Did eman pee in your Wheaties?

No. But he has been very verbally abusive. Using enormous amounts of profanity and making sort of vaguely threatening statements.

What’s the “ new PoA”?

Yes eman1200 is one of those foul mouthed keyboard warriors. Easy to be one when writing under a pseudonym. He becomes very upset when his real name is brought up.

I originally posted this on MeWe, but it struck me it applies to many conversations on this forum as well. (Of course I spend most of my time on FlyersForum these days, but there aren't many political discussions there so not so applicable there.)

In many discussions here on social media one runs into people who just seem to believe something no matter what the evidence. And indeed they often can't even think of any evidence which could exist in principle which would persuade them of the falsity of the belief.

This is an example of a non-falsifiable belief. I normally just politely note that when it becomes apparent and stop discussing the contents of that belief. But oftentimes people just don't seem to understand what it means to have a non-falsifiable belief. So I thought I should illustrate this distinction with a simple and concrete example.

I have a strong belief that gravity pulls objects toward the center of the earth. Really I am very confident this is true. But what if someone says to me "I don't think your belief is true and it strikes me your belief is non-falsifiable."

I can properly address this question about my belief by thinking of and stating how to falsify it. In this case, I can imagine an experiment which would persuade me that my belief is false. For example, if one holds out an orange at arm's height and lets go of it and it either stays where it is or starts moving upward, and this would be observed on multiple occasions and circumstances, that would persuade me that my belief is false. Therefore my belief is falsifiable.

Note I cannot address the question of whether my belief is falsifiable by taking out an orange and dropping it and showing it goes down toward the center of the earth. That only addresses whether the belief is true or false, NOT whether my belief is falsifiable.

Now in the case of political questions which are so often discussed here, of course the evidence is softer whether a proposition is true or false. That is why social sciences are "softer" than basic physics. But the same distinction about beliefs holds.

I find this often a good way to determine whom it is interesting to discuss a topic with and with whom it is not.

I actually thought Peter was permanently banned from PoA. Maybe the mods did too, and they kicked baby and bathwater out at the same time?

I suspect the beechtalk post will be short-lived too, but that's a for-profit site so they would allow it for the $75/mo friendship fee.

On PoA there were a number of people screaming for that because they did not like my factually based posts about Covid in particular or my joke cartoon about armed passengers on 9/11. But it never happened. Indeed, my account is actually not banned if you have a look. Instead a bunch of weird stuff happened. Password reset without my permission. Then all pages generating errors after a password reset by me. Then my ip being banned.

I never did receive any warning or explanation about any of it. In truth since it is privately owned I have always tried to follow their rules. I will politely ask for an explanation at times, but always tried to follow the stated rules. Apparently that is not good enough these days.

As to BT, the announcement survives but has not had much positive response. People there seem to receive it as bad form. My sense was that BT is a type specific club and I placed the announcement in 'Babble Talk' so seemed fine to me as not much direct competition at all really. But the mods will have to decide what they want to do.

Now they have banned my ip address. Such petty silliness.

It appears that after I asked at PoA they decided to block my account. They really are afraid of competition I guess.

More technically they changed my password without my permission. I assume so it won’t appear they locked me out.

nterestingly, when the new http://flyersforum.org was announced on PoA just 40 minutes ago, the MC there deleted the announcement. Query is in with them on what rule requires that? Please help spread the word.