Rainer Joswig and Hackers

[Xah Lee]

there's something i don't understand about the fucking tech geekers.

there's a lisp character, his name is Rainer Joswig. Over the years,
we've had our exchange of spats. But to me, usually my mindset is that
whatever argument we had online among tech geekers, the real life
relationship is still a potentionally positive one. i.e. for me, i
still consider it open to meet people who i had arguments online, in a
friendly way, like, having a coffee together or something when the
opportunity arise.

but, unfortunately, i find that sometimes it's not how the other party
perceived things.

I've had few personal examples. But today, i realized perhaps Rainer
is a example too.

in our arguments, he have provided info that are useful to me. For
example, in my article on lisp/emacs keybinding:

〈Why Emacs's Keyboard Shortcuts are Painful〉
http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_kb_shortcuts_pain.html

he has made corrections (in the form of argument/criticism/redicule
here in comp.lang.lisp). Then, i accepted some of his points, and at
the time, asked him if i can put it on my site. He agreed. (the post
is somewhere in comp.lang.lisp, probably can be found in 5 min) I
also, happily linked to his site. Like this:

<p>2008-07-15 Addendum: Thanks to
<a class="sorc" href="http://lispm.dyndns.org/" title="accessed:
2008-07-15">Rainer Joswig</a>
for some correction about the history of the lisp machine's keyboards.
<a class="sorc" href="http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/
msg/3b3dcdc52f507b02" title="accessed:2010-01-30">Source</a>.</p>

(the link is still there as of today; but i might remove it since his
site is dead for a month now)

however, a month ago, i noticed that his website is down. I asked him
on twitter i think or g+, about this. Got no response. I asked him
again about last week in a public post here in a thread in
comp.lang.lisp. No response.

I don't understand???

There are 2 issues here.

① I fucking hate this motherfucking tech geeking hacker fucks who
leave dead links on the web and don't fucking care. What the fuck?
Aren't these elite, elegant, coding experts who always take perfection
in algorithm, code, style, language, etc?

I don't understand, how could they, have their home page dead?

② The second issue, is that, since i found him on g+, i subscribed/
followed him (added him in a circle), and also sent him a friendly
hello message. But today, i discovered, it appears that he blocked me.
Up till today, to my mind, i think that Rainer perhaps thinks i'm a
annoying lisp idiot, but that's all, and doesn't hold grudge otherwise
agaist me. But maybe that's not so.

This, i don't understand?? Aren't these hacker typers are all for the
best ethics of humanity? the likes of freedom and Compassion and all?

I, Xah Lee, usually go out of my way to be platonically thankful,
promote my enemy's cause when i can. In this case, i linked to his
website from my website, which i'm very meticulous who i provide a
link to. I DON'T HAVE TO provide the link if i don't want to. A name
suffices. And SEO sites fucking pay me $30 a month per link. What the
fuck is going on?

Further readings:

For story of dead links among hacker idiots, see:

〈A Record of Frustration in IT Industry; Disappearing FSF URLs〉
http://xahlee.org/emacs/gnu_doc.html

〈unix: Hunspell Path Pain〉
http://xahlee.org/comp/hunspell_spell_path_pain.html

Yours truely dont unstand,
Human animal scumbags.

Xah

[Captain Obvious]

XL> ① I fucking hate this motherfucking tech geeking hacker fucks who
XL> leave dead links on the web and don't fucking care. What the fuck?

It might sound surprising, but people might have other stuff in their lifes.
Keeping hobby web sites up is not a top priority.

XL> however, a month ago, i noticed that his website is down. I asked him
XL> on twitter i think or g+, about this.

Lolwut, is that like putting it on a lamp post hoping he will see?
E-mail is for communication, twitter is for public chit-chat, mostly for
teenagers and companies which try to look hip.

XL> I don't understand???

Yes.

XL> Aren't these elite, elegant, coding experts who always take perfection
XL> in algorithm, code, style, language, etc?

Yeah, coing expert never gets ill, never travels, never has events with
family. He is supposed to be fully devoted to maintaing a web site.

By the way, how the fuck being a coding expert is related to web sites at
all?
Say, Donald Knuth is one of top experts in algorithms, but I doubt it makes
him a best webmaster too.
Most likely he doesn't give a fuck about his web site because it's not what
he is famous for.

