I'm surprised..
This thread reminds me of a conversation i had with a guy at work yesterday. He said Ronald Reagan said something when he was president about nuclear weapons, and I asked him where he heard that from. He tried to tell me that he didn't remember and since we were just having a conversation, he didn't have to prove what he said.
It was funny because he was an English major and I'm a history major and it ended up being educated opinion (wikipedia/English) vs. proof (non-wikipedia/History).
Driven either by a desire to win or by a guilty conscious (or both), my friend gets on Google and gives me proof from a newspaper.
The moral of the story is, Wikipedia is a mine field.
It was funny because he was an English major and I'm a history major and it ended up being educated opinion (wikipedia/English) vs. proof (non-wikipedia/History).
Driven either by a desire to win or by a guilty conscious (or both), my friend gets on Google and gives me proof from a newspaper.
The moral of the story is, Wikipedia is a mine field.
Well, I agree that things said in conversations dont need to be proved left and right. Sure it's expected that folks know their facts, but if conversations are constantly battles of who knows more and who's right, then it's no longer a conversation. Both parties can easily discuss both sides of an issue. Otherwise it's a debate which can be quite stressful and frustrating.
Yeah, but in this case, my friend was saying that Reagan learned about the horrors of nuclear weapons from watching a movie. It seemed a little outlandish, even for Reagan, so I asked him to prove it and he got defensive. So we ended up arguing for about an hour about what you guys are arguing about right now.
Of course he was defenseive, I'd be too if you took a stab at what was said like that. I'd personally take it for granted that he legitimately heard that piece of info somewhere. I used to work at a zoo where they would present turkey vultures as one of two birds that had a sense of smell. This wasnt exactly true, as many birds have senses of smell, however the vulture has a much sharper sense of smell than many other birds. I picked up on this and when I was in a conversation with some grad students at my university, I mentioned this "fact" in the conversation and was immediately landed upon. Needless to say it really pissed me off and I became extra defensive. They never discussed it with me but flat out berated saying I was wrong with words like "prove it" and such. It was a simple matter of wording, but became an attack that just ruined the conversation.
No, we usually agree, but get bogged down in the details. My point was that you should be prepared at anytime to justify yourself otherwise you're just full of crap. I didn't expect a book name, author and page number, but I expected a little direction. "Well, it was by so and so, i think" or "it was a book about such and such".
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SplishSplash
- Posts: 4467
- Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2000 8:00 am
The Latest: http://www.armadilloaerospace.comSplishSplash wrote:wasn't she a test pilot for his rocket?
what ever happened to that?