JUU,
If you were the only one to see things the way you do I'd have to agree with JoeW that you are seeing things.
But others see it, too.
There are some personalities on this board that use a deliberately antagonistic posting style. It is surprising how easy it is to get most people mad and, perhaps?, they enjoy making people mad. I'm not sure.
Their ideas and philosophies may or may not have any value. They like to state a lot of conclusions but the support offered for them is spotty and sometimes half baked. (And they like to shout a lot. WTF?) Makes it hard to tell. Well, hard to be certain (gold is where you find it, and don't you forget that).
Rather than presenting their ideas, their goal seems to be to present their ideas in an antagonistic manner. The ideas themselves seem to be of merely equal, or maybe even secondary importance. Recently they pushed the envelope until a few of them got bounced. Now that they know what they can get away with they are "doing their thing", staying back from the line but not way back.
And of course, there is the burning question of "how many actual people are we talking about?". Seems like too much work for just one. I'll guess one to three.
I usually pay a good bit of attention to how I want to say what I want to say. I strive consciously to avoid antagonism. When I'm tempted to bark back (the button-response can be surppressed if you think to try, but it is still there) at one of them, I use Wordpad first. Sometimes I can spend an hour or two trying various approaches. (If you need to blow off steam, this is the place to do it. Having blown off some steam, focus on what if anything you really want to say. With practice you soon just skip to the last step.)
Don't get into a "gunfight" with them. The quick draw posting style gives them an advantage. All they have to worry about is not crossing the line. You have the additional burdens of being nice and (trying to be) right. Take your time.
This is actually a very interesting phenomenon to watch. And it's educational, but not just in the Physics or Math sense. People do some fascinating things, and think in some fascinating ways.
You may have notied that my participation in some threads has dropped off recently. I still find some of what they say interesting, but you know you just get tired of being around people like that after a while. So I guess I'll just leave them to themselves for a while.
I can't keep them from following me to another thread and trying to pick a fight there, but I can ignore them. That doesn't mean I stop reading them. It just means I stop talking to them.
Consider a similar approach rather than what you propose. From time to time some interesting discussions do pop up here. And remember - "they" might say something interesting. I sense some intellegence, training and possibly even some experience. Honest.
Regards,
LB
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