wtf is this show, its amazing, how have I never seen this

Billions of people endure shame and humiliation every day due to the (presumably) well-meaning but misplaced efforts of various religions to stigmatize sexuality. Thats a LOT of suffering added up over hundreds of years.

To give a simple example.

Seriously now I dont get to sleep tonight because I have seven seasons of this to catch up on, **** you. It compares two of my favorite things: hilariously useless trivia, and Eddie Izzard (and apparently Hugh Laurie at some point).

Heh, I guess this is religion or politics now.

Pretty hard to give examples that would fit the theme that dont in some way infringe on the topics of politics or religion, wouldnt you say? You are basically just trolling.

Some people like internet arguments more than others.

I bet this isnt a very representative sample!

And as soon as I read the fictional characters I realized that I wanted to see hysterical examples that backed your claim.

But maybe I should not have eliminated fictional characters from my question.

Let's write the plot of what a biopic for each of these characters would look like if they had bee villainous and see if the harm they would have caused would not have been greater.

A. A villainous King Lear would have caused less harm than the well meaning but foolish King Lear. Okay, did Shakespeare's Richard the III cause less harm than Lear?

B. A Villainous Othello would have caused less harm (remember, he only killed one person as a good but foolish man) than a villainous Othello. Did Iago cause less harm?


And so on .

vhawk, I honestly don't believe every discussion devolves into politics or religion, far from it. I try not to argue about either, even when I'm not on the internet.

I wanted to state my view about evil, not to stir up controversy. We've disagreed about evil before, in another thread about serial murderers, in another subforum. I try to keep my internet discussions as civil as possible.

I dont believe every discussion does either. I just found it hard to come up with great examples of "massively evil events" or "actions causing suffering on a massive scale" that dont touch on politics or religion in some way. I rarely try to keep my internet discussions civil but I felt I had in this case and was a bit surprised at your bizarre complaint.

No complaint here. I wanted to address the charge that I am a "troll", so I did that.

That's somewhat unknowable and wasn't really what I meant.

The original context was:

Poster 1 (to OP): You are what's wrong with the world.
OP: That's rude. I'm a good person. WTF?
jb9 (to OP): Just because you are good person doesn't necessarily mean you don't cause harm. Good people acting unwisely can cause a great deal of harm.

Admittedly, my dramatic phrasing allowed for some variation in interpretation.

What I meant was something more like this:

King Lear's actions created a great deal of harm to himself and his realm. This harm did not occur because he was evil, but because he was unwise. He can stand on the heath and rail against the unfairness of the world all he wants, but that doesn't change the fact that he was part of the cause of the troubles.

Othello never would have been in a position to murder Desdemona had he not been a 'good' man (e.g., Desdemona would not have married to Iago), and I don't think anyone thinks he acted wisely (although I think one could make a argument that his actions cross the line of 'unwise' and make him into an 'evil' person).

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=233

I answered you, and in smashing fashion, in that thread, did I not?

I'm sure you thought it was a clever gotcha but then I went and crossed paths with a black cat and screwed the whole thing up for everyone!

I had assumed that your lack of response to my response meant a concession, but then here you are.

This is what you wrote:

"The same thing that causes me to curse at the coffee table?"

and I assumed you were mentally incapacitated at the time. I'm offering another chance at a reasoned response.

Nah I like that one. Lets try it out and see how it does. If you dont like it I've offered you a black cat alternative above.

Ok we'll give it a third go:

You understand that nearly everyone who has ever lived on Earth has believed in the gambler's fallacy, right?

For real though, this QI show might be the greatest in television history, no idea how you'd beat it.

Its is excellent in parts, silly sometimes and not the geatest show ever, not even the greatest show Fry has done.

was much better when it started, they used to have 2 or 3 guests who know everything + Fry who knows everything + Davies who knows nothing. They were all funny as well but now the panalists all seem to be chosen for funnyness rather than knowing everything.

Yeah, that's true. John Sessions was good on it as was Rory McGrath who was bright enough to be able to correct Fry on his Latin. Neither of them turn up any more unfortunately.

Anyway, I think it's an entertaining show and I'm glad to have been able to bring it to the attention of a QI virgin.

The host, Stephen Fry, is worth the effort of looking up also if you haven't heard of him.

I didn't say this, but briniging up that show was the act of a good person acting wisely.

Thank you.

QFT

I've heard of him in the sense that I know he was partners with Hugh Laurie, and I've got "A Bit of Fry and Laurie" and "Jeeves and Wooster" buried at the bottom of my netflix queue somewhere, but I wasnt really familiar with his work.

I wish I was more familiar with all of the guys on the show so I could list my favorites, most of them I'm vaguely aware of but there names arent household to me. Davies is good most of the time.

edit: looking them up, David Mitchell, Jimmy Carr, Rory McGrath and Charlie Higson

Blackadder goes Forth has Fry in his finest role imo (plus laurie). Blackadder 2 and 3 very worth watching as well.

Have you read Stephen fry's first book, "The liar"? Brilliant imo, his books go downhill fast after that though The Hippopotamus is pretty good. edit: warning the humour is very very english, lots of public school (that's posh here), cricket etc, be interested to hear what you make of it if you read it.

Again, no idea what you're talking about. This time, I won't offer a guess as to why I think that is.

This isn't clear at all and irrelevant even if true. There's no reason to believe that this isn't a positive feature either. Nearly everyone who has ever lived on Earth was also not an expert chess player. I consider that a feature.

Btw, I'm not asking whether it's logically possible for a feature present in every human society in various forms to be harmful, but rather what explains the specific presence of this particular feature in those various forms. It's easy to dismiss as useless aspects of human behavior you don't understand. You specifically blamed religions for this feature - do you still stand by this?