The toxicity of trolls
Tim Bradshaw
articles going back to 28-Aug-2002 (normally we keep them much longer,
but out upstream server changed in a way with which leafnode couldn't
cope earlier in Aug and I blew away our whole news spool...). I think
our feed is quite complete and relatively clean (most of the awfuller
spam seems to get filtered).
We have 3531 articles in this time.
Of these: 320, or about 9% are by Ilias, and 659, or about 19% have a
References line which has an ilias message ID at the start. Combining
these and removing duplicates, there are 838 articles in threads
started by Ilias, or about 24% of the total.
This was all done with (e)grep, cat and sort so I may have fouled up
some stuff.
But the results are fairly clear, I think: about 1/4 of the traffic in
cll is a result of one troll.
If I remove articles posted to more than two newsgroups (393 articles)
as unlikely to be interesting then I get ~ 27% of noise arising from
Ilias alone.
--tim
Pascal Costanza
[...]
> But the results are fairly clear, I think: about 1/4 of the traffic in
> cll is a result of one troll.
>
> If I remove articles posted to more than two newsgroups (393 articles)
> as unlikely to be interesting then I get ~ 27% of noise arising from
> Ilias alone.
He has just started to post disinformation directly addressed at
newbies. Is there something we can do about it, other than just keeping
quiet? The current situation is a bit frustrating.
Are there any successful patterns how to deal with trolls, perhaps from
other newsgroups?
Pascal
--
Pascal Costanza University of Bonn
mailto:cost...@web.de Institute of Computer Science III
http://www.pascalcostanza.de Römerstr. 164, D-53117 Bonn (Germany)
Raymond Wiker
> Tim Bradshaw wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > But the results are fairly clear, I think: about 1/4 of the traffic in
> > cll is a result of one troll.
> > If I remove articles posted to more than two newsgroups (393
> > articles)
>
> > as unlikely to be interesting then I get ~ 27% of noise arising from
> > Ilias alone.
>
> He has just started to post disinformation directly addressed at
> newbies. Is there something we can do about it, other than just
> keeping quiet? The current situation is a bit frustrating.
>
>
> Are there any successful patterns how to deal with trolls, perhaps
> from other newsgroups?
Maybe an ilias.faq?
Actually, it might be an idea to have a FAQ for this
newsgroup, and have this posted regularly. It needn't even be a big
FAQ; just a few pointers to the HyperSpec, the ALU, CLOCC, cliki, and
kill-file patterns for ilias.
--
Raymond Wiker Mail: Raymon...@fast.no
Senior Software Engineer Web: http://www.fast.no/
Fast Search & Transfer ASA Phone: +47 23 01 11 60
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Will Deakin
> Actually, it might be an idea to have a FAQ for this
> newsgroup, and have this posted regularly. It needn't even be a big
> FAQ;
Margolin. However, it hasn't been maintained for a while, although I
again believe valiant efforts were being made by Christophe Rhodes.
:)w
Christopher Browne
> Tim Bradshaw wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> But the results are fairly clear, I think: about 1/4 of the traffic in
>> cll is a result of one troll.
>> If I remove articles posted to more than two newsgroups (393
>> articles)
>> as unlikely to be interesting then I get ~ 27% of noise arising from
>> Ilias alone.
>
> He has just started to post disinformation directly addressed at
> newbies. Is there something we can do about it, other than just
> keeping quiet? The current situation is a bit frustrating.
>
> Are there any successful patterns how to deal with trolls, perhaps
> from other newsgroups?
<http://makeashorterlink.com/?A130148B1> Timothy Rue FAQ
"Ahhh, the time-honored question. Sooner or later, something has to be
done before Timmy entirely takes over Usenet.
- Fire with fire.
The first and most satisfying solution is to simply flame the hell
out of him at every turn. When he opens his mouth, flame him. When
he calls someone such as Gary Peake a liar and a thief, flame him.
If he whines about profit or children or something else, flame him.
It's fun, it's easy, and it doesn't cost much.
However, as tempting as it may be, this isn't the recommended course
of action. First off, it's often like kicking a wet bag of
sand. He'll respond with something totally unrelated, and you'll
wonder why you even bothered. Second, Timmy's cardinal sin is
killing scarce bandwidth. The last thing needed is to encourage him
to dump yet more drivel into our haven.
- Passive aggression.
Although not as immediately gratifying, a long-term approach is
certain to be more effective at ending this nonsense.
* Add "Timothy Rue" thre...@earthlink.net to your newreader's
killfile. This is the /surest way to reclaim our turf./ If
everyone in these groups were to immediately and permanently ignore
Timmy's postings, he would be gone within a month.
* Since someone or another is bound to reply to him, thereby
encouraging him to continue, spread the word to new users you
encounter. When you see a reply with his name in the header, send
this FAQ or your own explanation to the user. Remember, he can't
keep burning without fuel!
* Forward particularly slanderous postings to
postm...@earthlink.net. Don't get carried away here! This is a
last-ditch effort if you've clearly been lied about!
The key rule, though, is to /JUST IGNORE HIM/. Don't talk to him.
Don't trade e-mail. Don't acknowledge his existence.
Together, we can win."
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "gro.gultn@" "enworbbc"))
http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbbrowne/news.html#NETKOOKS
Rules of the Evil Overlord #139. "If I'm sitting in my camp, hear a
twig snap, start to investigate, then encounter a small woodland
creature, I will send out some scouts anyway just to be on the safe
side. (If they disappear into the foliage, I will not send out another
patrol; I will break out napalm and Agent Orange.)"
<http://www.eviloverlord.com/>
Kenny Tilton
Tim Bradshaw wrote:
> But the results are fairly clear, I think: about 1/4 of the traffic in
> cll is a result of one troll.
What is the sound of one troll posting? My take on this has been that
ilias is plain entertaining. Or is he an itch we can resist scratching?
Anyway, we who respond to ilias cannot escape our responsibility for the
traffic. How about a breakdown by correspondent? We cannot change ilias
(lord knows we tried) but we can change our own behavior.
While you are at it, in the "no good deed goes unpunished" category, I
would be interested in how many articles thanked quasi for his efforts,
and how many others attacked him for same. You do not have to actually
read all the articles; IIANM, no one thanked him.
kenny
clinisys
ilias
......
this is very funny!
looks very short.
should be (e.g.) :
this is short!
ilias
missinformation!
i post mostly in topic.
about Lisp.
the savages react to this posts.
mainly off-topic.
talking about knowledge.
if often reply to this off-topic.
analyze how much of my posts are off-topic due to the trolling (as you
like this term) of c.l.l. against me.
yes.
c.l.l. is trolling me.
unprofessional beasts.
Tim Bradshaw
> the savages react to this posts.
> mainly off-topic.
> c.l.l. is trolling me.
> unprofessional beasts.
