Originally posted by mike dangerously
I have heard that ATS is monitored by the government so,some people wolud be disinfo agents.
Ever see that Batman film with Jim Carrey? At the end of it the villain who has to decide what to do by throwing a coin is fooled into throwing one up
in the air to see which side it lands on. As he throws it up in the air Batman throws a whole roll of same coins up too. The villain can no longer
tell which is which and, confused, falls to his death.
Signal is lost in all the noise, and the job of the disinformation agent is done.
My personal belief is that even one or more of the people with their own forums is a disinformation agent. And all the neurotics with their unstable
mental states compelling them to post the unknowable for the unwary only adds to the noise.
I think the mendaciousness aspect of the terms and conditions needs to be more strongly policed. How exactly to do that would of course trigger
another talkfest but it is not impossible. Here is a suggestion list.
CRITERIA FOR A THREAD MAKING A CLAIM:
1. if the claim relates to the physical world of the senses, then it needs to have some form of evidence to be credible.
2. if the claim relates to something that is not verifiable then it can't truly be treated as something physical and should be only allowed in one of
the forums here that allows such postings. For example a lot of the "Venus is habitable like Earth" stuff is unverifiable due to the rejection of
conventional evidence and even empirical science by some of the OPs. Leaving aside the question of deliberate disinformation or sick mendacity as a
motivation for starting such a thread, whatever the motivation, these threads are not conducive of proof based on ordinary rules of perception and
physical universal constants. So it is needlessly provocative to have them in a forum where the apparent tone indicates generally that physical proof
is desirable.
3. INDUCTIVE reasoning threads should be clearly labelled as such by Mods if the original poster doesn't.
4. THEORIES as opposed to OBSERVATIONS should be clearly labelled as such.
Even as a commercial operation, ATS should guard against too many new visitors getting turned off. For the longest time I was personally totally
turned off joining up, and I am a personal witness to the interior of one of the bases people are preoccupied here, as well as a compiler of other
data sources... I would like to think that my profile means I have a home of some sort here as long as I manage to behave myself for long enough
periods of time. But who knows. Sometimes it seems that multiple threads inspired by an original good thread exist for no reason other than to stifle
rather than promote debate. Signal to noise ratio...