XL> Up till today, to my mind, i think that Rainer perhaps thinks i'm a
XL> annoying lisp idiot,

I'm fairly sure everybody here thinks you're an annoying lisp idiot. I just
forgot to block you for some reason, but it doesn't really help because
somebody will always comment your asinine posts.

XL> This, i don't understand?? Aren't these hacker typers are all for the
XL> best ethics of humanity? the likes of freedom and Compassion and all?

That's cheap, Xah, I don't remember any single 'hacker' with
holier-than-thou attitude.
I dunno, maybe Naggum, but I'm sure you won't complain about his site being
down.

XL> link to. I DON'T HAVE TO provide the link if i don't want to. A name
XL> suffices. And SEO sites fucking pay me $30 a month per link. What the
XL> fuck is going on?

Nobody really gives a fuck.

Keep your private corresponence private.

Use email.

Stop posting garbage to this newsgroup.

XL> Further readings:

XL> For story of dead links among hacker idiots, see:

XL> 〈A Record of Frustration in IT Industry; Disappearing FSF URLs〉
XL> http://xahlee.org/emacs/gnu_doc.html

XL> 〈unix: Hunspell Path Pain〉
XL> http://xahlee.org/comp/hunspell_spell_path_pain.html

Is there anybody naive enough to not recognize that you post this garbage
for cheap publicity and SEO?
There is a reason people consider you an annoying idiot.

Try posting stuff when you really want to communicate, without links to your
website. Maybe you'll face a different attitude.

[Harald Hanche-Olsen]

["Captain Obvious" <udod...@users.sourceforge.net>]

> Say, Donald Knuth is one of top experts in algorithms, but I doubt it
> makes him a best webmaster too.
> Most likely he doesn't give a fuck about his web site because it's not
> what he is famous for.

I could be wrong, but Knuth doesn't strike me as one who is driven to do
what he does by a wish to be famous. And he does seem to care about his
website, but it changes very slowly. Which seems to consistent with what
you could read as a mission statement of sorts:

Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on
top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of
things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible
concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science
exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is
accessible to people who don't have time for such study.
(http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html)

--
* Harald Hanche-Olsen <URL:http://www.math.ntnu.no/~hanche/>
- It is undesirable to believe a proposition
when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.
-- Bertrand Russell

[Alex Mizrahi]

>> Say, Donald Knuth is one of top experts in algorithms, but I doubt it
>> makes him a best webmaster too.
>> Most likely he doesn't give a fuck about his web site because it's not
>> what he is famous for.

> I could be wrong, but Knuth doesn't strike me as one who is driven to do
> what he does by a wish to be famous. And he does seem to care about his
> website, but it changes very slowly.

Ok, perhaps, I've worded it in a bad way.

I meant that if Knuth's web site will go down for any reason, that won't
tarnish his reputation even a bit because that's not where his
reputation comes from.

Perhaps there's a better way to illustrate my point. Say, Ken Thompson's
page looks pretty dead:
http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/ken/
But that's ok because all important information was published by other
means.

[Xah Lee]

for your lispers's reading pleasure.

〈What's the Difference Between Hacker and Tech Geeker?〉
http://xahlee.org/comp/tech_geeker_vs_hacker.html

plain text follows.

in short, a tech geeker is a hacker who is completely ignorant of
social sciences.

to give some example using programing celebrities: Richard Stallman
(RMS), Paul Graham, Jamie W Zawinski (JWZ), Eric S Raymond (ESR),
Michael DeGusta, Kent Pitman, are hackers, but they are not tech
geekers, because they have done things that require significant
involvement with society (e.g. started company or organization), even
if their stance is extreme (compare to politicians: actor-turned-
politician Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ronald Regan, silver-spoon scumbag
George W Bush.).

in contrast, vast majority of elite coders who slave on comp.lang
newsgroups, are tech geekers.

What's some example of tech geeker who are famous? I think Tom
Christianson, Linus Torvalds, Rob Pike, Dennis Ritchie, are good
examples.

of course, in general, i despise hackers and tech geekers, with rare
exceptions (e.g. i like Jamie Zawinski, Michael DeGusta, Bill Gosper,
…).

note that there are a lot expert programers who are not hackers (thus
nor tech geekers). For example, most academic computer scientists are
such. Celebrity examples: John McCarthy, Donald Knuth, Edsger W
Dijkstra, Guy Steele, … and also lots who are not academicians or not
always academicians, e.g. Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Richard
P Gabriel (RPG), Stephen Wolfram ….