Well, you see, since we're all such a bunch of savages, and we
obviously don't know anything about Lisp really as you've made so
clear, and we're trolling you and unprofessional beasts and all,
wouldn't it be really a much better use of your time to just not post
to cll any more? It must be really a huge waste of your time having
to deal with us unprofessional beasts who understand nothing and
refuse to learn from you, and I certainly don't think there is
anything that we can teach *you*. You are *clearly* so far beyond the
rest of the Lisp community that you would be far better starting your
own community of disciples - we are just a bunch of stuck-in-the-mud
retards who, in 20 years, have failed to see the many glaring faults
in our standards and implementations.
Erik Naggum
| Are there any successful patterns how to deal with trolls, perhaps from
| other newsgroups?
Stop responding to them.
I get much more pissed off by the people who cannot understand that ilias is
literally completely hopeless than by ilias, as I have made an exception to
my general principle not to kill-file people but listen to what a person has
to say regardless of his record, but ilias stood out as hopeless from day 1.
He wore a sign on his forehead telling everyone that he is a useless specimen
of the human race when he walked in the door. There is no point whatsoever
in responding to him, as he gave every evidence of being learning-impaired
and worse from the outset. Yet even people I have deemed really smart keep
responding to him, keeping him alive, evidently believing that the community
is somehow helped by it, at least by refuting his misinformation. It is not.
This breed of untermensch lives for the response they get from real people.
Unlike reasonably social human beings who attach importance to what they say
and do not need a response, this breed of untermensch attaches importance to
how people respond to what they say, and only their responses. If they have
to pester and annoy others to elicit a response from them, so be it. If they
have to break laws and regulations to cause others to notice them, so be it.
If they have to deface buildings with spray cans, so be it.
When the Internet became a public resource, criminals had to come with it.
We have spammers, Nigerian 419 scams, trolls on newsgroups, etc, just like we
have criminals in the real world. The difference is that our governments sit
on their hands and refuse to deal with them. ilias' ISP behaves exactly as
stupidly as every other ISP and refuses to do anything about him. There is
no way to stop the criminals. They even have anti-social defense lawyers on
the Net to "protect" them from criticism, in our community exemplified by
Coby Beck, who attack those who criticize the untermensch and want them to
have free reign of the newsgroups while ordinary, decent people are left with
no choice but to stop reading newsgroups that are taken over by untermensch.
If it had helped to kill-file ilias, the problem would have been gone by now.
The problem is all the people who think that /anyone/ in the known universe
would believe anything that he produces. The crucial point when it comes to
deciding whether to refute some claim or not is to decide whether anybody had
reason to believe it to begin with. If not, and you refute it, you gave it
credibility it did not deserve. If somebody did believe it, and you did not
refute it, were you responsible for their confusion, for how long it took
them to unconfuse themselves, for their spreading more confusion?
Now, I have to ask all the people who respond to ilias: Who the hell do you
think you are helping? Who could /possibly/ believe something he writes?
Even if such people might exist, /why/ would you care about those people? It
should take less time to think about what he writes than to read a refutation
to realize that he is totally, irrovocably hopeless.
Previously, kill-filing people was based on their annoying opinions and their
tendency to stir up conflicts and flame wars. There is real danger in being
insulated from "unwelcome" information with this practice, meaning that which
tests your convictions, but if there is anything the Internet can offer us
that the offline world could not, it is the free flow of counter-information,
which is routinely suppressed by the formal publishing channels. However, if
you listen to people who believe weird things, you realize very quickly that
they will more likely than not be crackpots, which is why other people ignore
them. It is your task, then, to be able to discern a crackpot from someone
who has an valuable alternative view, and actually /listen/ to what people
are saying, which sometimes require that you be much smarter than they are,
or think much more about it than they have. People who protect themselves
from alternative views therefore tend to be unable to distinguish crackpots
in time, as well. When presented with an unfiltered medium like the Internet
and Usenet newsgroups, those who have grown up on the filtered media will of
necessity feel bewildered and confused. In very many cases, it helps to poke
them with a cattle-prod and yell "THINK!" at them or treat them harshly as
long as they do not engage their brain. Few cases are literally hopeless,
but when one comes along, it /should/ be easy to detect because you know how
to sort an ignorant from an opinionated asshole and a person who believes in
some faulty premises from an actual retard or nutcase.
I am puzzled by the fact that people who have lent no benevolence to people
who have held intelligent views differing from their own, lend benevolence to
ilias and his ilk. It is as if they cannot deal with intelligent rejection
of their beliefs, but have no problems with misbehaving children. If people
think and manage to enunciate their arguments instead of defending themselves
personally and attacking their critics, their contributions may be still hard
to deal with because it is intellectually demanding, but if you argue and
listen with them, you may learn something valuable that changes the way you
deal with the world around you. Now, this is what I cannot figure out: What
could anyone possibly gain from converting ilias to his way of thinking?
/Please/ do not respond to ilias.
--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway
Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder.
Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.
Erik Naggum
| While you are at it, in the "no good deed goes unpunished" category, I would
| be interested in how many articles thanked quasi for his efforts, and how
| many others attacked him for same. You do not have to actually read all the
| articles; IIANM, no one thanked him.
I get a handful of thank-you notes in the mail every week. It is one of the
reasons I keep using a repliable mail address when I post. If the people who
take the time to respond thus positively had to post it, I very much doubt
that they would bother. If I cannot figure out the spam-protection mechanism
of some poster or I get a rejection slip from some mailer daemon, there goes
my positive response to them, as well. I doubt that anyone who has been on
Usenet for more than a week would fail to understand that "me too" articles
receive harsh treatment. It is not that a barrage of thank-you notes would
receive harsh treatment, but it is a private response, not a public response.
Do you write thank-you notes to individual people you read about in the
newspaper or do you send them to the newspaper? If the latter, do they get
published? More importantly, if they were published, and people got into the
habit of making their individual appreciation of individual achievements
publically known, what would that do with the way we /read/ newspapers?
Newspapers with a circulation of only 100,000 copies would likely have to use
numerous pages every single day on thank-you notes. Would that actually do
as much good as the thank-you notes by sms, fax, postcards, letters, flowers,
etc? Why not publish your Christmas greetings in the newspaper and be done
with it instead of sending them out personally? I think the picture emerges.
Will Deakin
Erik Naggum wrote:
> /Please/ do not respond to ilias.
Yes.
will
Mr. Poster
[snip]
> /Please/ do not respond to ilias.
Yes, he's toxic (as was, previously, that complete idiot who was
consistently on your case for no good reason), and one hopes that no
response means that he'll go away. He just might be nutty enough to keep
posting regardless.
Mr. Poster
Jacek Podkanski
I had a look on my computer just now. I have already downloaded about 3.5
MB of various references and manuals on Lisp, mostly following links from
messages other post on this group. I also spent much of my free time trying
to work out various things in Lisp. Significant part of my computer time is
related to Lisp or ideas learned from Lisp.
