There’s an interesting development in the discussion between Acltalls and anew. First, it deals with the use of ‘obvious’. I noticed this also, but thought I would just focus on the more egregious forms of condescension, insults, ad homs and so on. But yes, asserting that something is obvious, especially when the other person has disagreed or presented a different perspective without backing that up, does a couple of things: 1) it acts like an argument, as Acltalls points out, but isn’t one and 2) it frames the other person as missing the obvious, rather than having a different perspective or experience base, etc. There have been other not so egregious responses like ‘This reasoning of yours here appears illogical, nonsensical, and unreasonable, to me.’ It has ‘appears’; it is aimed at the reasoning, but there’s no need to paint someone else’s assertion as so extremely wrong. This is clearer in context:
you appear to be confused here.
How does defining a word like ‘nothing’ make it supposedly be no longer nothing?
This reasoning of yours here appears illogical, nonsensical, and unreasonable, to me.
I can define the word ‘nothing’ as 'no physical thing’, ‘distance’, or ‘space’, for example, and ‘it’ or ‘they’ are still ‘nothing’, by definition.
A so-called ‘true nothingness’ when defined as the lack of everything can be very easily imagined. But, because there are things already existing, and because of what the Universe is and how It works, there could never have been a ‘lack of everything’ and never could be.
Anew focuses on the state of mind: confused, rather than the point, as the opener. He uses the phrase later ‘very easily’ which functions the way ‘obvious’ does.
If I define nothing as X, how does this lead to it no longer being nothing? That does all the work without anything personal, no stacking of adjectives, and no implicit ‘you are missing something obvious’ with the ‘very easily’.
I didn’t react to these before because compared to things like ‘you are all in a cult’ ‘you all abuse children’ ', referring to people as ‘it’ - even if this comes from an ontological viewpoint - framing criticism of ideas as an inability to see or a closed mind, and so on, they were really minor. But they are also things one should not have to put up with. And given that anew has repeatedly said he would like to improve his communication, he is getting some very good feedback from Acltalls.