Zak, I've given links where people can review conversations where you were accused of a 'gish gallop', and judge the evidence for themselves.
Burden of proof is on the accuser.
"The Gish gallop is a rhetorical technique that involves overwhelming your opponent with as many arguments as possible, with no regard for the accuracy, ..."
You have to prove I have no regard for accuracy, or else admit your claim has no rational basis.
No Zak, I don't. I've pointed people to a place where they can review the multiple accusations that you were in the midst of a gish-gallop, and they can review the conversation and make their own determination. Your definition, that you quoted above, references 'overwhelming your opponent with as many arguments as possible'. Proving that you initiated a gish-gallop would mean I would have to quote you presenting an 'overwhelming number of arguments'. I believe the accusation is true; I believe that people have the ability to verify the truth of the accusation with the information provided. Now, while I maintain that basically 'all of your arguments'
are bad, I don't know that they're without regard to accuracy. Zak, I don't respect your intelligence, so I can't tell if you're deliberately lying or your narcissistic world-view skews your perceptions so strongly that you believe the crap you spew. You make a lot of inaccurate claims, and you make so many claims at once; then when called on any specific one you switch to another; then later pick up the first one when the conversation has moved on and you appear to have forgotten that it was rebutted (and of course, you claim it never was). For anyone
attempting a good faith discussion it is exhausting. Fortunately, I am not interested in a discussion; I do not need to refute your false claims; I do not need to explain why your 'rules' about how I have to do anything doesn't actually apply (but again, since I'm here for my own entertainment, I'll indulge you on occasion).
This would be just one of the many false claims you'd have to prove in order to even pretend to be rational or an accurate source of information, including but not limited to:
-Your fantasy about tongue-shoving
Zak, you keep bringing this up. This is one that actually has been refuted. My real claim (in the post that you quoted) was:
So ultimately, there's no reason to carry an instrument if it isn't in character for the character- whatever bullshit bonus you think you get from doing that is going to be available any one of a dozen other ways if you ask nicely.
After refusing to concede that only granting a bonus to diplomacy with an instrument would encourage people to play instruments if they wanted to be good at Diplomacy, you finally said:
Then there are a bajillion other things besides music this person can do to curry favor that would cost as much or less money and (in game and out) time to curry favor.
While I used a a parody of an example, reasonable people understood my point - that your stupid rule wouldn't cause problems because you were not
limiting the application to the specific case (using an instrument). And since I'm fine with people judging the full conversation in context, here's the entire quote.
I read the blog post, and while I don't think much of the rule, one reason it isn't going to be a problem is that it was indicated that failing the Dex check would result in a penalty.
If I want a bonus, and I have an action that can give me a bonus 50% of the time and a penalty 50% of the time, the only reason to perform that action is if I can't succeed without it. As the chance of failure decreases, the benefit of attempting it increases, but there is still the potential cost of carrying around a fragile piece of equipment.
But further - there's no reason to do this, anyway. Sure, player A might say 'If I play a really stirring emotional passage on my ocarina can I get a bonus on my Diplomacy check', and we know Zak S will say yes. And if player B says, 'if I stick my tongue down her throat and get her really hot, can I get a bonus on my Diplomacy check', and we know Zak S will say yes.
So ultimately, there's no reason to carry an instrument if it isn't in character for the character- whatever bullshit bonus you think you get from doing that is going to be available any one of a dozen other ways if you ask nicely.
-Claims of moving goal-posts
This is another one that would require dozens or hundreds of posts. And when you're called on it you claim that people 'misunderstood' your position and they should have asked 'clarifying questions'. In this thread (and others linked to), there are plenty of examples. It is unduly burdensome for me to comprehensively catalog your responses where you appear to be arguing one thing, then later arguing another. But as an exemplar of this, we can use the above discussion about musical instruments giving a bonus. I asserted that you would give the bonus in
dozens of situations, and rather than agreeing (like a reasonable person) you argued
for pages before agreeing that you'd actually give it in
a bajillion situations. Now, nobody actually knows
what those situations are because you've refused to catalog them, or even provide examples, but they APPEAR to be along the lines of my post. Maybe kissing someone that seems to be romantically attracted to you (and if you didn't understand that was intended to be implied in the example maybe you should have asked clarifying questions - hard to argue that someone would get a Diplomacy bonus if you ATTACKED them) isn't on the list of bajillion things, but I can't think of anything close to a bajillion things that are. And of course, by your definition, failure to list a bajillion things
actually makes you a liar.