As you see, you professionals made more impact on a hobbyist and a troll
like me than another troll.
But maybe I should complain that you are unable to teach me anything and
spend time wasted on Lisp playing mindless computer games.
--
Jacek Podkanski
Wade Humeniuk
"Erik Naggum" <er...@naggum.no> wrote in message
news:32418903...@naggum.no...
> I am puzzled by the fact that people who have lent no benevolence to people
> who have held intelligent views differing from their own, lend benevolence
to
> ilias and his ilk. It is as if they cannot deal with intelligent rejection
> of their beliefs, but have no problems with misbehaving children. If people
> think and manage to enunciate their arguments instead of defending
themselves
> personally and attacking their critics, their contributions may be still
hard
> to deal with because it is intellectually demanding, but if you argue and
> listen with them, you may learn something valuable that changes the way you
> deal with the world around you. Now, this is what I cannot figure out: What
> could anyone possibly gain from converting ilias to his way of thinking?
It might not be benevolence that it lent to ilias and his ilk, but a type of
"top dog" behavior. As human beings we still have desires to be the "top dog",
to be the perceived winner/superior/smarter person in a situation. Thus we
might put up with a "lower dogs" behavior because it keeps us on top, no matter
what the "lower dogs" views and behavior might be. In fact the more absurd (and
thus obviously inferior) the "lower dogs" behavior may be, the better. This may
not just be our primal behaviors, but also to protect a person from their fears
and secret thoughts that they really are not that smart. Engaging in public
communication with people as smart or obviously smarter, breaks all that down
and may threaten some. It takes a honest, courageous and humble person (or
psychologically healthy person) to face all that.
People may not be trying to convert ilias but are just pissing on the "lower
dog".
Wade
Thomas F. Burdick
> I am puzzled by the fact that people who have lent no benevolence to people
> who have held intelligent views differing from their own, lend benevolence to
> ilias and his ilk. It is as if they cannot deal with intelligent rejection
> of their beliefs, but have no problems with misbehaving children.
You may have got it right with the misbehaving child thing. If you're
dealing with an adult who's spouting nonsense, or who you disagree
with, or who pisses you off; you might argue back, you might be rude,
you might ignore them. Anything in the normal spectrum of adult-adult
interactions will happen.
Adult-child interactions are different, though. It is *not* okay to
quietly ignore a misbehaving child. In the real world, if a child is
shouting and running around and being a jerk, you chide, or correct,
or punish, the child. You don't ignore it. If Ilias really is
causing people to react as though they were confronted by a
misbehaving child, maybe that's why he is being engaged. If people
thought of him as a competant adult, they might feel it was okay to
ignore him.
--
/|_ .-----------------------.
,' .\ / | No to Imperialist war |
,--' _,' | Wage class war! |
/ / `-----------------------'
( -. |
| ) |
(`-. '--.)
`. )----'
Peyed Peyeper
> He has just started to post disinformation directly addressed at
> newbies. Is there something we can do about it, other than just keeping
> quiet? The current situation is a bit frustrating.
THE PIED PIPER OF HAMLIN:
http://www.indiana.edu/~librcsd/etext/piper/text.html
I.
1 Oh lads (and lass) of comp.lang.lisp,
2 I cannot help but hear your call -
3 You long for conversation crisp
4 As 'fore the troll had tolled you all.
5 Aye, I can rid you - by my eye -
6 With charm-ed pipe and poison stream:
7 And to this task, I will apply
8 That very function - will funcall
9 What e'er it takes - though truth be told,
10 'Twill not be hard, with charmed text.
11 For I exterminate by trade
12 Across the dregs of all usenet,
13 A trail of waste behind me laid,
14 I rid the land for he who hollers.
15 Is it worth a thousand dollars?
Kenny Tilton
Erik Naggum wrote:
> * Kenny Tilton
> | While you are at it, in the "no good deed goes unpunished" category, I would
> | be interested in how many articles thanked quasi for his efforts, and how
> | many others attacked him for same. You do not have to actually read all the
> | articles; IIANM, no one thanked him.
>
> I get a handful of thank-you notes in the mail every week.
well if someone helps me in particular with a question i have, a
"thanks, joe" article /does/ feel a little bandwidth wasteful. not that
i would feel too bad about such a post; given the pathetic usenet
signal-noise ratio, a public acknowledgment of help given ranks pretty
high on the relative worthiness scale.
c.l.l. is a community, one beleagured almost daily by denunciations as
"unpopular". now comes quasi with a little positive press for CL and...
kablam!!!
I am reminded of the partition/split-sequence fiasco. A contrib is met
with nothing (and again I do not think I exaggerate) -- nothing but a
lambasting of the contributor over the /name/.
In both cases we did not even see "neat work, but...". This might fit
with what someone wrote today about the ilias volume being a
top/bottom-dog thing. Folks seem moved to take up pen only when they see
a chance to grandstand their perceived superiority.
kenny
clinisys
Christopher Browne
> Anyway, we who respond to ilias cannot escape our responsibility for
> the traffic. How about a breakdown by correspondent? We cannot change
> ilias (lord knows we tried) but we can change our own behavior.
I'm adding in comp.lang.lisp to the set of newsgroups for which I
collect/post stats. It may not have my name on it, but you know whom
to blame :-).
--
(concatenate 'string "aa454" "@freenet.carleton.ca")
http://cbbrowne.com/info/linux.html
WARNING - the content of this message may be erroneous, misspelled and
perhaps even flammable. It also contains small parts that could cause
asphyxiation. NOT RECOMMENDED FOR CHILDREN UNDER 3 YEARS OF AGE
John Stone
> analyze how much of my posts are off-topic due to the trolling (as you
> like this term) of c.l.l. against me.
>
> yes.
>
> c.l.l. is trolling me.
Acknowledging that is a great first step.
> unprofessional beasts.
Don't let them get you down. Ignore their "bait", or send it back in
a clever way that shows that you're not falling for their silly
practical jokes. Or you could talk about Lisp, but you have to wait
until people stop talking about "trolling", whatever that is.
--
John Stone
"See what I do with it? I eat it!"
Angelo Rossitto as Grazbo in Al Adamson's DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN
Kenny Tilton
John Stone wrote:
> Don't let them get you down.
good advice, but perhaps too late, witness his asshole thread. which
indeed suggests he is no troll, for he seems sincerely hurt that he has
become a laughing stock in c.l.l.
but that happened because he first initiated a dialog (good) in which
his contributions were a mess (bad). this smacked of trolldom but now
looks like a deep psychological defect in his ability to sustain a
coherent social interaction. in which case c.l.l. should indeed stop
tormenting the poor guy.
i mean, he /does/ like Lisp. :)
kenny
clinisys
Rolf Wester
Erik Naggum wrote:
> * Pascal Costanza
> | Are there any successful patterns how to deal with trolls, perhaps from
> | other newsgroups?
>
> Stop responding to them.
