The most "useful" part of ATS???

I couldn't think of a better word than useful. I have insomnia at the moment and it's been about 4 days since I got a decent nights sleep. I'm starting to get cranky and punchy in turns.

So in my opinion the Social Issues and Civil Unrest forum is really the only thing worth looking at on ATS.
I check rants and survival because they are amusing, but you can find that stuff anywhere.
What keeps me coming back are the discussions about Police Brutality and Gay marriage in the SICU forum.

I've never been on a forum with so many police officers where there are a larger number of people unafraid to discuss their real feelings about police officers.
And I think it's awesome!

I don't know how long it will take or how many "haters" have to tell their stories before the police officers who come here and oddly enough a ton of them seem to be moderators, finally start to get it. Finally become willing to admit that people have a legitimate beef with how the police state is starting to effect and affect the world we live in.

So while this is a rant, it's in my opinion an optimistic rant. Which is rare for me. So just accept that.

Try the log out button once and a while ...
errrr on second thought....

i was once in a college course ,in which,all we did was watch drug dealers and homeless people think about killing cops,on movies.i didnt believe that crap because i had lived those lifestyles and recognized propaganda.the weak minded end up accepting that the gov is always right and police do no evil.they become cops.the brutality comes from religion reinforcing that we should judge rather than accept.the cop attitude is actually a mental disease .

I always thought the most useful part of ATS was the Search Bar.

Then again, only about 2% of the membership actually uses it, so meh.

King

reply to post by Kingalbrect79


Well again, useful wasn't the most appropriate word for my thought.

Beneficial seems to be the word I should have chosen. 99.7% of the stuff on these forums is utter drivel.
I think that the dialogues in the Social Unrest forums are some of the most informative I've ever read.

Not because there is any discussion of merit, but because they are a perfect microcosm of how the people of the USA think, and react, and react some more and then react again.

You can read a single discussion and see the unfolding of several types of process happening. Most of them being a chain reaction or lock and dam system of denial.

I can see unguided formative logic paths happening in a discussion where people have brought an opinion to bear directly on a subject, but they don't know why they have that opinion. It's a parrot response, and then they get challenged. And they scramble to fabricate and "link justify" their way through an argument that they seem very passionate about, when in reality the argument, and the subject mean almost nothing to them.
The reason they argue is because there was a challenge. It doesn't matter if the challenge made any more sense than their opinion. That's not the point. The point is that they know they are right. Why they are right is not important either. Just that they are right.
So then they have a cascade of mostly ill formed and causal interpretations of obscure sentences in questionably sourced material that it'self isn't properly sourced, but because there is written text put up by someone somewhere, they now have the Armor they need in their battle for what is right. Which is, them being right.

It is fascinating to me. And it has real potential as a teaching paradigm in my humble opinion. One thing I've always believed is that it is very difficult to teach someone how to think, if you don't already know how they think.
Looking at these forums, it is becoming obvious to me that there is a way to use the type of argument that is most common in these forums to formulate a new learning path. Not a truly new path. It looks like it will be a kind of dirty street version the Laurillards Theoretical Conversational Framework.

Yes. This makes me feel fancy! very fancy!

In that case I would tend to agree. In fact I was thinking about that very ideology the other day. I've been around ATS a LONG time. I was a guest reader on a weekly basis for several years before I even decided to register, and even then it took me quite some time before I decided to join the posters in comment because I felt I needed to educate myself on various topics within the forums so that I would not sound like one of those "lost" individuals.

I remember conversations with very intelligent people; rocket scientists, quantum theorists, physicists, phychologists, military personell and various other "celebrity" figures to which you can still find their threads in archive for fascinating discussion.

However it is true that the forums have dropped in quality over the last five years as new people take over and start putting their bias, un-educated opinions in at the drop of a hat without thinking before they post. Often times I find threads started in retaliation to getting "owned" (if you'll pardon the gamer term) by someone in another thread because they jumped to conclusions or tried to present an outlandish claim with no evidence, and then was called on it. Almost completely gone are the fantastic conversations within the aliens/ufo forums, military projects and esoteric sections; they have delved into a very quick "pics or it didn't happen" mentality where people 50% of the people no longer explore topics with an open mind, 25% react bluntly and very rudely, and the remaining 24% are just down right decietful or misleading in an effort to "one-up" everyone else in some quest for digital stars and flags for an online profile.

I joined ATS because this was the one place where civil discussion ruled all, and it was enforced.
I joined ATS because there were people with character, education and the willingness to talk despite the cynnic or skeptic's dis-approval.
I joined ATs because people here would give you the benefit of the doubt, unless you proved yourself to be dishonest.

I think those days have almost all but gone, and with the exception of some excellent individuals here on the forums who keep up the good fight, I don't see much any more worth talking about, so I end up having the same arguments and conversations that everyone else does, because it all seems to revolve around religion or politics anymore.

Younger generations will have to find their own way, I just wish they would do a little digging first and spend some time with the search bar before they spout off endless rants in threads that aren't in the rant section.

On a side note, since when is a single question, or a two line OP grounds for a thread discussion?

Oh well. We have to roll with the ups and downs, but at least ATS is here for us to use freely, and without judgement.

King

I haven't been running around here that long. I've been using discussion forums since the early 90's though and IRC so I generally jump in with both feet.

I am finding it more and more difficult to join discussions and not spend the entire time explaining to someone that they aren't using a real argument type.
I'm getting hung up on pedantic formats for debate and I spend all my time trying to write elaborate analogies for someone who, at the end of the post, still aren't going to understand what I meant.
They are just going to pick a single line from a 150 word paragraph, and put it in quotes and make some logical fallacy retort.

Disagree.

There is no police state and police brutality is rare. You only hear it a lot because members here and regulars on the protest scene who are always anti-authority for the sake of it like to claim it happens after first provoking the police or going against a law then get their one sided comments and videos online as a way to gain sympathy through lies.

To me, after looking at and posting on almost every section of ATS, the only useful one now is a tie between Music and Movies.