nevets wrote:Having participated in many debates on many platforms against conspiracy theorists, or political far leftists or far rightists, my method has evolved substantially from when i began using just any newspaper article, or anything i can find on the internet that has been put in writing, to back my claim.

I genuinely cannot conceive of how you could be worse. You literally just put up anything you find on Wikipedia regardless of its complete irrelevance to your argument. If your actions here are the 'evolved' state of affairs, I can't even begin to imagine what you used to do - just cite something entirely random and disconnected?

Nevets wrote: I even went through a period where i stopped citing sources, as i was fed up with my arguments being shot down due to the reliability of my source, or the conspiracy theorist finding some legitimate smear he can inflict on the author, to support his claims of the author being a shill, or disinformationist. And in the end, i found actually, wikipedia to be the most reliable source when it comes to tackling those wide of dead centre.

Wikipedia, as I've told you something like a dozen times is an entry level introduction to a topic. It cannot be taken as being anything other than written by non-experts for non-experts.

Nevets wrote:I did begin by checking the source, on every single little sentence i printed, and sometimes there can be "many" sentences, and going through sources and reading every single thing in every single source, especially when the source could be a 1000 page book, is just not practical.
One cannot learn much, going through every single minute little detail, regarding something already minute, just to check the validity of one particular little statement. This is supposed to be done already anyway, by Wikipedia.

Again, you're being disingenuous.

I've already offered you many specific examples.

It's not the information contained in Wikipedia that is being questioned here, it's the relevance of the snippets you're copying and pasting with respect to your arguments.

For example, you'll make a statement like "The Pope sent British troops to the Crusade" and you'll cite a line from a Wikipedia entry that reads:

Wikipedia wrote:The pope (Latin: papa from Greek: πάππας pappas,[1] "father"),[2] also known as the supreme pontiff (Pontifex Maximus), or the Roman pontiff (Romanum Pontificem), is the bishop of Rome, leader of the worldwide Catholic Church, and head of state representing the Holy See.

Nothing contained in that sentence supports your contention.

No one reading that can use any single word of it to evaluate the truth of your claim.

It's basically impossible even to believe that YOU think it supports your claim.

That you KEEP doing this requires some explanation. The explanations can be: you are so far removed from understanding that you actually think that line supports your argument; you're trolling knowing full well that it doesn't support your argument; you're astoundingly thick; you're mentally unhealthy; you're on mind-altering substances that mean you are temporarily indisposed to reason or comprehension.

None of them are particularly charming allegations, but it's very hard to conceive of anything else that could explain this absurdity.

Nevets wrote:IFair enough, if you spend all week, or all month, working on one article, you may get it 99.7% beyond reproach.
However is that practical, to spend all week or month working on something, to learn what? One thing.

Well, it really does depend on how big and detailed that 'thing' is. A few years ago, I spent 19 months researching all the available evidence for the origins of European peoples mostly from a linguistic perspective, but also looking at their history and material culture. It was a personal interest project, so it wasn't full time, but I estimate I spent something like 2-3 hours a day, 7 days a week for over a year and a half - so let's say something in the region of 1200 hours. I ended up with hundreds of pages of notes, images, journal papers and a deep sense of satisfaction and nothing else to show for it. So really, the scope is down to your personal interest and the depth to which you wish to know something. Nearly all knowledge runs deeper than a Wikipedia article can ever hope to achieve.

Nevets wrote:I found the most effective way of forming an opinion, is when the opinion is formulated as part of a group effort, mostly in debate, where someone objecting to the validity of a source that was used in a wikipedia article. This can then be debated, with that particular argument either improved upon, or forfeited.

Your modus operandi here doesn't reflect this at all. What you *appear* to find most effective is nonsensical assertions which you entirely fail to support, and when those assertions are challenged, you simply hop onto an entirely new topic and start the process all over again.

Nevets wrote:Wikipedia, is not fake news, and it is not alternative news, and it is probably a lot better than mainstream news,...

Criticism of mainstream news is, to me, an indication of someone inclined towards conspiracy theory. Certainly outlets can have a political bias, but it's not like it's hidden, and it doesn't mean they don't report the news, only that they may either curate the types of story they more or less frequently present, or they may 'spin' stories towards a political bias. However, most people who complain about mainstream news appear to do so because they have whacky ideas that they feel the news outlets don't cover, not because those news outlets are only interested in factual, legitimate news... oh no... because they're biased, or have a shady agenda.