>
The best one can do.
>
> This breed of untermensch
No human beeing is an "untermensch". I'm German and I'm highly sensitive concerning
this kind of words. This word amoung others has been used by the most terrible
criminals
in world history to legitimate mass murder. Call ilias a troll or an idiot but
whatever he does
nothing will turn him to be an "untermensch".
Rolf Wester
Alain Picard
> Are there any successful patterns how to deal with trolls, perhaps
> from other newsgroups?
Yes. I established that he was a troll on his 2nd or 3rd post,
and, since he has confirmed his character, killfiled him, and
avoided every thread he's responsible for. If we all do that,
the problem is immediately solved, I guarantee you.
It's up to us.
Tim Bradshaw
> Now, I have to ask all the people who respond to ilias: Who the hell do you
> think you are helping? Who could /possibly/ believe something he writes?
> Even if such people might exist, /why/ would you care about those people? It
> should take less time to think about what he writes than to read a refutation
> to realize that he is totally, irrovocably hopeless.
> [...]
> /Please/ do not respond to ilias.
I apologise for my part in this. Very early on I did mistakenly think
that he could be deconfused, but I am afraid to say that more recently
I have been taking a certain evil pleasure in merely baiting him.
This is both cruel - it's pretty much bullying - and a misuse of cll.
Someone else remarked that this might be territorial pissing, but I
don't think it is - certainly not on my part, and as far as I can tell
all the other people who have been responding have been genuinely - if
mistakenly - trying to help.
--tim
Nicolas Neuss
> * Pascal Costanza
> | Are there any successful patterns how to deal with trolls, perhaps from
> | other newsgroups?
>
> Stop responding to them.
> [...]
Additionally, I lower the score on all messages originating from
ilias' (and also other troll's) posts. The keys in Gnus are L-r-s-t
RET. All messages in the subsequent are marked, and I usually do not
read them. Saves me a lot of time.
Nicolas.
Erik Naggum
| It might not be benevolence that it lent to ilias and his ilk, but a type of
| "top dog" behavior.
I have to admit that while I do not start to play this game, I also do not
yield when someone wants to be "top dog", so I recognize the mechanism.
Still, anyone can be better than ilias without any effort.
| As human beings we still have desires to be the "top dog", to be the
| perceived winner/superior/smarter person in a situation.
I think it is bit more complex than that. I believe only a relatively small
group of people engage in this anti-social competitive game-playing, but when
they do, others not only do not want to yield their position to them, it is a
self-protective necessity to prevent competitive people from "rising" in the
hierarchy of a group. I consider competitiveness to be a mental disease when
it causes people to attach more importance to their personal position than
the good of the group they fight to take over and I believe that people who
feel the need to challenge whoever they think is the "top dog" for no other
reason than their own personal satisfaction to be mentally diseased as well.
This anti-social behavior causes nothing but conflict, but not /only/ because
we are human when we also refuse to let people like that win, the group that
yields to mentally diseased leaders would soon perish. There is therefore an
element of self- preservation in fighting the mentally diseased, obsessively
competetive whenever and wherever they try to take control. (Part of my
great distaste for the entire field of competitive sports is that regardless
of whether these morons "win" or not, they have abused their physical health
to the point of being crippled, and it is more a testament to the advanced
state of modern medicine that these guys can walk at all. Sports-related
health care costs are /enormous/ and keep growing without bounds. It is,
however, entirely possible that giving the anti-socially competitive an
outlet in a field where their fighting has no bearing whatsoever on the rest
of society is a good thing. Sports may therefore provide people who would
have become criminals and soldiers looking for a war a place to fight amongst
themselves.)
| Thus we might put up with a "lower dogs" behavior because it keeps us on top,
| no matter what the "lower dogs" views and behavior might be. In fact the
| more absurd (and thus obviously inferior) the "lower dogs" behavior may be,
| the better.
But winning over the "lowest dog" only means that you are the next lowest
dog. That should not be particularly rewarding, should it?
| Engaging in public communication with people as smart or obviously smarter,
| breaks all that down and may threaten some. It takes a honest, courageous
| and humble person (or psychologically healthy person) to face all that.
Then why do so many who cannot take it engage precisely in public discourse?
| People may not be trying to convert ilias but are just pissing on the "lower
| dog".
Even so, they should find a more worthy target.
Erik Naggum
| I'm German and I'm highly sensitive concerning this kind of words.
Not my problem.
Paul F. Dietz
> I apologise for my part in this. Very early on I did mistakenly think
> that he could be deconfused, but I am afraid to say that more recently
> I have been taking a certain evil pleasure in merely baiting him.
> This is both cruel - it's pretty much bullying - and a misuse of cll.
It's easy to fall into this trap. Just remember that a non-negligible
fraction of the population is mentally ill, and some fraction of those
will have access to the internet. The obviously disturbed trolls, while
very annoying, in the end deserve our pity. Their lives must not be
pleasant.
Paul
ilias
>
>
> John Stone wrote:
>
>> Don't let them get you down.
>
> good advice, but perhaps too late, witness his asshole thread. which
perhaps you've missinterpreted.
the 'LISP - Assholes' thread.
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=amq79c$4pr$1...@usenet.otenet.gr
limits.
> indeed suggests he is no troll, for he seems sincerely hurt that he has
> become a laughing stock in c.l.l.
savages can't hurt me.
they are irrelevant.
>
> but that happened because he first initiated a dialog (good) in which
> his contributions were a mess (bad). this smacked of trolldom but now
> looks like a deep psychological defect in his ability to sustain a
> coherent social interaction. in which case c.l.l. should indeed stop
> tormenting the poor guy.
savages of c.l.l.
listen to your cyber-doctor.
> i mean, he /does/ like Lisp. :)
of course.
Erik Naggum
| now comes quasi with a little positive press for CL and... kablam!!!
Are you for real? How much do you want to tolerate if someone flashes his
"good intentions" badge? It was not because of his positive press that
anything happened, it was because of the way he took other contributors for
granted, and then did not back down.
| I am reminded of the partition/split-sequence fiasco. A contrib is met with
| nothing (and again I do not think I exaggerate) -- nothing but a lambasting
| of the contributor over the /name/.
You exaggerate.
| In both cases we did not even see "neat work, but...".
Where were you?
| This might fit with what someone wrote today about the ilias volume being a
| top/bottom-dog thing. Folks seem moved to take up pen only when they see a
| chance to grandstand their perceived superiority.
Well, the only thing interesting to you should be: Do you?
Kenny Tilton
Tim Bradshaw wrote:
> all the other people who have been responding have been genuinely - if
> mistakenly - trying to help.
Absolutely. I lost a lot of respect for ilias when he rejected my
assertion along those lines. Folks continued to respond helpfully long
past early signs that he is uncoachable. Quite a tribute to c.l.l., by
the way.
kenny
clinisys
Joe Marshall
> Now, I have to ask all the people who respond to ilias: Who the hell do you
> think you are helping? Who could /possibly/ believe something he writes?
