why do so many discussions turn contentious?

Party poopers.. :-)

Tough being a gentleman/lady isn’t it?

90% of the issues in the US, boil down to VIDEO game and cell phone addiction. I swear the whole country would go into full blown withdrawal if the NET went down..

2 hours MAX a day to do with TECH.. Phone, computer, TVs EVERYTHING, my stuff shuts OFF.

The solution is the problem.

Time to feed the chickens and pick up my Grandson that is GLUED to an IPad thanks to the school (6 years old). Not at Grandpa’s. Fix the chicken coop, or take walk by the river or something..

Watch the game warden as they play with their laptops and the poachers just walk on by.. I swear.. Won’t check a homeless guy with a fishing pole, but nearly broke a leg checking out the 50K bass boat. Really makes me want to go fishing..

I think what I’m saying is I want to be homeless.. :-)

Regards

90% of the issues in the US, boil down to VIDEO game and cell phone addiction. I swear the whole country would go into full blown withdrawal if the NET went down..

That reminds me of the best line from the movie, Gravity, where the character played by George Clooney remarks, after a lot of satellites are destroyed, "Half of North America just lost their Facebook." 

I wish it would happen.

All the best,
Nonoise

@whart , yours is the politically correct approach which in many if not most instances is the correct approach for maintaining your reputation as a "Nice Guy." I prefer the Galileo approach where you are put under house arrest for believing in the truth. Nobody thinks the earth is flat.

People are easily misunderstood online as expression is absent but still the mythology and lack of understanding and willingness to understand are rampant. Much of this is generated by marketing and appealing to lay instinct. Since none of this is life or death and nobody is going to get their back side sued off for being wrong, wrong is free to flourish. 

This is a very complex subject involving physics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, acoustics, neurology, physiology and aesthetics. Very few of us have a handle on all of it. There is a lot to learn. In many instances there is more than one right approach or areas where compromises have to be made.

The environment we evolved in was rough putting it mildly. Losing was dying. You had to win, you had to be right and this instinct is in all males. The best way to survive was to make everyone else think you were the most vicious mother around. Study gang behavior. Study history. 

There comes a point where political correctness becomes dysfunctional. Neville Chamberlin is a great example. 

In order to learn you have to be ready to cast off firmly held beliefs when proven wrong. The tendency is to hold on to them. Some egos just can not tolerate being wrong.

Now I going to go get an Aperol Spritz and bury myself in sine wave sweeps. Installing my new cabinet has change the room acoustics enough that the system's imaged has blurred a little. 

I've heard differing reports, but the internet as it once existed was dismantled in 2016-17.  Now 97 to 99% of what you see posted is AI bots "conversing".  The people who programmed them have lost control and the bots have taken over.  I am not a bot, but that's exactly what a bot would say.