> "... conflate me writing and giving attention to something as being "not genuinely interested". I honestly do not understand" There is a classic trolling tec

> "... conflate me writing and giving attention to something as being "not genuinely interested". I honestly do not understand" There is a classic trolling technique, which I have heard called a "snow job" but probably has other names, wherein someone tries to basically overwhelm a topic of discussion with minutia in order to get people to waste their time while not actually making any progress in the discussion. Relatedly, a common technique among people who are dogmatic about a position is to build an impenetrable wall (built out of unreasonable standards of proof, and nitpicking criticism) and then spend a lot of time arguing about how their wall hasn't been penetrated. In essence it becomes a way of inflating the ego -- "we argued for hours and the other guy never even put a dent in my position! That's because I'm so smart!" Again, not saying this is what you're actually doing, just noting that it's easy to get that perception from reading along. > "I don't think the perceptions you describe as others perhaps having accurately characterize me, though." Perhaps they don't. But the first comment I made in this subthread has a score of +10 right now (an unusually high score for a meta-comment of this sort, particularly this deeply nested), which indicates that quite a few people share the perception. > "I am not attempting to create a particular perception; I'm only trying to have an on-topic discussion" Whenever you speak or write, you create a perception. Whether intentional or unintentional, it affects your ability to have an on-topic discussion. My hope is that you'll be able to take what I've written here and learn how to reshape that perception, in order to more effectively communicate your interest in an on-topic discussion. One final thought: the comment "no real evidence", likewise, contributes to the perception. What has been shown might be weak evidence, but it's not nothing. In a Bayesian sense, if you started with a neutral perception ("I do not know if there is a significant difference") what has been presented would be suggestive that a difference might exist, but not strong enough to show that a difference definitely exists. The proper response would be "this seems like an area where better data could be gathered" rather than "no real evidence has been shown".