For detail, see:

• What is a Tech Geeker?
• Computing Culture: What's Hacker?

Here's other essays related to hacker, tech geeker, involving
celebrities:

• What's Philosophy and Paul Graham
• Paul Graham's Infatuation with the Concept of Hacker
• Celebrity Programers with RSI (RMS, JWZ, …)
• GNU Emacs and XEmacs Schism, by Ben Wing (JWZ)
• Netscape Crap (JWZ)
• Death of a Troll — My Memory of Erik Naggum
• Guy Steele on Parallel Programing: Get rid of cons!
• Lisp Celebrities and Computing History from Worse Is Better (RPG)
• Book Review: Patterns of Software (RPG)
• Why You Should Avoid the Jargon Tail Recursion (Kent Pitman)
• Why do I Rant In comp.lang.lisp? (Kent Pitman)
• Programing Language: Why Lisp Do Not Have a Generic Copy-List
Function (Kent Pitman)
• The Nature of the Unix Philosophy (Rob Pike, ERS)

Xah

[Tim Bradshaw]

On 2012-01-17 20:14:12 +0000, Xah Lee said:

> in short, a tech geeker is a hacker who is completely ignorant of
> social sciences.

Ah yes, social "sciences". People with physics envy.

[Antsan]

Uhm...

"Ah yes, physics. People with math envy."?

Social "sciences" may be hard to do right, but they're still useful.

[Tim Bradshaw]

Antsan <thomas.b...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Uhm...
>
> "Ah yes, physics. People with math envy."?
>

No, it turns out

[netsettler]

Yes, some divide sciences into hard and soft. That's a possible
partition. I like the partition hard and easy as a contrast. Physics
is an easy science, in that, for example, atoms are assumed to either
be mostly uniform or sufficiently unvaried that in quantity they are
possible to deal with statistically. If physicists had to know each
atom's motivation or emotional state to know what it does, they'd not
get far. So their job is easier sometimes than politics. Or else
Asimov is right in Foundation when he lays out how psychohistory works
and you just plain have to have a suitably large number of people
before you can claim what will happen with any reliability. So maybe
physicists are just lucky the things they study are small and many.

And indeed even a partial, heuristic solution to an out of control
problem like social or political sciences, fuzzy and imperfect as it
may seem to hard scientists, is still useful. Testimony to the power
of abstraction that we can talk about such things at all, really, even
with a high degree of being wrong.

[netsettler]

FWIW, I've heard it said that any science with the word "science" in
its name isn't one. :) But that applies to both social science and
computer science. Real sciences (like physics) just have a name and
everyone knows the science part.

Here's another article that might be fun in the mix that Xah offers. I
don't use terminology quite consistently with him, but then I don't
own the terminology and it's probably more interesting just to look at
the terms people use and to observe the fact of variation than to
worry who's right and wrong.
http://open.salon.com/blog/kent_pitman/2008/11/16/hacking_before_the_internet

Those not familiar with my blog, which is not usually technical and is
mostly political (though there's philosophy, poetry, humor, and
whatnot) can find a tabbed/indexed summary at
http://www.nhplace.com/kent/Writing/blog-summary-recommended.html
I'm @KentPitman on Twitter if you are looking for notices about new
blog posts, though the Open Salon site has an RSS feed, too.

[Kaz Kylheku]

On 2012-01-18, netsettler <pit...@nhplace.com> wrote:
> On Jan 18, 4:38 am, Tim Bradshaw <t...@tfeb.org> wrote:
>> On 2012-01-17 20:14:12 +0000, Xah Lee said:
>>
>> > in short, a tech geeker is a hacker who is completely ignorant of
>> > social sciences.
>>
>> Ah yes, social "sciences".  People with physics envy.
>
> FWIW, I've heard it said that any science with the word "science" in
> its name isn't one. :) But that applies to both social science and
> computer science. Real sciences (like physics) just have a name and
> everyone knows the science part.

"Computer Science" is a hodge-podge of mathematics, statistics,
electronics, hacking/debugging and of course, religion.