> Even if such people might exist, /why/ would you care about those people? It
> should take less time to think about what he writes than to read a refutation
> to realize that he is totally, irrovocably hopeless.
>
> /Please/ do not respond to ilias.
Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Rolf Wester
Erik Naggum wrote:
> * Rolf Wester
> | I'm German and I'm highly sensitive concerning this kind of words.
>
> Not my problem.
>
No surprise, I expected that answer.
Rolf Wester
Espen Vestre
> * Rolf Wester
> | I'm German and I'm highly sensitive concerning this kind of words.
>
> Not my problem.
Please note that "Untermensch" is a more dangerous expression than
"Übermensch" (Nietsche never used the former, btw!). You didn't want
Godwin's Law to be applied, did you?
--
(espen)
Kenny Tilton
Erik Naggum wrote:
> * Kenny Tilton
> | now comes quasi with a little positive press for CL and... kablam!!!
>
> Are you for real?
no, i is complex.
k,c
Christopher Browne
It is not necessary for someone to /intend/ to troll a group in order
to in fact do so.
There are quite a number of "trolls" out on Usenet that basically
suffer from some form of mental illness that leads them to some form
of paranoid schizophrenia, which leads to them constructing strange
conspiracy theories.
In some cases, (as seems the case here) there is something severely
broken about the "troll's" communications skills. There may some
intelligence in some areas, but due to the "breakage" in the other
areas, it turns out to be impossible for the "troll" to constructively
communicate with the community around them.
The net result is that whether the individual /intends/ 'evil' or not,
there is no way to hold a constructive conversation.
--
(concatenate 'string "cbbrowne" "@cbbrowne.com")
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/x.html
Rules of the Evil Overlord #145. "My dungeon cell decor will not
feature exposed pipes. While they add to the gloomy atmosphere, they
are good conductors of vibrations and a lot of prisoners know Morse
code." <http://www.eviloverlord.com/>
Wade Humeniuk
"Erik Naggum" <er...@naggum.no> wrote in message news:32419449...@naggum.no...
> * Wade Humeniuk
> | It might not be benevolence that it lent to ilias and his ilk, but a type of
> | "top dog" behavior.
>
> I have to admit that while I do not start to play this game, I also do not
> yield when someone wants to be "top dog", so I recognize the mechanism.
> Still, anyone can be better than ilias without any effort.
>
This may be a reason that trolls can elicit so much discorse. Part of
a troll's attack may be to attempt to be "top dog" and get to people to fight
that. But also appearing completely helpless the troll gets people
to exercise their "top dog" skills. I have found ilias's threads to be
very strange, his insistence on being an expert in an area but presenting
it in a totally inane way. Even when other's point out the problems ilias
just continues on. Its like he has pasted a "kick me" sign on his back.
> | As human beings we still have desires to be the "top dog", to be the
> | perceived winner/superior/smarter person in a situation.
>
> I think it is bit more complex than that. I believe only a relatively small
> group of people engage in this anti-social competitive game-playing, but when
> they do, others not only do not want to yield their position to them, it is a
> self-protective necessity to prevent competitive people from "rising" in the
> hierarchy of a group. I consider competitiveness to be a mental disease when
> it causes people to attach more importance to their personal position than
> the good of the group they fight to take over and I believe that people who
> feel the need to challenge whoever they think is the "top dog" for no other
> reason than their own personal satisfaction to be mentally diseased as well.
> This anti-social behavior causes nothing but conflict, but not /only/ because
> we are human when we also refuse to let people like that win, the group that
> yields to mentally diseased leaders would soon perish.
For the last few years I have wondered if there are societal controls
against destructive "top dog" behaviour. Does this mean there are
opposite societal forces that helps cooperative and humble people
rise in a group? I certainly am a believer in the power of humility.
> There is therefore an
> element of self- preservation in fighting the mentally diseased, obsessively
> competetive whenever and wherever they try to take control. (Part of my
> great distaste for the entire field of competitive sports is that regardless
> of whether these morons "win" or not, they have abused their physical health
> to the point of being crippled, and it is more a testament to the advanced
> state of modern medicine that these guys can walk at all. Sports-related
> health care costs are /enormous/ and keep growing without bounds. It is,
> however, entirely possible that giving the anti-socially competitive an
> outlet in a field where their fighting has no bearing whatsoever on the rest
> of society is a good thing. Sports may therefore provide people who would
> have become criminals and soldiers looking for a war a place to fight amongst
> themselves.)
>
> | Thus we might put up with a "lower dogs" behavior because it keeps us on top,
> | no matter what the "lower dogs" views and behavior might be. In fact the
> | more absurd (and thus obviously inferior) the "lower dogs" behavior may be,
> | the better.
>
> But winning over the "lowest dog" only means that you are the next lowest
> dog. That should not be particularly rewarding, should it?
>
It might be pleasurable for a few minutes, then one moves onto the next
target.
> | Engaging in public communication with people as smart or obviously smarter,
> | breaks all that down and may threaten some. It takes a honest, courageous
> | and humble person (or psychologically healthy person) to face all that.
>
> Then why do so many who cannot take it engage precisely in public discourse?
>
It is like anything, you have to use it to develop it, especially if one has lost
in on the way to becoming an adult. If a person is psychollogically unhealthy
it just means the person's mind is divided or unbalanced, the good parts
are still there and just striving to be expressed. The person may be in conflict
doing it, but it can still be good for them.
> | People may not be trying to convert ilias but are just pissing on the "lower
> | dog".
>
> Even so, they should find a more worthy target.
>
> --
> Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway
>
> Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder.
> Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.
Wade
Aleksandr Skobelev
> Adult-child interactions are different, though. It is *not* okay to
> quietly ignore a misbehaving child. In the real world, if a child is
> shouting and running around and being a jerk, you chide, or correct,
> or punish, the child. You don't ignore it.
AFAIK, they ignore children misbehaviours in Japan. At least, until age 5
years. :)
Len Charest
> ilias' ISP behaves exactly as
> stupidly as every other ISP and refuses to do anything about him. There is
> no way to stop the criminals.
Er, ilias is certainly an idiot, but how is he a criminal?
quasi
> Are you for real? How much do you want to tolerate if someone flashes his
> "good intentions" badge? It was not because of his positive press that
> anything happened, it was because of the way he took other contributors for
> granted, and then did not back down.
Incorrect. Please reread the thread, if you must. I
immediately agreed about that matter and since have asked for and been
given permission by the relevant people.
I protested to the uncalled for unfriendliness & "thou art a
noise maker & copycat" tone. Whatever justification I gave was to
explain myself and my actions. If you call /that/ as not backing down
from the original point, then you did not get the point. At all.
the "whining dimwit"
--
Think.
