A Good Scrap!

[Citizen Koba]

Charles Taylor, who worked on the shop floor of the Wright Cycle Company, described the room above as ‘frightened with argument’. He recalled: ‘The boys were working out a lot of theory in those days, and occasionally they would get into terrific arguments. They’d shout at each other something terrible. I don’t think they really got mad, but they sure got awfully hot.’

Lovely article here about the value of argument and debate as a tool for advancing our knowledge and understanding of the world. An understanding sadly missing in the many people who think that the point of argument is simply to try to 'beat' or silence their interlocutors by means of insult or rhetorical trickery...

After a family friend expressed his discomfort at the way the brothers argued, Wilbur, the elder, explained why arguing was so important to them:

No truth is without some mixture of error, and no error so false but that it possesses no element of truth. If a man is in too big a hurry to give up an error, he is liable to give up some truth with it, and in accepting the arguments of the other man he is sure to get some errors with it. Honest argument is merely a process of mutually picking the beams and motes out of each other’s eyes so both can see clearly…

Wilbur Wright’s description of collaborative intellectual enquiry is one the ancient Greeks would have recognised. Socrates believed that the best way to dispel illusions and identify fallacies was through the exchange of arguments.

Agnes Callard, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago and an expert on the ancient Greeks, says that Socrates was responsible for one of the founding innovations of Western thought: what she calls the ‘adversarial division of epistemic labour’, in which one party’s job is to throw up hypotheses, while the other’s is to knock them down. This is exactly what happens in a modern courtroom as prosecutor and defender co�operate in a quest for justice by ripping each other’s arguments apart. Even though Socrates himself was sceptical of democracy as a form of government, the idea that people with different views can vigorously yet co�operatively disagree is essential to ********ic society.

FWIW the story of how the Wright boys' father would task them with taking different sides of an argument is one that makes me smile cos as a teenager ferocious intellectual and political debate round the kitchen table was part and parcel of living with my old man and I was always reflexively adversarial. Even though it would sometimes end with me getting clipped round the side of the head - or worse - I never seemed to get the knack of just keeping my damn mouth shut.

[Marchegiano]

Yeah, I should probably tone it on back down... But, to be fair, there's disagreement, misunderstanding, and then dealing with the frustration of having guys like Jugger be here. I reckon once you threaten death over someone being a fan of a boxer you've thrown the whole error deal out the window. I liked that quote quite a lot but I'm not sure it's always true, some folks are just ****ed. Not their debate, not their argument here on this one post, everything you read from them is ****ed.

I don't hate our juggie, but, I do think he's legitimately ****ed.


Everyone else, I'm just ****ing around to a degree at least. You can always write things less provocatively to make your point more clear and give the reader a better chance to follow rather than get hung up where their feelings were hurt. IMO on this internet space that is the first decision. Am I going to explain things to my audience or am I going to explain things to myself at my audience. I think most of us go with the latter but I'm not so confident the majority do it on purpose and knowingly.

That said, I can't say I'd be terribly surprised if there was a considerable amount of people who write a way just to be seen or rather ensure a bite. Chollo and Siablo don't seem to like me very much at the moment, but, Chollo and Siablo and I have all been here like a decade and I just met those fools. So, to a degree provocation works and there may be a few of us who do it just to carry on.

I'm game to have brainier debates and less name calling. Watch me perform for the next week or so, test the provocation and ****, bet I got back to a much smaller circle here on the largest boxing forum online. Which, at the end of the day I am here for your stories so if what I'm writing fails to deliver a response then I have failed. Regardless of how much more the folks who enjoy a bit of solid history enjoy it, catching less fish is catching less fish.

I been thinking we got a lot of new anyway and it's a bit **** no one does a new fans thread. I'll start posting again on some basic **** like belts, bodies, and HW champions....not today though well, maybe but later.

[ShoulderRoll]

But, to be fair, there's disagreement, misunderstanding, and then dealing with the frustration of having guys like Jugger be here. I reckon once you threaten death over someone being a fan of a boxer you've thrown the whole error deal out the window...

I don't hate our juggie, but, I do think he's legitimately ****ed.

Juggernutz is quite the character. Member of a crime family who shoves pizza boxes into people's throats and who once threw Arthur Mercante Jr down a flight of stairs.

I try to have serious boxing discussion on here but it's not always possible. Once trolls start acting up it's very easy to get ****** into the counter-trolling game.

As a veteran of the Mayweather-Pacquiao flame wars I can say this site hasn't changed much in that regard over the years.