ATS Guide to proving your point without sufficient evidence

I am going to demonstrate how you can prove a valid point without sufficent evidence using tactics that are very common here at Above Top Secret. I'm going to use an example arguement where Joe's arguement is true, but he has little evidence to back it up. The arguement is that the sky is, in fact, red. (This is true, it's just much, much more blue than red.)

1. Sound authoritative. Make your statements as though you were stating a simple fact, something that cannot be disputed. "The sky is red." Don't emphesise "is" or anything like that. That makes it sound like you're making a new claim. State it plain and simply. Make it look like you've read it in a Rand McNally Atlas 500,000,000 times and are simply quoting a basic fact. This works for some, however, sometimes you have to go a little farther.

2. Quote figures; don't quote sources. If you want to take it one radical step further, you can quote sources, and just reword the context. For example, Joe finds a figure by color blind scientists who study light. They were all asked if they could tell the same shade of blue from red. 8 out of 10 said, "no." Joe says in his post, "In a study conducted by the New York Times, 80% of spectral diffraction analysists (just made that up ) studied agreed the sky is as red as an apple."

Eventually, you will have someone argue against you. This is inevitable, there are some fools out there who just don't understand that you can be completely trusted and the information that cockroach under your pillow gave you is completely and obviously true. Now is when you have to go on the attack. ATS has a great resource for this, the search engine. I'll explain more shortly.

3. Mock the fool poster's credibility. So you're argueing against someone now. Chances are, if you are debunking a long held lie (example: The sky is blue), several people are going to have made arguements against you before you've had a chance to respond to any of them. This is a good thing. Some people can be pretty persuasive. If you're reading this, you're still at the rookie level. If you have plenty of responses, you can ignore those hard ones. Just go after the person who doesn't speak english too well, has a short fuse, or the early teen who doesn't have a strong grasp on grammer. Each has their own strategy which will draw away completely from the point your post was making. This, too, is a good thing. People will remember they read something about that ("I thought I read something about the sky being red, and it being a government conspiracy to keep us from believing that Mars has any life on it that is causing us to see it as blue...") Because you distract completely from the point with each of these people, they'll walk away thinking, ("You know, no one could give a good arguement against it. It must be true. I'll have to tell my friends") Thus, your information is out.

a) Non-english speaking poster: This is the easiest and most dangerous person to take advantage of. You can attack misspellings, poor grammer, misuse of punctuation, etc. You'll make the person look like a complete idiot. I know I would if I were trying to talk to y'all in english! This can backfire, however. You want to make sure to only use the non-english speaking poster as a side conversation, so it doesn't look like you're ignoring those hard to respond to posts. This one goes away as soon as they make it known that english isn't their first language. Then you look like a jerk, unless you can convince everyone they're lying about english not being their first language. Though tricky, this can give you a lot of credibility if you see through your Indian friend's lie about speaking Indian before speaking english.

b) Short Fuse Poster: This guy should be your main focus. Every time they post, respond, and do so in a sarcastic, snide manner. Treat them as though they just got hit with the stupid stick 54,854 times beyond the legal limit. ((To a post by Mr. Mad asking why the sky looks blue to him): "Oooookkaaaaayyyy, Mr. Mad. Fine. I'll explain refraction...Again. I didn't realize the people discussing this subject hadn't finished high school physics. Light hits the molecules of the atmosphere at a specific, absloute, quantum (the more, bigger words, the more it sounds like you know what you're talking about and that you're smart) angle (going to webster's for another word for "split"...ooo) which hits the molecule and fractures in such a way as to appear red. The government has a bilateral imaging array enhancement aligner (this is the fun part, throw a bunch of words together, and just make stuff up. You don't need to prove it or back it up; it's the government, of course it's true!) which fires a gamma pulse beam through our ocular nerve reversing the ratiocination (it does work) in the grey matter causing epileptic flashes of blue perception which outweigh the red perception so we never suspect Mars has a superior alien race bent on human destruction.") Whew! That was fun! Most all people, at this point, will believe what you're saying unless they're completely insane. However, the insane can sometimes pull people away from your brilliant concept. You must prevent them from corrupting the minds of the others. That's where step 4 comes in. Mr. Mad will be very upset. You treated him like an idiot, and if he knows anything about physics, he knows you just rammed his bottom with a whole bunch of sugar and spice and everything nice. He'll come back with every word you can imagine. Don't let it get to you. This just means, in the eyes of the readers, that he doesn't have an arguement and is running purely on emotion. Keep your responses contained, yet slightly inflammitory. Keep up Mr. Mad's anger while sounding like the voice of reason yourself.