Will Deakin
> I apologise for my part in this. Very early on I did mistakenly think
> that he could be deconfused, but I am afraid to say that more recently
> I have been taking a certain evil pleasure in merely baiting him.
> This is both cruel - it's pretty much bullying - and a misuse of cll.
happen to somebody like my two year-old son I would be very upset. Even
if he put himself in the way of it. Mocking[2] the afflicted is never
justified.
In my defence I should add that some of my -- albeit oblique -- comments
were intended to cause some form of reassement or adjustment of self but
to no avail.
I wish that in fact the whole sorry episode turns about to be an
enormously elaborate hoax.
(sigh)
Will
[1] Maybe this is an northern english thing -- or maybe I'm secretly
your alter ego ;)
[2] I think at the time I thought that I was merely mithering but given
the nature of
ilias
> * Pascal Costanza
> | Are there any successful patterns how to deal with trolls, perhaps from
> | other newsgroups?
>
> Stop responding to them.
>
> literally completely hopeless than by ilias, as I have made an exception to
> my general principle not to kill-file people but listen to what a person has
> to say regardless of his record, but ilias stood out as hopeless from day 1.
> He wore a sign on his forehead telling everyone that he is a useless specimen
> of the human race when he walked in the door. There is no point whatsoever
> in responding to him, as he gave every evidence of being learning-impaired
> and worse from the outset. Yet even people I have deemed really smart keep
> responding to him, keeping him alive, evidently believing that the community
> is somehow helped by it, at least by refuting his misinformation. It is not.
>
> This breed of untermensch lives for the response they get from real people.
> Unlike reasonably social human beings who attach importance to what they say
> and do not need a response, this breed of untermensch attaches importance to
> how people respond to what they say, and only their responses. If they have
> to pester and annoy others to elicit a response from them, so be it. If they
> have to break laws and regulations to cause others to notice them, so be it.
> If they have to deface buildings with spray cans, so be it.
>
> When the Internet became a public resource, criminals had to come with it.
> We have spammers, Nigerian 419 scams, trolls on newsgroups, etc, just like we
> have criminals in the real world. The difference is that our governments sit
> on their hands and refuse to deal with them. ilias' ISP behaves exactly as
> stupidly as every other ISP and refuses to do anything about him. There is
> the Net to "protect" them from criticism, in our community exemplified by
> Coby Beck, who attack those who criticize the untermensch and want them to
> have free reign of the newsgroups while ordinary, decent people are left with
> no choice but to stop reading newsgroups that are taken over by untermensch.
>
> If it had helped to kill-file ilias, the problem would have been gone by now.
> The problem is all the people who think that /anyone/ in the known universe
> would believe anything that he produces. The crucial point when it comes to
> deciding whether to refute some claim or not is to decide whether anybody had
> reason to believe it to begin with. If not, and you refute it, you gave it
> credibility it did not deserve. If somebody did believe it, and you did not
> refute it, were you responsible for their confusion, for how long it took
> them to unconfuse themselves, for their spreading more confusion?
>
> Now, I have to ask all the people who respond to ilias: Who the hell do you
> think you are helping? Who could /possibly/ believe something he writes?
> Even if such people might exist, /why/ would you care about those people? It
> should take less time to think about what he writes than to read a refutation
> to realize that he is totally, irrovocably hopeless.
>
> tendency to stir up conflicts and flame wars. There is real danger in being
> insulated from "unwelcome" information with this practice, meaning that which
> tests your convictions, but if there is anything the Internet can offer us
> that the offline world could not, it is the free flow of counter-information,
> which is routinely suppressed by the formal publishing channels. However, if
> you listen to people who believe weird things, you realize very quickly that
> they will more likely than not be crackpots, which is why other people ignore
> them. It is your task, then, to be able to discern a crackpot from someone
> who has an valuable alternative view, and actually /listen/ to what people
> are saying, which sometimes require that you be much smarter than they are,
> or think much more about it than they have. People who protect themselves
> from alternative views therefore tend to be unable to distinguish crackpots
> in time, as well. When presented with an unfiltered medium like the Internet
> and Usenet newsgroups, those who have grown up on the filtered media will of
> necessity feel bewildered and confused. In very many cases, it helps to poke
> them with a cattle-prod and yell "THINK!" at them or treat them harshly as
> long as they do not engage their brain. Few cases are literally hopeless,
> but when one comes along, it /should/ be easy to detect because you know how
> to sort an ignorant from an opinionated asshole and a person who believes in
> some faulty premises from an actual retard or nutcase.
>
> I am puzzled by the fact that people who have lent no benevolence to people
> who have held intelligent views differing from their own, lend benevolence to
> ilias and his ilk. It is as if they cannot deal with intelligent rejection
> of their beliefs, but have no problems with misbehaving children. If people
> think and manage to enunciate their arguments instead of defending themselves
> personally and attacking their critics, their contributions may be still hard
> to deal with because it is intellectually demanding, but if you argue and
> listen with them, you may learn something valuable that changes the way you
> deal with the world around you. Now, this is what I cannot figure out: What
> could anyone possibly gain from converting ilias to his way of thinking?
>
> /Please/ do not respond to ilias.
>
Silence is Accepting
Joe Marshall
> I am afraid to say that more recently
> I have been taking a certain evil pleasure in merely baiting him.
> This is both cruel - it's pretty much bullying - and a misuse of cll.
I see nothing wrong with amusing myself by abusing people like this.
Pascal Costanza
Sorry to say that, but I disagree. If the reason for certain behavior is
really some kind of mental illness, then pity doesn't help at all but
pity rather feeds the illness. The only help that is appropriate is
professional help, but mentally disturbed people are usually only
willing to ask for professional help when their level of suffering is
considerably high.
So, perverse and cruel as it might sound, anything that increases their
level of suffering actually might be a step towards a real improvement
of their situation. So don't feel ashamed if you happen to feel like
poking fun at them - you are not the reason for their illness.
Newsgroups cannot be some kind of self-help group or a substitute for
psychotherapy.
Pascal
Kenny Tilton
Pascal Costanza wrote:
> Sorry to say that, but I disagree. If the reason for certain behavior is
> really some kind of mental illness, then pity doesn't help at all but
> pity rather feeds the illness.
Rubbish. The mentally ill benefit enormously by not having their odd
behavior taken at face value. In mild, non-threatening cases one needs
to look past the immediate offensiveness of the behavior to the
suffering (or simply confused) individual behind it. Compassion will
then arise in anyone at all mentally well.
> ...anything that increases their
> level of suffering actually might be a step towards a real improvement
> of their situation.
Self-justifying fiction. Abuse only makes them dig their heels in
further, becoming more and more attached to their delusion/confusion
with each exchange. They do /not/ miraculously discover their own
confusion (what a concept!) and seek help, they sink in deeper.
But break off the attack and they can find their way back to clarity.
Then "catch them" being normal and reinforce that.