-Claims of not ever engaging in a good-faith conversation
Saying 'I've never seen evidence of Bigfoot' doesn't mean that I have to provide exhaustive evidence that Bigfoot exists. I've never seen evidence that you participate in conversations with good faith doesn't mean you don't - just that I haven't seen it. In the conversations I've been involved in, you act like you're a victim, demean everyone around you, refuse to clarify what position you're arguing, and consistently refuse to respond to substantive portions of people's quotes and instead make attacks on minor points with personal attacks. I've pointed out some of those ways
in this very thread. Eventually I got tired of posting quotes and links to the conversation(s) where I discovered this, in part because you like to pretend I never did that. Well, I did. For anyone that cares to look through 65+ pages of this conversation, they can see that. And if they don't,
that's fine, because there are enough examples without doing the research.
Zak, I admit to being a mere mortal, capable of making mistakes.
Then the only good and honest thing to do is admit them.
If they were relevant to the conversation, I would be happy to. As I've said
many times, I'm confident in my assessment that
you are an asshole.
And if the truth is in doubt, then the only good and honest thing to do is take every precaution to make sure your statements are true before making them--and after. Especially if they're about other people allegedly doing bad things.
This is why I've been very clear that my statements are on topic:
you are an asshole. What other bad things do you think I am 'alleging' you did?
Regarding white lies, you seem to claim that if someone told a lie, even once, that they're a liar and that you can never accept anything they ever say (and also that they're a troll and should be denied life-giving care). I don't agree with that. As for telling a lie that is (a)known to be untrue and (b) hurtful to an individual, I don't think I've done that. Regarding you
being an asshole, I think that's a reasonable conclusion based on discussions I've seen you're involved with online. Over and over I've pointed to evidence that supports that conclusion. Your response appears to me to just be, 'I'm not an asshole so DDMW must be a liar, don't look at his evidence'. That might work for you, but it's not going to convince many other people. In any case, you seem to think that if you can show that I've spread misinformation that I'm a liar and that nothing I say could possibly be right. That's not a valid logical argument. Unless
everything I say is a lie, than anything I say may either be the truth or a lie. In that case, I'd be a normal human being and you'd have to use your powers of discernment to determine whether I'm being honest or not.
You know one important piece of discernment is
motive. I've told you (and everyone else) why I'm here and why I think it's important to tell everyone
you're an asshole. What motivation do you think I have
to lie? Why wouldn't it make more sense to tell people something that is
true, especially if I expect and rely on their ability to judge evidence themselves?
Please send your full real name and address to zakzsmith AT hawtmayle dawt calm.
No, Zak. You have other tools if you want to sue me. I don't like you, and I'm not interested in communicating with you outside of this thread. Being sued would be a pain in the ass for me, but I'm willing to endure it to get the satisfaction of a court of law agreeing that I'm not guilty of defamation because you are, in fact, demonstrably, an asshole. So yes, you can cause a significant amount of disruption to me, but not without also doing a lot of work on your part. Of course, it'd be hard to show any
damages since, according to you, it's already been done. You appear to like to use the threat of lawsuits as a tool to shut people down
because you are an asshole. That's one reason that I'm willing to be the one to call you
an asshole. I'm not afraid of being sued. I'd RATHER NOT BE, but the threat of a lawsuit is not sufficient to cause me to desist. So Zak, this whole thread started because you went for the 'nuclear option' of suing people, demonstrating that you're willing to do exactly that. That has a chilling effect on people's free expression of their personal opinion of you, at least, it does for most people. As I've said before, I'm very fortunate in many ways - you don't scare me. But it's important to me that we maintain the principle of reciprocity. If you want me to do a lot of work to defend myself in a court of law, it's only fair that you do a lot of work to move forward. Subpoena my IP address, you know, all that discovery work - if you're very confident in your case, I'm sure you'll have no trouble justifying the time and expense. And bonus for me - all that time you're spending on this is time you're NOT spending on being an asshole everywhere else.
PS
Zak, I'm pretty confident that you'll have a reply in 2-3 minutes. I am confident that I will have a response to you
in due time. But I'm afraid I've dedicated just about as much time
today as I can afford. I'll look forward to getting back to you tomorrow or the next day.
Edit - Fixed a quote tag and add a P.S.