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Admittedly, when debating lasers it's not as important, but when debating ideas winning is absolutely essential. These threads are read by the public and don't kid yourself that we're not at war. Winning in that context certainly does matter.

At least as important is your own credibility. If you are seen as disingenuous, supporting arguments that you don't truly believe in simply to feed your own ego, then your credibility vanishes and then later you will not be believed by good people even when you are right.

Bill Clinton lost credibility when he was caught as a liar. His supporters claimed it didn't matter because he only lied about sex. In truth, he lied to the person most important to him, his wife. The correct assumption is that if he would cheat on the person most important to him, then he would also cheat on his country. And it turned our he did.

Regarding lasers, the discussion is important to the pilot who may find himself weighing the relative merit of expensive protective gear. If what Blackdog says about pilot visibility is true, the threat isn't nearly as bad as it seems. And in any case, countermeasures can be easily devised.

What does it mean to say you've "won" an argument? It sure doesn't mean that you've arrived at the truth. But arriving at the truth is the most important thing. And keeping the discussion unemotional is conducive to a productive argument.

dont flame me, this is just my opinion. i seldom post but i read FR a lot. ive gone through the whole thread and i think ableChair was right. mostly. his style leaves a lot to be desired but i think you missed his point with the above quote. what hes saying is that seeking truth may always matter in private discussion but not in public. people use public forums to spread disinformation and were at war. even if your wrong sometimes its necessary to just win otherwise the enemy convinces others to follow. its about persuasion not truth.

regarding the rest of this debate ableChair was correct in stating that another poster changed the tone as he called it. starting off with "blah, blah" is very condescending and that poster should have expected a spirited response.

the bystanders have a valid beef but i think if you see a rumble going on its best not to get into it and take sides if you dont want to get slammed too.

the part about the sunlight was pretty well covered with what i thought was a clear and easily understandable quote. but other posters relintlessly tried to prove a hard copy source wrong. ableChair was making a sutle point about the difference between sunlight that hits the ground directly vs sunlight that gets channeled in the atmosphere. i looked in a cheesy astronomy book i have and it said the same thing. 5 percent hits the ground directly. so 95 percent is blocked somehow. but i think ableChair was wrong about lasers and i dont think the air offers that much resistance to lasers.

finally i read the ego thing differently too. i think ableChair may not be firing all pistons but it was the ones posting against him that were posting replies on ego. i dont know if he did it on purpose but he cleverly ensnared the posters by sounding like he didnt know anything. once they took the bait he slammed them. but then they had to protect their ego because they were tricked. imho.