[Xah Lee]

On Jan 18, 1:19 pm, netsettler <pit...@nhplace.com> wrote:
> On Jan 18, 4:38 am, Tim Bradshaw <t...@tfeb.org> wrote:
>
> > On 2012-01-17 20:14:12 +0000, Xah Lee said:
>
> > > in short, a tech geeker is a hacker who is completely ignorant of
> > > social sciences.
>
> > Ah yes, social "sciences".  People with physics envy.
>
> FWIW, I've heard it said that any science with the word "science" in
> its name isn't one. :)  But that applies to both social science and
> computer science.  Real sciences (like physics) just have a name and
> everyone knows the science part.
>
> Here's another article that might be fun in the mix that Xah offers. I
> don't use terminology quite consistently with him, but then I don't
> own the terminology and it's probably more interesting just to look at
> the terms people use and to observe the fact of variation than to

> worry who's right and wrong.http://open.salon.com/blog/kent_pitman/2008/11/16/hacking_before_the_...

>
> Those not familiar with my blog, which is not usually technical and is
> mostly political (though there's philosophy, poetry, humor, and

> whatnot) can find a tabbed/indexed summary athttp://www.nhplace.com/kent/Writing/blog-summary-recommended.html

> I'm @KentPitman on Twitter if you are looking for notices about new
> blog posts, though the Open Salon site has an RSS feed, too.

humm.... so Kent is now NetSettler. Like, “i settel net disputes”.
LOL. I was wondering where he went.

gotta whip out those google +1 on his articles, and also stalk him on
twitter, lest i got blocked!

Xah

[D Herring]

On 01/18/2012 06:14 PM, Xah Lee wrote:

> humm.... so Kent is now NetSettler. Like, “i settel net disputes”.
> LOL. I was wondering where he went.

FYI, I read "NetSettler" as "one who settles on the internet".

Search "early settlers" for examples of this (IMO) more common usage.

- Daniel

[netsettler]

On Jan 18, 7:11 pm, D Herring <dherr...@at.tentpost.dot.com> wrote:
> On 01/18/2012 06:14 PM, Xah Lee wrote:
>

> > humm.... soKentis now NetSettler. Like, “i settel net disputes”.

> > LOL. I was wondering where he went.
>
> FYI, I read "NetSettler" as "one who settles on the internet".
>
> Search "early settlers" for examples of this (IMO) more common usage.
>
> - Daniel

This is correct. Also, oddly, and completely by coincidence, the
article I pointed at happens to answer this question.

[George Neuner]

On Wed, 18 Jan 2012 21:33:19 +0000 (UTC), Kaz Kylheku
<k...@kylheku.com> wrote:

>"Computer Science" is a hodge-podge of mathematics, statistics,
>electronics, hacking/debugging and of course, religion.

And it is more "art" than "science".

[Tim Bradshaw]

On 2012-01-18 21:23:06 +0000, netsettler said:

> Yes, some divide sciences into hard and soft. That's a possible
> partition. I like the partition hard and easy as a contrast. Physics
> is an easy science, in that, for example, atoms are assumed to either
> be mostly uniform or sufficiently unvaried that in quantity they are
> possible to deal with statistically. If physicists had to know each
> atom's motivation or emotional state to know what it does, they'd not
> get far. So their job is easier sometimes than politics.

Alternatively: scientists pick fields which are usefully amenable to
the scientific method (in the sense that they are simple enough that
it's not insanely hard to deal with them). Pseudoscientists pick
things which are *not* usefully so amenable (too complicated,
typically) and then pretend.

[Duane Rettig]

On Jan 18, 1:19 pm, netsettler <pit...@nhplace.com> wrote:

> On Jan 18, 4:38 am, Tim Bradshaw <t...@tfeb.org> wrote:
>
> > On 2012-01-17 20:14:12 +0000, Xah Lee said:
>
> > > in short, a tech geeker is a hacker who is completely ignorant of
> > > social sciences.
>
> > Ah yes, social "sciences".  People with physics envy.
>
> FWIW, I've heard it said that any science with the word "science" in
> its name isn't one. :)  But that applies to both social science and
> computer science.  Real sciences (like physics) just have a name and
> everyone knows the science part.

Excluding the trivial degenerate case of "science"...

Welcome back, Kent.

Duane

[Don Geddis]

Antsan <thomas.b...@googlemail.com> wrote on Wed, 18 Jan 2012:
> "Ah yes, physics. People with math envy."?

http://xkcd.com/435/
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ d...@geddis.org

[Xah Lee]

was re-reading Kent's article on Hacker:
http://open.salon.com/blog/kent_pitman/2008/11/16/hacking_before_the_internet

anyway, noticed that it is not mentioned in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28programmer_subculture%29

perhaps someone want to add it?