Nevets wrote: that reports on the rumours and unfounded allegations and suspicions, as they happen, and mainstream news probably has a great deal to answer for actually, in the creation of conspiracy theories.
Just look what Jane Stanley caused when she announced live on TV, that WTC7 had fallen 20 minutes before it did. This started all types of insane theories, such as the BBC being in on it, and having advanced knowledge.

That makes no sense at all; I wonder whether these statements make sense in your head before you write them down.

Nevets wrote:Wikipedia is a decent platform to "begin" a "valid" debate with.

There's a whole lot of 'depends' necessarily tacked onto that statement.

Not least is the assumption that the person using Wikipedia can actually read and process the information contained therein.

Merely citing a link to Wikipedia doesn't validate anything. If a person cites a Wikipedia page that doesn't corroborate their argument, then the Wikipedia page might as well be the back of a milk carton for its value in generating material facts to debate.

Nevets wrote: It does not mean that one believes everything Wikipedia says is 100% correct, nor does it mean one does not know how to go through a wikipedia article with a fine comb and check the validity of every single source, and do the wikipedia editor and moderators jobs for them.
One can only do so much, and this needs to be the job of the person "objecting" to either one source in the argument, or, the entire article. Though it is extremely doubtful that an entire article on wikipedia is going to be 100% innacurate, though there may be room for disagreement on certain sources.

You're already repeating yourself and you're also ignoring the actual challenges to your particular usage of Wikipedia.

Nevets wrote:Wikipedia is a Crowd sourced encyclopedia.

Wikipedia may represent the world's most popular online encyclopedia, but its crowd-sourced https://www.livescience.com/7946-wikipe ... urate.html

This is actually a great example of another form of bizarre Wikipedia usage you've employed: citing the banal.

I offered you various examples of this, but my preferred one is:

Water is wet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water

Wikipedia wrote:Water is wet

No one's going to challenge the contention that water is wet. No one's going to challenge that Wikipedia is a popular online encyclopedia.

But the fact is that with respect to your argument, the statement 'water is wet' is very nearly as relevant as your citation about Wikipedia.

Nevets wrote:A 2005 study found Wikipedia to be as roughly as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica. So despite the concerns, it is not bad that after highlighting the concerns, the study showed that it was still as reliable as the Encyclopedia Britannica.

A 2005 study by the journal Nature found Wikipedia roughly as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.livescience.com/7946-wikipe ... urate.html

This is a form of misusing a source you've not yet employed, but it's worth pointing out here that you don't make an argument by copying and pasting the text from the source, then quoting the source. This just means it was never your argument to begin with.

Nevets wrote:A 2008 study found Wikipedia to be 80% accurate

a 2008 study in the journal Reference Services Review pegged Wikipedia's accuracy rate at 80 percent https://www.livescience.com/7946-wikipe ... urate.html

This is all obfuscation.

Aside from Theropod, no one here has said that Wikipedia is not correct or accurate.

What we've been saying is that your particular usage of Wikipedia is not correct or accurate. When you cite Wikipedia, you don't cite an entry that materially supports your claim, you just cite some random pop quiz fact from Wikipedia as if it justifies something not actually contained in its words.

I can furnish dozens of instances of you doing this.

Nevets wrote:Wikipedia also has a differing accuracy rate for different subjects, and in particular the subject of drugs, Scientists found their accuracy to be 99.7%

Their conclusion is that the accuracy of drug information on Wikipedia was 99.7% https://www.zmescience.com/science/stud ... -25092014/

Irrelevant, but an example of how you tend to wander around different subjects apparently just trying to show you know something.

Nevets wrote:
And Academics, "do" use Wikipedia. They use it as an initial starting point. It is not practical for one person that is tracing the footsteps of man from gibbons 20 million years ago, right up to Donald Trump taking presidency, to check the validity of every single little source. This has to be the job of the objector(s).
And this is "exactly", what academics "do", they use wikipedia as a "good" initial starting point.

I use Wikipedia and I'm an academic. What I don't do is use Wikipedia the way YOU use Wikipedia.