c) The early teen: The non-english speaker can sometimes turn into this, and vice versa. The early teen is nice because their minds are still putty. They're just starting to go through that rebelious stage, and anything you tell them that is against "Big Brother", they'll want to believe. If you have a skeptic, you have a gold mine. If you can, through the course of your thread, manage to convince someone who was completely against your idea that your idea is sound and makes sense, you just added TONS of credibility to what you were saying. You can recognise the early teen through their use of insults. Therefore, start dealing with this one the same way you would the non-english speaking poster. If thye start insulting you with toilate comments and a litany of swears, you have yourself an early teen. Reap the rewards, and be spending time U2Uing them on the side to convince them of your point. If it's done through a U2U, more stable people who know who they are and what they believe in can't refute your sensable statements ("The sky is red. Your parents just taught you that the color that is red is actually named "blue" because they're tools of the government"). That statement would be argued until it turned blue in the face as a narmal post. But as a U2U, someone may understand.

4. After you've taken advantage of Mr. Mad's ignorance and stated an extremely scientific point, people will come after you with science of their own, and articles. You can go one of two ways here. You can do lots of research, or just make something up. For the most part, every publication has gotten something wrong. Just check the second page, they usually have a "Oops" section correcting mistakes made the last day/week/month. Exploit these to show that your opponent's source holds no water. They quote the Chicago Tribune. First, tell them that when they reported that a kid had been found after 34 hours, it was actually 32 hours! Then mention the Tribune's extreme conservative slant (I know, I know, but for some reason most people at ATS seem to be liberals and they buy this simple little lie hook line and sinker. It really works like a charm, you just call a liberal paper conservative and they no longer trust it. Hehe if my plan works, they'll all be watching Fox News in no time! Muh-wha-ha-ha! Anyway, back to the tutorial.) If the person still backs it, pull race into the mix. ("The Tribune supported slavery and the confederacy, and donated hevily to Hitler. What, you say they didn't? Well, of course they got rid of all evidence from their books, they're tools of Big Brother! Sheesh!") Finally, if none of this works, and someone is still harassing you about your obvious truth, go to number 5:

5. U2U the person in a friendly manner and find out what religion they are. Then go on the offensive. They say they're Islamic, you go to town about them being suicide bombing woman hating ignoramouses. They say they're Christian, throw the Crusades in their face, hit them with the Catholic church not recognising the earth revolving around the sun until just recently. They say they're Jewish, say, "Of course you are! You're one of THEM! You're part of what I'm trying to expose, of course you're saying I'm lying!" If they say anything else, explain that their opinion doesn't matter because they're one of those "wrong" religions. These courses will do one of two things. Either the person will think you're an idiot and go away (good) or the person will become a Mr. Mad and go nuts (better).

Well, this is all it takes to put together a good conspiracy. You have the clientel who will believe. That's the reason they're here at ATS. You don't come to a government conspiracy website unless you are hoping to discover something or you're looking for a good laugh. I won't tell y'all why I come here If anyone has any questions, you can either post here on this thread, or U2U me. If you post on this thread, I'll respond with examples. Hehehehe please respond on this thread.

Ahhhh, but the sky is neither blue nor red. It is the light that is the actual color!

Originally posted by ben91069
Ahhhh, but the sky is neither blue nor red. It is the light that is the actual color!

Actually, this is not true, as any Junior in highschool could tell you who's been through spectography in physics. In other words, for one who may not have, about 90% of High School students junior year or above. Light contains all colors, our atmosphere causes some to be absorbed and some to be refracted. In earth's case, we have a largely nitrogen atmosphere, followed by oxygen. Obvously oxygen, otherwise we'd all be dead. It is light hitting that oxygen and all the red particles being absorbed which causes it to appear red to view. So it is the particles in the sky, the red ones, which cause the sky to have it's color. Foolish little proto-scientist.

This is the problem with all you'ns. You think you are so smart and all!!!!!!!!!!!!1 Well I know fer sure the light has colurs and all. If it wernt so = why wood my tv show those color bars?????? Answer me this Mr. Smartpants! HA

Have you seen the sky at sunset? You actually see a rainbow if you look carefully.

And I've seen white and gray skies before....

Originally posted by ben91069

This is the problem with all you'ns. You think you are so smart and all!!!!!!!!!!!!1 Well I know fer sure the light has colurs and all. If it wernt so = why wood my tv show those color bars?????? Answer me this Mr. Smartpants! HA

Now now, no need to get upset. If I said anything that angered you, I didn't mean to. All I was saying was that light has no color its self. Those little color bars on your tv? Look at them closely. The green guy is always green (This kind of emphesis is acceptable. It is stating a point that your opponent can, in fact, test and prove to be true. By adding the emphesis, you're throwing that extra quarter/$10,000 (depending on your stakes) onto the pot. You want the person to call you on this, so provoke them.) This is because the material that green bar is made of absorbs green. Therefore you see green. Just like when you look up at the sky, you see red.

