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I'd submit to you that "knob" has many different meanings, and in my usage, it meant "someone who is ignorant of my argument"... sort of like... a dunce. Which he was, and still is. It wasn't at all in an inflammatory manner.
All I'm looking for is intelligent discussion and debate, and if his arguments are going to totally ignore mine and culminate with "You're insane", then he is obviously perfectly happy in continuing to sound like a knob (a term we use around work to describe someone who complains about something without having done the required work to understand it).
I have very much toned down my arguments in the past months so as to not incite flamewars. I don't think it's too much to ask that other people argue without making a personal attack. So whereas my saying he sounds like a knob means "you are largely ignorant of what I am speaking" and is not an ad hominem attack, his "You're insane" is both false and designed to degenerate the discussion on to his level. There is a very big difference between the two, and the parallel you draw is not one at all.
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