Aside from the specific problems I've already mentioned, another aspect of your misuse of Wikipedia is that you cite something extremely basic but pretend to be knowledgeable, pretend that your citation of it just means you're correct regardless of the fact that nothing in your citation supports your position.

An example of this is what happened when I pointed out to you that you continually misused the term 'papal' by using it as a noun when it's an adjective. You retorted by citing an entry from Wikipedia that explained how the office of the Pope was established. Not only was it completely irrelevant to the point at hand - that you were misusing the word - but it's also completely banal. No one here is unaware of the what the Pope is, or that it's an office of the Catholic Church etc. Citing that sentence doesn't mean you know what you're talking about; it actually indicates the converse.

I am snipping out more iterations of you making irrelevant arguments below about the accuracy of Wikipedia, which has not (except by Theropod) been challenged as these are wholly obfuscatory.

Nevets wrote:Now whilst my use of Wikipedia has been critisized by members on this forum, and claims that this is not an Academic way to conduct debate,...

Here is the central strawman I knew was coming.

See, it takes some rational ability to formulate a long form argument like this, and as such, I don't think you're stupid. That's a problem though because if you were just thick then it would be easy to explain why you've ignored all the actual explicit criticism of the way YOU use Wikipedia as a misunderstanding on your part... but the fact that you've woven this strawman together over hundreds of words suggests that you know very fucking well what you're doing so you can't gain the benefit of the doubt in terms of being innocently ignorant.

This is pure mendacity on your part. And your insistent repetition of this form of misrepresentation is why you have netted such vigorous rejections of your bullshit.

Nevets wrote:i object on the grounds, that appart from "once" when a user used a source to show me that the Norse were not involved in an invasion against Portugal, even though the source itself said those that conducted the invasion were from Nordsee, 2BC, i have never "once" seen anyone use a source, and that is "not" Academic.

Then you've either got a very poor memory, or you're not telling the truth.

Nevets wrote:Bringing unsubstantiated self proclaimed authority on a subject to the table "is not" Academic in the slightest, and the use of Wikipedia "totally" defeats an arrogant or ignorant and unsupported opinion, even without fine combing to sources.

YOUR usage of Wikipedia does no such thing because of the points I've made above.

The fact that you use Wikipedia as a distraction and preening tool means you're not using it as a source, which in turn means that you have made unsupported assertions... consequently, why do other people have to spend their time to do something you're not prepared or capable of doing?

No one has actually made any authority statements - what they've actually done is reject your assertions. As your assertions are unsupported, they're under no obligation to furnish you with multiple sources supporting their rejection - the point is you failed to convince people. That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

If you actually offered an academic (no caps needed) argument with cogent, relevant, substantive support and I disagreed with you on factual grounds, I'd offer a source showing why I believed you wrong. That's what I did the first dozen or so times, but your unwillingness to engage on the same level meant I saw no reason to continue doing so.

Nevets wrote:I also do not have a problem with the users on this forum providing no sources, but to raise disputes on my source, while expecting me to just accept their unsourced opinion, is not Academic.

You have again randomly capitalized 'academic'.

You are setting yourself up as an arbiter of what is or isn't academic, but I am under no obligation to defer to you particularly as I do not believe you have any capability in this regard at all. You possess no credibility whatsoever based on your behavior on this forum.

Further, whether you comprehend this or not, this forum is a discussion forum, it's not actually an academic venue. Were it truly an academic venue, then you really would be expected to bring a damn sight more to the table than single sentences from Wikipedia, so there's another central obfuscation present in your argument.

Nevets wrote:Objectors could also help improve the reliability of Wikipedia, by providing better sources, which could then also be put in to the Wikipedia article.

Except that no one (except Theropod) has actually criticized Wikipedia, it's validity, accuracy, or anything else... what they've clearly done numerous times is criticize the way YOU use Wikipedia.

Strawman demolished.

Nevets wrote:Wikipedia is a good start, for presenting a rational initial argument, particularly when replying to an opinion that provided no source whatsoever.

It can establish basic facts; it can't support wild conjecture that is not contained within the Wikipedia entry.

Nevets wrote:I challenge anyone to prove otherwise, that Wikipedia could be considered "unreliable".
And lets see what "Academic" sources are used.

Your strawman is irrelevant. And you've once again capitalized 'academic' for no good reason.