DUers: Brave Enough To Be Wrong, Point It Out and Allow the World To Watch

[berni_mccoy]

The Jesse MacBeth story certainly pointed out one thing: Humans Can Be Gullible. Many of us get fooled by stuff all the time, especially when it says something we all want to hear. I've come to rely heavily on Snopes.com. But even then, snopes can't track every false-hood on the Internet. The one thing I find interesting about DU is that DUers will vet the truth out, EVEN IF IT MEANS PROVING THEMSELVES WRONG. DUers are courageous enough to get at the truth and Skinner is brave enough to allow the entire thing to play out in front of the entire world. This shows that he is interested in the truth. Other political sites are *not* so brave or interested in the truth.

If the equivalent of the Jesse MacBeth story had broke on the freeper site, they would have first deleted *any* posts pointing out flaws in the story. This is because they are COWARDS. Then when the truth finally came out, they would once again exhibit cowardice and delete the original post altogether. Google cache is littered with such ghost pages from their site.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

1. I'm so old,

I don't know who Jesse McBeth is.

Did I miss something?

[havocmom]

2. pssst, send me a PM when you find out

I dunno who it is either :shurg:

[OldLeftieLawyer]

4. Psssssssst

Do you care?

(whisper the answer)

[havocmom]

15. Sorta, gotta keep up with what the latest distraction is

so I can point out how pointless it is. ;)

[berni_mccoy]

3. Here's the link

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1260163

[Stinky The Clown]

9. He's the evil handmaiden of the rw nutjob who plays tony soprano

:sarcasm:

[OldLeftieLawyer]

11. Can you believe

I gave up on The Sopranos this season?

Boring beyond belief, a caricature of a caricature, and it should have ended a season ago.

So now we know, eh?

Grazie, amico mio.

[Stinky The Clown]

13. I've never seen even one episode of it. Ever

One of my sons gave me a years' worth on DVD for Christmas. I never watched any of it. (Shhhh ... don't tell him. he'll feel bad)

[OldLeftieLawyer]

14. If you watch from Season One,

it's absolutely brilliant. I mean, brilliant. Compelling. Just a work of art.

I watched all - what? - five seasons, and began to see it get tired.

This year, eh.

But, seriously, if you're ever of a mind, start with Season One.

I won't tell.

[havocmom]

16. Is it like the Three Tenors?

:shrug:

[davepc]

5. The power of truthiness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness

Truthiness is the quality by which a person purports to know something emotionally or instinctively, without regard to evidence or to what the person might conclude from intellectual examination.

It cuts both ways. The preponderance of the evidence usually wins out.

[JuniperLea]

6. I watched this tread

And it sure was a study in talking things out, brainstorming and finding the truth. Sometimes it takes many pairs of eyes on one issue to find the solution to a puzzle. Sure, there were some heated moments, but there was also a lot of thinking out loud and progress in the thought process. Good thread.

[northamericancitizen]

7. Thanks. Thumbs up for DU.

[Vinnie From Indy]

8. Absolutely!

eom

[Ian David]

10. I myself openly admit that I am wrong 1/12 of the time

I've been humbled by my fellow DUers more than once, and been forced to change many of my views several times.

Sometimes, even on the same subject.

I once spent hours going back and forth on one particular point until I declared I had "Skeptic's Fatigue" and conceded that I had no idea anymore.

Yes, there is a whole lot of nonsense and idiocy posted here, but it never goes un-challenged.

So, if Bill O'Reilly says, "Those kooks over on DU believe that an army of Ronald Reagan clones in giant robotic exoskeletons is poised to attack America," and then people come here to check it out, they might see a handful of Woo-Woos screaming about it, but they'll also see some well-reasoned argument and off-handed scorn leveled at it as well.

[Meldread]

12. If only I was right as much as I was wrong...

...I'd likely be rich. I've been in many heated debates around DU, some of them well reasoned and some of them not-so-well reasoned. Looking back, I'd probably be lucky to be right half the time.

If I could learn two things, it would be to have patients with other people, and to learn how to keep my emotions from clouding my views and judgment.