It's 2019 can we please stop the stupid?

[AFTT47]

Of course they're fucking fish. I've caught a few using fish hooks.

A "dolphin fish" is a fish, but a dolphin is  MAMMAL AND NOT A FISH.

Again don't talk shit to me if you cant or wont recognize the difference between how a scientist uses language and how a layperson uses language.

That seems to be what you're doing, Brian.

You'll never catch a scientist even engaging in this useless argument because they are going to use proper scientific nomenclature when discussing species and family. You seem to expect the same of a layperson who for some reason has an emotional investment in whether the fish or the mammal has more right to the common name, "Dolphin." In fact, neither of them do.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you and you've actually got somebody who thinks Flipper is a fish. Hell, if that's the case, why waste your time with such a fool? Might as well argue with a flat-earther!

[Anomalocaris]

Brian thinks he is righteous, so anything he fancies to say must be right.

[Shell B]

Stop splitting hairs for the sake of it. I mean, I wouldn't get mad on Twitter about it, but dolphins ain't fish, yo.

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/dolphin.html

Find me a biologist who will waffle like the posts in these threads about whether dolphins are fish. None of them actual think you mean Mahi when you say dolphin.

They be mammals, brah. It's such a pointless semantics waste of time to debate it.

[Macoleco]

USA is a weird country. The leaders are complete retards, and education seems to be lacking. Yet it is the most powerful country on Earth.

[Anomalocaris]

Stupid is enshrined somewhere in the UN charter for human rights somewhere, I’m sure.

Why would it need to be?

For something to be worth enshrining as a right, there must exist the possibility of it being taken away.   Have you met a christard who can even theoretically be parted by just a infinitesimal distance for a tiny instant of time from his stupidity?

---

USA is a weird country. The leaders are complete retards, and education seems to be lacking. Yet it is the most powerful country on Earth.

Leaders are retards because majority of the populous are retards.   Hitherto it had staved off its own decline by sucking in talent from around the world to make up for the low average quality of much of its own citizenry.  It bends the talented immigrate to the task of forestalling it’s own decline while it prevents these same talented immigrants from diluting the average idiocy by making sure the second and third generation of these same immigrants also largely become retards.

That was before 2016.   Now we defend our treasured retardation with such zeal we don’t even want to talented immigrants to come here to forestall our own decline.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The Great Dolphin Debate aside, I don't foresee much hope to 'stop the stupid'.  People take a great deal of pride in their willful ignorance, treating almost as a birthright, something to be cherished.

A wise man (I disremember who) once remarked that the total amount of IQ points on the planet is a fixed quantity:  the population is growing.

Boru

[Belacqua]

So just now on Twitter, I ran into a an angry Tweet form an IDIOT getting angry at someone else for calling dolphins mammals. The idiot did a all caps shout Tweet insisting that dolphins were fish because they swim in the water. 

They should not be angry at the person that told them the truth, they should get angry at the person that sold them the lie. 

I swear, America is regressing and that is scary.

There's a classic book called Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, by Richard Hofstadter. 

He starts by defining what he means by calling someone an intellectual, and he identifies two characteristics: 

~ An intellectual takes ideas seriously, as having importance even if they don't lead to money or fame or a better mousetrap. 

~ An intellectual takes ideas playfully, being willing to spend time on ideas he doesn't agree with, and systems that are currently way out of fashion. 

So it isn't the same thing as just being smart, because a smart guy who spent all his time on more practical pursuits wouldn't necessarily be an intellectual. 

And Hofstadter makes a persuasive case that the US has pretty much always been suspicious of intellectuals. We prefer people who use their smarts to make money -- or we just prefer people who make money, with or without smarts. 

I think the only intellectual character in pop culture in recent years has been Hannibal Lector.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I think the only intellectual character in pop culture in recent years has been Hannibal Lector.

Sheldon Cooper.

Boru

[GrandizerII]

Stop splitting hairs for the sake of it. I mean, I wouldn't get mad on Twitter about it, but dolphins ain't fish, yo.

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/dolphin.html

Find me a biologist who will waffle like the posts in these threads about whether dolphins are fish. None of them actual think you mean Mahi when you say dolphin.

They be mammals, brah. It's such a pointless semantics waste of time to debate it.

That's fair, though when biologists are doing their research, they are expected to use the scientific names for these organisms rather than ambiguous common names.

[Shell B]

Stop splitting hairs for the sake of it. I mean, I wouldn't get mad on Twitter about it, but dolphins ain't fish, yo.

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/dolphin.html

Find me a biologist who will waffle like the posts in these threads about whether dolphins are fish. None of them actual think you mean Mahi when you say dolphin.

They be mammals, brah. It's such a pointless semantics waste of time to debate it.

That's fair, though when biologists are doing their research, they are expected to use the scientific names for these organisms rather than ambiguous common names.

I don’t think they find the common name ambiguous. None of us actually do. I also don’t think they’re out to sea on research vessels speaking Latin to each other. Furthermore, the Latin name is usually included next to the common name as a parenthetical in research papers, an afterthought for clarity. It’s not like they all wander around correcting each other when everyone knows what dolphin means, even if it’s more fun to rile Brian than admit it.