Two things help the reality-challenged: psychotropic drugs and
compassion. We can offer only the second. Imagine a mile in ilias's shoes.
disclaimer: pardon the holier-than-thou tone. i am as big an asshole as
anyone. it's just that i have been very close to many a nutcase, and
loose screws aside, they have been the most interesting, intelligent,
decent, and -- precisely beacuse of their suffering -- compassionate,
accepting people I have known.
k,c
Erik Naggum
| Er, ilias is certainly an idiot, but how is he a criminal?
Breaker of what little laws and regulations that keep this society working.
If you wish to quibble over the formality of the laws and regulations or the
conviction of criminals under the rule of law, feel free to post a lengthy
harangue on the topic.
Erik Naggum
| No surprise, I expected that answer.
I am Norwegian and I am very sensitive to people from the Wehrmacht telling
Norwegians what to do or not to do. You tried that once and it left serious
scars in the Norwegian soul. Will you pay attention to my sensitivity or
consider it my problem? I think you should do the latter and that it is
obscene to bring up personal sensitivities because of one's /nationality/.
So your nationally induced sensitivity is your problem. Keep it to yourself.
If you do not, you very strongly communicate that your sensitivities are more
important than every other sensitivity to which the author has already paid
due respect. Such egoistic behavior is typical of people who want others to
feel bad because they perceive themselves as victims. Cut it out.
The whole world is well aware of the guilt-ridden German psyche, but I have
one piece of /really/ good advice for you: Get the hell over it.
"Untermensch" is defined by Oxford's excellent dictionaries of the English
Language this way
a person considered racially or socially inferior.
Of course it is a strong term that should elicit emotions, but the arrogance
and haughtiness of Germans who think their personal sensitivities should
cause other people to curb their language and the things they can talk about
is one of the most appalling cases of emotional blackmail and censorship
around. (Another most appalling case of same is how the Jews /milk/ their
tragedy more than 50 years later.) People who prey on the guilt that they
want other people to feel should receive no sympathy whatsoever.
Erik Naggum
| That's the community spirit!
But "sharing" his sensitivities /is/ part of the community spirit? Where is
your respect for /my/ sensitivities? Do they not count? What if I am hurt
by your ridicule? Should I be able to silence you and turn the community
against you? You have chosen a very dangerous path.
Erik Naggum
| So, perverse and cruel as it might sound, anything that increases their
| level of suffering actually might be a step towards a real improvement of
| their situation.
It is not perverse and cruel. Most people live cozy little lives much like
that of a pebble that has fallen into an indentation in a larger stone and
through wind and rain and snow and cold, digs itself deeper and deeper
because it never receive enough energy to travel out into the world. You can
find such holes that are hundreds of years old. Humans at the bottom of such
holes call their holes their "religions" or their "culture" and fight tooth
and nail to remain in their hole if they are washed out by the massive floods
of information from the Internet.
However, people outside their hole have a duty in no small sense to drag them
out, to let them see the human experience they have protected themselves
from. This will be very painful to many of the "outed" hole-dwellers. If
they are aware of this pain and do not want to be exposed to the real world,
the solution is very, very simple: Return to their hole. If, however, you do
venture outside your hole, the fact that we are human beings and therefore
invariably benefit from sharing in our collective experience, means that even
hole-dwellers be exposed to the real world and experiences that they may
resist because they secretly want to go back to their holes.
It is courage that keeps them on the outside -- and that courage should be
awarded with information they need but do not want. If they respond with "I
feel hurt! Do not present information I cannot cope with!", they should go
back to their hole and not return to the outside world. As long as they are
out in the real world, they have an /obligation/ to cope with the world they
have chosen to deal with and human /decency/ requires that they do not make
their coping problems anybody else's problem. Posting a requirement to
curtail the freedom of expression of others because they cannot cope with it
is obscene and is the really perverse and cruel thing to do to others.
Imagine how many things people cannot cope with! Imagine a world where
somebody's failure to cope were the one ruling principle of all your social
interaction. You would get a society where people could not pronounce true
statements about groups of people because they would feel offended. You
would get a society where differences that really hurt a group would have to
be kept a secret instead of being rectified and solved because they feel more
hurt about the existence of a difference than about it causing their losses.
You would get a society where people would have to determine whether they
would offend anyone with statement before they could determine its truth. In
the end, we would encourage people not to learn to read because they would
only find millions of volumes that made them feel ignorant and unworthy.
If you want sympathy from some warm body that does not understand you, get a
dog. If you want sympathy from some warm body that does understand you, get
a cat. If you want sympaty from some warm body that wants to be understood
before it gives you any sympathy whatsoever, get another human being.
Eliot Miranda
Erik Naggum wrote:
[snip]
>
> Imagine how many things people cannot cope with! Imagine a world where
> somebody's failure to cope were the one ruling principle of all your social
> interaction. You would get a society where people could not pronounce true
> statements about groups of people because they would feel offended. You
> would get a society where differences that really hurt a group would have to
> be kept a secret instead of being rectified and solved because they feel more
> hurt about the existence of a difference than about it causing their losses.
> You would get a society where people would have to determine whether they
> would offend anyone with statement before they could determine its truth.
and soon enough the leaders of that society would choose to go to war
with Iraq ;)
--
_______________,,,^..^,,,____________________________
Eliot Miranda Smalltalk - Scene not herd
Matthew Danish
> "top dog" behavior. As human beings we still have desires to be the "top dog"
I don't know about you, but I'd rather be "top cat" than "top dog".
Cats are sure of their superiority, and don't need constant
reinforcement from their peers, or from pesky humans.
=)
--
; Matthew Danish <mda...@andrew.cmu.edu>
; OpenPGP public key: C24B6010 on keyring.debian.org
; Signed or encrypted mail welcome.
; "There is no dark side of the moon really; matter of fact, it's all dark."
Erik Naggum
| Compassion will then arise in anyone at all mentally well.
I think I understand your problem. Please let me know how I help you.
| Self-justifying fiction.
I see your pain, but I cannot share it. Would you like to help me understand
what made you make this hurtful statement?
| Abuse only makes them dig their heels in further, becoming more and more
| attached to their delusion/confusion with each exchange.
Somewhere along the line here you managed to read "abuse" where no such
intent was present in the articles you read. I can see that your sensitivity
towards "abusive" people has caused you to see them where they do not really
exist, but it is difficult for me to sympathize with you when you think in
such openly hostile terms. Please reduce your hostility towards other people
and do not accuse them of favoring abuse. Try to understand what they meant,
and try to see that as different from what caused you to feel pain.
| They do /not/ miraculously discover their own confusion (what a concept!)
| and seek help, they sink in deeper.
You are so patronizing towards these suffering people. Why do you speak on
their behalf with such authority when you seem to want to evoke compassion?