Originally posted by Amethyst
Have you seen the sky at sunset? You actually see a rainbow if you look carefully.

And I've seen white and gray skies before....

So then you admit you see red skies. You see, people?! The mask is coming off. People are coming to see that which the government doesn't want them to see! Congrats, rock! You have come further in your being than many do!

Now forgive me my language I study the english a second wording. My country have many bright people that you do not know My thought is this if these lights are very bright they would be red but are not do you see this? Tell me these things cannot be correct

Originally posted by ben91069
Now forgive me my language I study the english a second wording. My country have many bright people that you do not know My thought is this if these lights are very bright they would be red but are not do you see this? Tell me these things cannot be correct

Sheesh, you sound like my cleaning lady. Well, guy, actuall. He's always on about his country this and that, and he was neuclear physicist, etc. Whatever, bub, be sure to use those scrubbing bubbles so the next time I drink outta the toilate it'll taste FRESH! In fact, you sound remarkably like my cleaning lady-man. What's your...My gosh! Your name here is Ben91069?! I take it that stands for Ben Hodges, born 9-10-69? Duh! I'm glad to see you came on, little buddy! Going on about english not being your second language, that was pretty good. Perfect, actually, if you consider what the subject of this thread was. So how's Gayle and the kids? Chris still trying to get at the plugs? I'll give you a call tomorrow, see if y'all want to get together with the wife and myself. Jeeze, I can't believe you were impersonating my cleaning lady-man...On the board I convinced you to come to to laugh...with interest at these profound conspiracies being uncovered.

I just voted you "way above" for posting this brilliant thread, junglejake. Where can I subscribe to your fansite?

Don't let the fascist caelo-cyanists get you down!!!

All glory to the New (red) Dawn of Enlightenment!

"You have voted junglejake for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have used all of your votes for this month."

you make a very fair point and on too many occasions do I see knew members shot down due to thefact that they have "not been here as long as the other members..."

Good stuff Jake!

You have voted junglejake for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month.

(Now you can handle praise several different ways. I prefer to ignore it. After all, my point was so profound that of course you'd vote for me being way above. The other option is to build off of their posts and reinforce your arguement. Personally, I think this is a little over the top.

One good idea is to ignore the praise, and as your spectacular statement works its way through the recent posts, you make some kind of comment about the praise without directly addressing it. Then you bring your fantastic thoughts to the front of the board and people check it out. I recomend doing this quarterly through the day to bring it to the attention of as many people as is possible. Now for a slightly belittleing comment about the praise, and disappointment that something so logical would be considered way above.)

Hey, thanks for the praise, guys. It's just sad that it's so simple to make a complete characture of ATS and that so many would recognise it as such. If only people wouldn't play this as a popularity contest but rather a place to exchange ideas at. It's just a matter of time before I'm deemed too unhip and Big Brother will have his way in making you believe the sky is blue.

(Now I look like I'm really concerned about where the message board is going. This can endear you in the hearts of the vets while reminiscing makes the noobies think you're more important here than you really are. Plus, you aknowleged the people's adoration of yourself. You didn't mention names, just the fact that they're out there. Now, if they're attention getters, they're really going to want you to name them, so they may try something over the top. This is a good thing. Let them draw attention to your thread. The more people who read it, the more likely you'll get people believing it's a conspiracy plot. Always, always, always close with some mention of Big Brother, the shadow gov't, NWO, Illuminati, Masons, or Star Trek Convention '05ioria. Those names will get a rise out of any die hard conspiracy fellow.)

(EDIT: Notice I ignored Klepto. This is so, if this post dies again before anyone can comment, I can make another comment. Intro with something like "By golly, Klepto, I didn't see your post in there. How did you manage to steal your way into here?" People will be too focused on groaning over your horrible joke to notice how weak your cover story for trying to collect points is. This way no one accuses you of trying to get extra points by posting in seporate posts. It's sometimes a good idea to put these EDIT things into your posts so it looks like you try to add to posts rather than get extra points. Then get some extra points and post again. I'll keep Klepto in my back pocket for now.)

[edit on 1-11-2005 by junglejake]

Klepto is impressed with your Shaolin style Junglejake.. he will grant Chicago a reprieve..