(am not doing because i've had my share of editing war on Wikipedia
and decided few years ago that Wikipedia for me is to be read only)

Xah

On Jan 18, 1:19 pm, netsettler <pit...@nhplace.com> wrote:

> On Jan 18, 4:38 am, Tim Bradshaw <t...@tfeb.org> wrote:
>
> > On 2012-01-17 20:14:12 +0000, Xah Lee said:
>
> > > in short, a tech geeker is a hacker who is completely ignorant of
> > > social sciences.
>
> > Ah yes, social "sciences".  People with physics envy.
>
> FWIW, I've heard it said that any science with the word "science" in
> its name isn't one. :)  But that applies to both social science and
> computer science.  Real sciences (like physics) just have a name and
> everyone knows the science part.
>
> Here's another article that might be fun in the mix that Xah offers. I
> don't use terminology quite consistently with him, but then I don't
> own the terminology and it's probably more interesting just to look at
> the terms people use and to observe the fact of variation than to

> worry who's right and wrong. http://open.salon.com/blog/kent_pitman/2008/11/16/hacking_before_the_...

>
> Those not familiar with my blog, which is not usually technical and is
> mostly political (though there's philosophy, poetry, humor, and

> whatnot) can find a tabbed/indexed summary athttp://www.nhplace.com/kent/Writing/blog-summary-recommended.html

[Tim Bradshaw]

On 2012-01-19 23:14:38 +0000, Don Geddis said:

> http://xkcd.com/435/

I've always liked that one, but I think it's wrong, because purity is
not the only dimension. When I was a physics person I think we knew
we were not pure compared to the maths people, but we did not want to
be more pure: being a bit rough-and-ready about the maths let
physicists use Dirac deltas, for instance, for tens of years before the
maths people sorted out what they really meant, and that was a good
thing. There are instances where that kind of hacky approach was not a
good thing, I think (notably in GR where things like
being-sufficiently-differentiable not only matter but can fail to be
true in physically-plausible cases, but on the whole it has worked very
well.

The other dimension I think (or an other dimension) is around the
scientific method: real sciences actually use it (at least of pushed),
while cargo-cult "sciences" do something which looks plausibly as if
they are using it, but actually don't.

[Marco Antoniotti]

Ok. I'll jump in!

A biologist thinks he is a molecular biologist
A molecular biologist thinks he is an applied chemist
An applied chemist thinks he is a chemist
A chemist thinks he is a physical chemist
A physical chemist thinks he is an applied physicist
An applied physicist thinks he is a physicist
A physicist thinks he is a theoretical physicist
A theoretical physicist thinks he is an applied mathematician
A mathematician thinks he is a pure mathematician
A pure mathematician thinks he is God
...
God is a hacker who just finished a demo in six days and wants to get some sleep.

:)

Cheers
--
MA

[Alex Mizrahi]

> geekers, because they have done things that require significant
> involvement with society (e.g. started company or organization),

> What's some example of tech geeker who are famous? I think Tom
> Christianson, Linus Torvalds,

So, organizing thousands of programmers to work on a product which is
useful to millions (billions?) of people isn't a "significant
involvement", it's less than starting a company?

Your ignorance is staggering.

FYI, starting a company is pretty much trivial (depends on a scale, of
course), especially if you already have money. But coordination of a
large scale open source product isn't.

> of course, in general, i despise hackers and tech geekers,

That's quite an achievement in douchebaggery. Those people make software
you use on a daily basis, often giving it away for free, but you despise
them.

That's like, you know, eating wheat bread but despising farmers which
make wheat which goes into that bread. Maybe because they are sweaty
when working in fields, or they don't have a good taste for poetry, I dunno.

So you're not just an idiot, you're a mean idiot. It's much worse.
You're a despicable person, Xah.

[Tamas Papp]

On Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:26:18 +0200, Alex Mizrahi wrote:

> So you're not just an idiot, you're a mean idiot. It's much worse.
> You're a despicable person, Xah.

Yet people still respond to him at length. If that's his objective,
he is pretty successful; he managed to manipulate some clearly
intelligent people into a meaningless discussion.

Best,

Tamas

[Tim Bradshaw]

On 2012-01-20 12:26:18 +0000, Alex Mizrahi said:

> FYI, starting a company is pretty much trivial (depends on a scale, of
> course), especially if you already have money. But coordination of a
> large scale open source product isn't.

