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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.

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.

You posted a little bit back on 2/07/2002 -- the day you were born. ableChair started a thread and got into a flame war but you came to his defense just as you are doing now. It's almost as if ableChair and kodaChrome were of one mind. You posted about six times and then that was the last we heard from you until now.

and were at war. even if your wrong sometimes its necessary to just win

So how far would you go to win an argument? Would you resort to creating an alternate user identity to support you?

From ableChair's profile page: "I am me and you are you. But I'm not real, just a shadow. Here but gone, never quite reified. Catch me if you can. "

Vanity Post By ableChair

But regarding egos or alter-egos, I don't agree that the people who critisized you, er... I mean ableChair did so to protect their ego. If that were true they would have responded to your... I mean, his insults in kind. They would have flamed him back. But they didn't, they were quite civil. Why would they do that? Why would they take those insults when it would have been so easy to shoot back? Because they wanted to teach him a lesson by example. Instead of flaming him, or calling the moderator, they showed him that it is possible to have a debate without responding with invective.

Well, ableChair said he won't post here anymore but I expect you will. I do hope you've learned something about civility from his bad example