. . . . .for now. . . mmwwwooooAAARRH!

that really piss me off. You come up with some ridiculous theory and then belittle anyone that questions it's obvious stupidity. You think you're smart playing your word games and making others look like fools, just to score points on this dumb ass geek board. You make me sick.

Im sorry Junglejake, you wont like my answer but i'ts been debunked long ago.

Originally posted by mythatsabigprobe
that really piss me off. You come up with some ridiculous theory and then belittle anyone that questions it's obvious stupidity. You think you're smart playing your word games and making others look like fools, just to score points on this dumb ass geek board. You make me sick.

Welcome to ATS and its community, mythatsabigprobe.
Let me be the first to say that I think you have over-reacted to the point that junglejake is trying to make. Just let me say that this whole fiasco was not intended to belittle members but to relay a different point, but I will leave that to Junglejake to reveal.

Edit: btw, I would guard oneself from making comments to the degree that you just have:

....on this dumb ass geek board

The members have a bad habit, per se', of taking such wrong and then proceeding to rip said poster a new rearend. But again, greetings and welcome to ATS.



seekerof

[edit on 11-1-2005 by Seekerof]

Originally posted by mythatsabigprobe
that really piss me off. You come up with some ridiculous theory and then belittle anyone that questions it's obvious stupidity. You think you're smart playing your word games and making others look like fools, just to score points on this dumb ass geek board. You make me sick.

(This is who we call Mr. Mad. Now this fellah is hard to read by his few comments. Is (s)he really mad, or just playing along? One way to tell is to look up the person's previous posts. Be right back (brb works, too). OK, now we have a strange situation. mythatsabigprobe has only 6 posts out there. We may, indeed, have a legitimate Mr. Mad here. No one tell him to read what's in the parens, I'm going to play and show y'all how it's done.)

Mytha, (it's good to abreviate, it puts you into a position of power in the conversation. You've taken the name they asked to be called and changed it without asking. Abreviate poorly and it tells them they chose a kruddy name) if I made you feel like a fool in any way, I'm sorry. I thought I had toned down my language so it could be understood by most, but I guess I failed and I appologize for that. As for the word games, to what do you refer? Do you mean changing got to toggle by adding only 3 letters?

Finally, Mr. Mythatsab, I don't want points. Why would I want points? All I could buy is removal of the sensors, and who the heck cares about that? I'm not a point whore (derogetory term I couldn't think of before. This is the term people will call you if they see through the reasoning behind your posts. What can I say, I'm a RPGer...I like to gain points purely for the points.) and don't like to collect points. I try to spend them as often as I can (on what, U2Us?!) yet they keep accumulating. I just keep getting too many accolades and have too much insight to keep my point total low. I'm sorry you've gotten the wrong impression of me, and I hope we can still be friends (assumed friendship. If they break it off, they look like the bad guy even though no previous relationship existed before that sentance...I think I may have to make an advanced users guide...There are some intricacies I hadn't factored in until I put them into use...)

Originally posted by Seekerof

Welcome to ATS and its community, mythatsabigprobe.
Let me be the first to say that I think you have over-reacted to the point that junglejake is trying to make. Just let me say that this whole fiasco was not intended to belittle members to to relay a different point, but I will leave that to Junglejake to reveal.

seekerof

SeekerOf: Bad Seeker! You didn't listen to the lesson on Mr. Mad! Now Mr. Mad may see you as a resoning human being and assume you work for the government! Oh, seeker, seeker. We've had this conversation so many times before (by saying something like this to a moderator, I just, in the eyes of the noobies, established that SeekerOf is lower in the pecking order than I. Absloutly false (or could this be a suck up attempt while defaming someone to earn brownie points the way someone earns brownie points at a roast? HAHAHA YA NEVER KNOW! MUH-WHA-HA-HA!), but that's the way it will appear to new folks. As a result, they'll add more wieght to my words. Again, notice the dropping of the "Of". 2 letters, who cares, but to establish myself as a person of influence, I will do that to a moderator. You all can close your awe-struck mouths now.)

Originally posted by mythatsabigprobe
that really piss me off. You come up with some ridiculous theory and then belittle anyone that questions it's obvious stupidity. You think you're smart playing your word games and making others look like fools, just to score points on this dumb ass geek board. You make me sick.

wooaah there fella...

I think it was not a dig at an individual, purely an observation that didn't require such an obtuse response such as you gave. If you feel he made a personal attack upon you, I could understand that you would be upset (and I for one would back you up because personal attacks on discussion sites serves no purpose apart from being destructive..) unless you feel the qualities that Junglejake has expressed are reflections of qualities you feel you have.

Try to lighten up a little

Klep.