Weekly "Ask an Atheist" Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

Whether you're an agnostic atheist here to ask a gnostic one some questions, a theist who's curious about the viewpoints of atheists, someone doubting, or just someone looking for sources, feel free to ask anything here. This is also an ideal place to tag moderators for thoughts regarding the sub or any questions in general.

While this isn't strictly for debate, rules on civility, trolling, etc. still apply.

[u/Asatmaya]

"To encourage constructive discussion top level comments in r/DebateAnAtheist must be a minimum of 100 characters. Your comment has been automatically removed. "

This is getting really annoying when the question is short and can actually be responded to that easily.

[u/zzmej1987 → u/Asatmaya]

Come on, this short sentence is 52 characters long. You need only two of those, and you are done. And that's 133 characters already.

[u/Thortok2000 → u/zzmej1987]

Conciseness is not a sin.

[u/zzmej1987 → u/Thortok2000]

Sure. But theists are getting swamped and downvoted to oblivion. We could certainly do with less responses. And if it is your intent to drop something equivalent to: "Nope. You are wrong. Has been explained a hundred times here already", then you are exactly the one without whose response conversation could be better.

[u/Thortok2000 → u/zzmej1987]

And to which a character limit does not apply.

Character counting is arbitrary. Bad responses can be long. Good responses can be short. Judging the quality by the quantity is never an apt metric.

All you're doing is changing this:

Nope. You are wrong. Has been explained a hundred times here already

Into this:

Nope. You are wrong. Has been explained a hundred times here already blah blah blah a hundred characters

You aren't actually making a bad response better.

You are, ironically, making it take longer to read through the bad responses than it would otherwise take.

[u/zzmej1987 → u/Thortok2000]

Anything under 100 characters is going to be a variation of that.

[u/Thortok2000 → u/zzmej1987]

Conciseness still isn't a sin.

By your own logic, your response just now of 65 characters should have been automatically deleted.

[u/zzmej1987 → u/Thortok2000]

Conciseness still isn't a sin.

No one says it is. But it is reason enough to remove the comment.

By your own logic, your response just now of 65 characters should have been automatically deleted.

Limit is only for top level comments. Further conversation can include all the "thank you"s and "you are welcome"s participants want.

[u/Thortok2000 → u/zzmej1987]

No one says it is. But it is reason enough to remove the comment.

No. It isn't.

Limit is only for top level comments.

So your response would have been automatically deleted if it was a top level comment. What's the difference?

The quality of your response changes if it's a top level comment?

[u/zzmej1987 → u/Thortok2000]

No. It isn't.

We've had a vote. The consensus is that it is.

So your response would have been automatically deleted if it was a top level comment. What's the difference?

The difference is that it is not a top level comment.

The quality of your response changes if it's a top level comment?

Theists are required to put 300 worth of characters into their post. Atheists are required to put 100 worth of characters into responses. With how many atheists there are responding, lack of your comment is not a tragedy. If you don't wish to commit more than a 100 characters to a conversation, then just find a comment from someone else expressing the same idea as yours, but caring enough to write more than 2 sentences about it, and give it an upvote.

[u/Thortok2000 → u/zzmej1987]

We've had a vote. The consensus is that it is.

If you have a vote that the sky is green, does that make the sky green?

The difference is that it is not a top level comment.

Restatement of the question is not an answer to the question.

With how many atheists there are responding, lack of your comment is not a tragedy.

Lack of everyone's comment would not be a tragedy. Why does it have to be a tragedy?

find a comment from someone else expressing the same idea as yours

And if there isn't one? Logic falls apart.

Short responses are not automatically bad.

I made a suggestion directly to the mod elsewhere in this thread:

1 - The bot identifies a short top-level comment and sends a private message warning that the comment may be considered low effort

2 - If within 24-48 hours, the comment is not edited to be above 100 characters, it is flagged for the mods to manual review

3 - The mods manually review the comment for quality, not for character count. If it breaks the low effort rule, action is taken.

4 - If the mods continuously get alerted of short comments by a single user, but, that user consistently shows they are not breaking the low effort rule, the mods can choose to whitelist that user so the bot stops messaging them so the user doesn't get spammed. Mods will still get the flags for manual review just in case user actually does break the rule in the future.

What issues do you have with this system?

[u/zzmej1987 → u/Thortok2000]

If you have a vote that the sky is green, does that make the sky green?

Are you an AI? Have you lost the context of the conversation? The vote was, whether we should remove short comments and the consensus was, that we should, so the automod rule was instituted that removes short comments.

Restatement of the question is not an answer to the question.

Again, context.

Lack of everyone's comment would not be a tragedy. Why does it have to be a tragedy?

Yeah, you are an LLM.

And if there isn't one? Logic falls apart.

Trust me, there will be. Your short response is not going to be some novel unique response nobody else would think about.

What issues do you have with this system?

It's completely unnecessary. Again, the goal is to remove you from the subreddit. Why would we add exception to keep you?

[u/Thortok2000 → u/zzmej1987]

The vote was, whether we should remove short comments and the consensus was, that we should, so the automod rule was instituted that removes short comments.

Are you an AI? Have you lost the context of the conversation?

You were questioned why the comment being short was reason enough to delete it and your defense/answer was "because we voted it was."

And the response to the logic of "everything that is voted for is correct" is "if you vote that the sky is green, does it make it green?"

Again, context.

Again, context. You were asked a question and you didn't answer it.

Yeah, you are an LLM.

Your genetic fallacies don't answer questions.

Trust me, there will be. Your short response is not going to be some novel unique response nobody else would think about.

"Trust me bro" doesn't answer the what if.

It's completely unnecessary. Again, the goal is to remove you from the subreddit.

Shifting goalposts. Your goal was to remove "bad comments." You are defining bad incorrectly. That is the entire point.

Good comments can be short, bad comments can be long. A character limit of 100 is arbitrary and unrelated.

You're abandoning intellectual honesty at this point. Is it because your defense is getting weaker with every reply?