For context, the post I’m referring to is a map of Africa with subsaharia Africa in deep green, Sudan in light green and north Africa was white or some other color. The poster was claiming nothing had ever been invented in the green zone. My comment was gonna be this:
Antiseptics before Europeans.
Iron Smelting Not the first to discover it, but recent evidence show it was invented independently.
Some modern Archtecture taking inspiration from Sudano-Sahelian features such as a roof shape favoring natural ventilation. And since I just transitioned to recent inventions, there’s the Cardio Pad, invented in Cameroon, to help diagnose cardiovascular disease.
The amount of sealioning and goalpost moving I see is incredible. I’m happy the mods seem generally good about it in most of the lemmy instances I participate in, but holy crap some people need to have their keyboard thrown out or their fingers broken occasionally to get the message.
I am quick to block users on any platform exactly for this reason.I’m not obligated to engage with bad faith arguments or other explicit wastes of time.
Want proof X happened? Do like any rational person and spend TWENTY SECONDS on an internet search. Demanding I provide proof is just an attempt to get me to waste my time compiling sources so you can go “nuh uh.”
Arguing with someone on an online forum is very rarely going to set that individual on the right path, but I like to believe others who read the back and forth may be more persuaded. I often take initiative to explore a topic I knew little about beforehand because someone asserted something I found surprising or simply suspicious. If people go as far as to post references, it’s even less of a burden on me to learn something new.
There are definitely times when requesting a source is healthy. I had posted what I believed to be a true fact (about cities only planting male trees. You can look in my profile and see it). Someone replied that it wasn’t true. I went about looking for the original source from where I read it (admittedly almost 10-15 years ago) and learned that the original source was refuted.
Skepticism is healthy. But we’re at a point where healthy skepticism and sealioning is getting difficult to tell apart.
I gotta make sure I stop replying as soon as a reasonable person would stop being convinced by the dog whistles. It’s challenging when people keep moving subject so much.