*Starting* a company is certainly trivial: looking after a company as
it grows rapidly is very definitely not.

[Tim Bradshaw]

On 2012-01-20 12:34:11 +0000, Tamas Papp said:

> Yet people still respond to him at length. If that's his objective,
> he is pretty successful; he managed to manipulate some clearly
> intelligent people into a meaningless discussion.

It's a kind of sport.

[kodifik]

On 20 ene, 11:58, Marco Antoniotti <marc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> A biologist thinks he is a molecular biologist
> A molecular biologist thinks he is an applied chemist
> An applied chemist thinks he is a chemist
> A chemist thinks he is a physical chemist
> A physical chemist thinks he is an applied physicist
> An applied physicist thinks he is a physicist
> A physicist thinks he is a theoretical physicist
> A theoretical physicist thinks he is an applied mathematician
> A mathematician thinks he is a pure mathematician
> A pure mathematician thinks he is God
> ...
> God is a hacker who just finished a demo in six days and wants to get some sleep.
>

Reminds too much that old joke about a humanist, a biologist,
a physicist and a computer scientist arguing about which
is more important in the face of God:
The biologist remarks to the humanist that God made Adam and Eve
last, being the rest of animals and plants a previous requisite.
The physicist notes that before all that, God had to say
"Let there be light", and the computer guy exclaims "and chaos?
Remember chaos!"

[Sam Steingold]

> * Alex Mizrahi <nyrk.z...@tznvy.pbz> [2012-01-20 14:26:18 +0200]:

>
> So you're not just an idiot, you're a mean idiot. It's much
> worse. You're a despicable person, Xah.

I find it fascinating how long it took some people to see that.
I find it even more fascinating that there are killfiles he managed to avoid.

--
Sam Steingold (http://sds.podval.org/) on Ubuntu 11.10 (oneiric) X 11.0.11004000
http://truepeace.org http://honestreporting.com http://jihadwatch.org
http://openvotingconsortium.org http://mideasttruth.com http://iris.org.il
What garlic is to food, insanity is to art.

[Alex Mizrahi]

> Yet people still respond to him at length. If that's his objective,
> he is pretty successful; he managed to manipulate some clearly
> intelligent people into a meaningless discussion.

Ok, I'll explain.

1. Humans have these things called emotions. Fiction book usually has an
antagonist whom readers hate and despise and protagonist whom they
admire and respect, and so one reason for reading a book is tickling
one's emotions.
Reading USENET isn't that much different, i.e. it might tickle your
emotions too. USENET's 'antagonists' are usually of much smaller
caliber, but on the bright side you can write a reply which they will
read, so it's interactive, unlike books.
So it isn't any less meaningful than reading a book, and in some way
it also helps as a writing exercise. (Think about people doing, say,
project Euler problems. Is that meaningless?)

2. As Tim wrote, it is a kind of sport.
Xah Lee is clearly an attention whore, but is he a troll in the
original sense -- i.e. does he write from a point of view of some
invented persona rather than sincerely? I doubt that.
He might be different from what he claims he is -- i.e. he is
neither a good programmer nor mathematician -- but that's probably not
even intentional.
So, being a hardened attention he probably has a thick skin, but not
infinitely thick as would be in case of troll. (But even then, I doubt
that infinitely thick skin even exists.)
His hate-filled rants about 'tech geekers' suggest that skin isn't
that tough and skin is penetrable.

So there is always a chance that a spammer or "troll" would realize
who he is and will change his behaviour in future. It is fairly
entertaining to write replies aimed at that. General strategy is to find
weak places and attack them, so it's pretty much like a competitive sport.

I'm not really going to make a lengthy discussion with Xah, but it's
certainly a good idea to practice from time to time.

[Ralph Schleicher]

Tamas Papp <tkp...@gmail.com> writes:

> Yet people still respond to him at length. If that's his objective,
> he is pretty successful; he managed to manipulate some clearly
> intelligent people into a meaningless discussion.

There's a famous quote:

"Never argue with an idiot. He brings you down to
his level, then beats you with experience."

--
Ralph

7000 days of Linux experience. (quite a round number today)

[Marco Antoniotti]

On Friday, January 20, 2012 7:37:41 PM UTC+1, Ralph Schleicher wrote:
> Tamas Papp <tkp...@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > Yet people still respond to him at length. If that's his objective,
> > he is pretty successful; he managed to manipulate some clearly
> > intelligent people into a meaningless discussion.
>
> There's a famous quote:
>
> "Never argue with an idiot. He brings you down to
> his level, then beats you with experience."

