Remind me, o immortal Smith… when was I the one to try to make the techs equal and get into a lengthy conversation with you about it? Keep in mind during your quoting, I would like the posting’s topic, the placement of every reply I made within the topic, and quotations of every remark I made during said conversation. I am not and never have been for the equalization of techs… I simply made a small number of postings (I can’t even recall posting more than one) on theories about how they could be made that way IF people wanted them to be, for use in THEIR games (not mine). I wasn’t the one to kickstart that idea, nor to even perpetuate it, nor to argue with you concerning it, mainly because in the games of A&A I do play, I never use tech anyway, and often call no tech before the game! So if you’re going to talk about what any one of us here has argued, do your research on who said what beforehand.
“Have I ever been right about anything?” Obviously, I must have been right about many things if I’m the person that even my professors turn to when they have questions about things, and whether they’re making errors within some lesson. To be honest, I question whether you have ever been right about anything. Frankly, you’re the only person here who thinks your ideas have any value whatsoever. Is that surprising? It shouldn’t be.
As you haven’t played me in A&A, you have no right or capacity for judging my ability or how I allow emotion to interact with it. In fact, I haven’t played a game on this site or ANY site on the net, or with any other people in any form other than on a board, in person. So you can’t even claim to have witnessed my playing the game, and therefore have no information on which you can draw any form of conclusion about skill level, knowledge, playing style, emotional interaction, etc… Furthermore, your comparing A&A playing ability to opinions of intellect is startlingly incoherent, frivolous, and downright silly for somebody of your “intellect.”
Calling yourself “enlightened” because you’ve read things, and referring to people who haven’t as “unenlightened,” reminds me of somebody. That “somebody” is myself when I was 14 years old, except that I had some modicum of logical, individual thought to back up my comments (rather than incoherent and simple quotations of others’ opinions that often do not apply to the lesson at hand). You haven’t even got that, and I presume that is why you resort to comparing “skill” at a board game that is based largely on dice-rolling as a method of argumentation (and yes, I do believe luck in battles is more important than luck in tech; I never said anything to the contrary, as, if you paid any attention to my statements, you would know).
You, sir, are a hypocrite as well: you claim that we are “ignorant” for being unable to consider opinions other than our own, and that you are “enlightened” for having read others’ opinions. Would you then tell me sir, how, using this belief system, can you claim that only those who follow your opinion of “enlightenment” are truly enlightened, and those who do not are automatically “ignorant”? Doesn’t this contradict your assumption that intelligence depends on consideration of others’ contributions to knowledge?
You fall into a class of people I refer to commonly as “Pseudo-Intellectuals.” This class contains people who have very little intellect and few ideas of their own, so to make themselves seem more intellectual and impressive (most often as an ego thing, but sometimes to impress a woman they couldn’t get any other way), they demean others and refer to them as “ignorant” to make themselves seem more “enlightened”. They have a tendency to analyze other people’s statements with an ability on par with the average 8 year old and then create a wordy response to their own poor analysis, to misquote people or only partially quote them in a manner that cuts out something giving further or opposing meaning to the statement, and will often quote the wrong person as having said something somebody else said. I believe there is a term in psychology for people like this, but I haven’t studied psychology deeply enough to know the name for whatever this condition is. All I know is that others who belong to this class include a guy from a previous school I attended who believes the USA itself is run by “free masons” who plotted the assassination of JFK and who dominates the globe, and that “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” which according to him translates from Latin into “New World Order” (by the way, I KNOW Latin, and it doesn’t), is a symbol of the USA’s dominance. He said - big surprise - that people who didn’t know this already were “unenlightened” and should learn more about conspiracy theory by - you guessed it - reading some book. There was also a “genius” named Bill in my high school who was much like you: life being nothing beyond strategy games and Star Trek, intellect nothing beyond having read some other people’s works and being able to quote them as if they were his only ideas, and ego inflated constantly by his demeaning of others. He arrogantly thought of himself as the only “enlightened” person among a zombie crowd… just like yourself! And one more, just because space limits me: myself 6 years ago, back when I used to be like you. I would quote authors whose works I didn’t even truly analyze, but that I thought sounded pretty, apply them to lessons I didn’t know anything about, and then refer to everyone else’s opinions as “ignorant” to make mine seem brighter (while I was in this sad and unfortunate state, I once stated that Plato probably had Down’s Syndrome because his statements disagreed with those of Locke). An ad hominem, am I using with this posting here? Perhaps, but I relish in it; for it is no more than you deserve, having spewed the granddaddy of ad hominems just now.
“All knowledge comes from previous knowledge?” All I have to say to that is “Guhhh… Burrr… Duh-hurr!” Would you please tell me then, Mr. Smith… where did the first piece of knowledge of the first man come from? Being the first, it could not have been based on existing ideas. Where did the first mathematical idea come from? Obviously not previous knowledge. How about the first alphabet man created? Not based on previous knowledge. Where did the first notion of God come from? How about the first idea to keep track of time and events, before man began recording history? The first time man had a philosophical thought that had nothing to do with survival? The first of ANYTHING, for that matter! To state they were based on previous knowledge causes a contradiction within their very statements as being the first of their kind, proving via said contradiction that all knowledge is NOT based on previous establishments thereof - unlike your rather unusual example of “proof by example,” something even the most elementary of mathematicians, philosophers, or simply logical people would make a great mockery of before telling you to simply “shove off.” “I just read something today were Isiah Berlin critiques the notion of Ulitiarianism. So obviously all knowledge comes from previous knowledge and is merely like layers on a cake.” That’s like saying “All numbers are prime. Take 23. 23 is a number and it’s prime. So all numbers are prime.” Obviously, this is not true.
“Thinking is a euphemism for prejudice”? I have never read a statement that was so blatantly formed by somebody who knew less of what he was talking than my 3 year old cousin Kate, so decided to use large words in his sentence that any 10th grader could see through. I did not even specify what I was referring to as individual thought, and therefore, you cannot judge whether I am being prejudiced against anything as my idea was not even specified! However, I can say YOUR opinion is strongly prejudiced, as you automatically presume that people who form original ideas rather than taking those from your favorite authors are ignorant. Or remind me… were you just using that word to make everyone else seem smaller so you would seem bigger, as a symptom of your Pseudo-Intellect? If so, I guess that might be forgivable.
You’re a sad man, Smith. It’s depressing for me to see someone with such intellectual potential as yourself prove himself unable to mature beyond his teenage years, and thereby prevent his intellect from maturing as well.