Cool. I never heard it. I remember the "never argue with an idiot, listeners may not be able to tell the difference." :)

Cheers
--
MA

[Sam Steingold]

> * Marco Antoniotti <zne...@tznvy.pbz> [2012-01-20 11:46:25 -0800]:

> On Friday, January 20, 2012 7:37:41 PM UTC+1, Ralph Schleicher wrote:
>>
>> "Never argue with an idiot. He brings you down to
>> his level, then beats you with experience."
>

> "never argue with an idiot, listeners may not be able to tell the difference."

When you are arguing with an idiot, your opponent is doing the same.

--
Sam Steingold (http://sds.podval.org/) on Ubuntu 11.10 (oneiric) X 11.0.11004000

http://pmw.org.il http://openvotingconsortium.org http://memri.org
http://ffii.org http://iris.org.il http://dhimmi.com http://truepeace.org
Only adults have difficulty with child-proof caps.

[Kaz Kylheku]

On 2012-01-22, Sam Steingold <s...@gnu.org> wrote:
>> * Marco Antoniotti <zne...@tznvy.pbz> [2012-01-20 11:46:25 -0800]:
>> On Friday, January 20, 2012 7:37:41 PM UTC+1, Ralph Schleicher wrote:
>>>
>>> "Never argue with an idiot. He brings you down to
>>> his level, then beats you with experience."
>>
>> "never argue with an idiot, listeners may not be able to tell the difference."
>
> When you are arguing with an idiot, your opponent is doing the same.

This all stems from the problem that when you argue with anyone, you have to be
able to see the world through his perspective, and be prepared to discuss it in
his language and concepts. The idiot isn't able to rise in this way, so
invariably his opponent must descend.

[Michael Moeller]

Am 01/22/2012 08:02 PM, schrieb Kaz Kylheku:

> This all stems from the problem that when you argue with anyone, you have to be
> able to see the world through his perspective, and be prepared to discuss it in
> his language and concepts.

Right. But this is almost impossible in a newsgroup because it lacks the
vital non-verbal components of a normal conversation. Most people are
not aware of this. Thus anything quickly turns into crap.

[Alex Mizrahi]

> Right. But this is almost impossible in a newsgroup because it lacks the
> vital non-verbal components of a normal conversation. Most people are
> not aware of this. Thus anything quickly turns into crap.

If you're an USENET veteran you can deduce many of these non-verbal
components from a writing style.

[Tim Bradshaw]

On 2012-02-17 12:50:01 +0000, Michael Moeller said:

> Right. But this is almost impossible in a newsgroup because it lacks the
> vital non-verbal components of a normal conversation. Most people are
> not aware of this. Thus anything quickly turns into crap.

I think in fact they are aware of it, but don't know what can be done,
if anything.

[Michael Moeller]

Pretty hard for someone not a native speaker of English.

[Michael Moeller]

Jaron Lanier addresses this behaviour in his book "You are not a
gadget". It's in fact rather complex.

[Tim Bradshaw]

On 2012-02-17 14:41:42 +0000, Michael Moeller said:

> aron Lanier addresses this behaviour in his book "You are not a
> gadget". It's in fact rather complex.

I've not read that though I've heard of it. My suspicion is it might
just not be easily fixable (there are certainly instances of the same
thing happening with real paper letters).

[Michael Moeller]

That's right. Has to do with psychology a lot.

[Giorgos Keramidas]

I don't think that's true for all speakers of English.

My own self is a very limited sample from which to draw conclusions for
a larger set of English speakers, but I believe my comprehension of the
language has improved with time to the point of serving as a useful
counter-example to that claim.

I'm a non-native speaker (and writer) of English, and over the years I
managed to train my verbal & reading comprehension skills to a level
that often exceeds that of native speakers that I meet here and there;
people who I've met in vacation trips, conferences, user groups, other
social gatherings or even just people who I've happend to communicate
over the wire.

Non-verbal cues are IMO merely a matter of 'training'. One has to read a
_lot_ of stuff, and engage your brain as often and as much as possible.
Then I'm reasonably certain that after a while the non-verbal skills kick
in pretty much 'automatically'.