Your confused and self-contradictory verbalizations indicate that you both
want to protect and to control a lower class of people than yourself. "They"
are no longer subject to their own willpower, but need your assistance. The
problem with this is that you replace compassion with a desire to manipulate
other people. You treat a whole class of people with a single statement that
shows that you actually harbor dehumanizing resentment towards them. Again,
I can sense your pain and your desire to protect others from your own painful
experiences, but really, you should trust each individual to cope with his
own set of experiences on an individual basis. While some clearly would sink
deeper into whatever psychosis they suffer from, many others essentially wait
for somebody to give them a jolt to get out of their rut.
| But break off the attack and they can find their way back to clarity. Then
| "catch them" being normal and reinforce that.
Again, there is much evidence of your pain and suffering, but although you
cry out for compassion with your plight, you turn patronizing, arrogant, and
even dehumanizing towards a large number of individuals by pretending to be
able to know them all. You define what is normal /for/ them. This would not
be so bad if it were possible to ascertain that you are normal, or generally
that one is normal. The desire to be normal is so strong with people who
fear having a deviant psychology that they hunt the literature for evidence
that they are within at least one definition of "normal". However, there
/is/ no "normal". There is expediency of actions and reactions. Rationality
is not acting in particular way, it is using the feedback from the world that
is acted upon to modify the actions. You declare someone other than normal
and irrational when you cannot understand them, but more often than not, this
has been abused by both the medical and other professions with power to judge
people to mean that if a group of people who consider themselves "normal" are
unable to figure out the reasoning behind your actions and reactions, then
you are not normal, irrational, and possibly mentally ill. Since people with
average intelligence tend to be "normal" more often than not, and people with
very low or very high intelligence tend not to be "normal" more often than
not, this system has caused very highly intelligent people to be mistreated
and encouraging the myth that very high intelligence is indistinguishable
from madness. However, among a group of people who believe in reincarnation,
there is a different set of "normal" reactions and lines of reasoning than
among a group of people who consider the belief in reincarnation to be prima
facie evidence of insanity. The stereotypical nutcase believes he is Napeleon
Bonarparte or Jesus or some other historical figure. Meanwhile, in other
parts of the world, very serious people go looking for the reincarnated Dalai
Lama and usually find him in young boys. If you hear voices tell you what to
do, you are classified as insane in our days, but Joan of Arc heard the voice
of God tell her what to do and led a nation of co-believers. "Normal" is
such a tainted concept that anyone who speaks of it should replace it with
the much more honest and appropriate "just like I am".
| Two things help the reality-challenged: psychotropic drugs and compassion.
Add firm feedback from other people and a refusal to blame other people for
their coping problems. Compassion does not mean yielding, but many "soft"
people tend to think they serve people by providing a cushion-like reality
for them, creating a buffer between them and reality. This is an insult to
their ability to deal with the world, abrogating their ability to cope in the
absence of such buffers. Many psychotropic drugs have the same effect of
dulling the perception of reality and their reactions putting people into a
contourless world of blurred grey instead of the stark black and white they
see in their "natural state". Notice also how some people reach for a stupid
accusation that other people think in black-and-white terms -- they do
nothing but highlight their own fears of the kind of mental illness that
people they think are insane have an all-or-nothing reaction to things. Real
compassion means standing fast, being a firm reference point upon which
others can lean and judge their own coping and the reality around them. Real
compassion is /not/ to change to suit the person who needs it.
| We can offer only the second. Imagine a mile in ilias's shoes.
Indeed, you should try to imagine his continued need to post.
| disclaimer: pardon the holier-than-thou tone.
Your tone is that of someone who has been hurt and who has now found a
mission to protect others from similar pain by placing yourself between the
reality you believe some people cannot cope and those people, but actually
only preventing them from learning how to cope more than anything else.
Erik Naggum
| To me, communication between people isn't as black and white as you appear
| to be advocating.
Are you at all aware of the insult you have just hurled my way? Damn you.
| It's not the case where it's either "appeal to everyone's sensitivities" or
| "don't appeal to any sensitivities".
I asked whether /my/ sensitivities did not count. Could you please answer
that question and leave the armchair philosophizing to some later time, like
perhaps never? Your selectivity is under question here, not some moronic
universality argument that is so easy to argue against that it is incredibly
hostile of you to assume such a fantastically idiotic argument on my part.
How do you determine whose sensitivity to respect and whose to ignore?
Vassil Nikolov
[...]
> the most terrible criminals in world history
Not counting a certain other regime farther east...
---Vassil.
Vassil Nikolov
[...]
> I have already downloaded about 3.5
> MB of various references and manuals on Lisp
Does that mean you don't have the HyperSpec (~15 MB), or that
you counted just compressed files? If the former, the HyperSpec
`site' is at http://www.lispworks.com/reference/HyperSpec/index.html
and it has a link to the compressed downloadable file as well.
---Vassil.
Rolf Wester
Erik Naggum wrote:
> * Rolf Wester
> | No surprise, I expected that answer.
>
> I am Norwegian and I am very sensitive to people from the Wehrmacht telling
> Norwegians what to do or not to do. You tried that once and it left serious
> scars in the Norwegian soul. Will you pay attention to my sensitivity or
> consider it my problem? I think you should do the latter and that it is
> obscene to bring up personal sensitivities because of one's /nationality/.
You are right. I will keep that in mind.
> So your nationally induced sensitivity is your problem. Keep it to yourself.
> If you do not, you very strongly communicate that your sensitivities are more
> important than every other sensitivity to which the author has already paid
> due respect. Such egoistic behavior is typical of people who want others to
> feel bad because they perceive themselves as victims. Cut it out.
>
> The whole world is well aware of the guilt-ridden German psyche, but I have
> one piece of /really/ good advice for you: Get the hell over it.
>
> "Untermensch" is defined by Oxford's excellent dictionaries of the English
> Language this way
>
> a person considered racially or socially inferior.
>
> Of course it is a strong term that should elicit emotions,
Do you know who first used that word and how it was meant then?
In my perception this word is meant to refer to a whole group not a single person
which makes a great difference of course.
> but the arrogance
> and haughtiness of Germans who think their personal sensitivities should
> cause other people to curb their language and the things they can talk about
> is one of the most appalling cases of emotional blackmail and censorship
> around.
You are right again. I take back my first post.
> (Another most appalling case of same is how the Jews /milk/ their
> tragedy more than 50 years later.) People who prey on the guilt that they
> want other people to feel should receive no sympathy whatsoever.
Rolf Wester
Rolf Wester
Vassil Nikolov schrieb:
Some years ago we had a discussion in Germany whether Stalin was as evel
as Hitler or not. Not playing down Stalin's crimes I think that the Nazi regime
was singular in history.
Rolf Wester
Raymond Wiker
Ilias, on the other hand, sees nothing wrong with abusing
himself by amusing people like this :-)
--
Raymond Wiker Mail: Raymon...@fast.no
Senior Software Engineer Web: http://www.fast.no/
Fast Search & Transfer ASA Phone: +47 23 01 11 60
P.O. Box 1677 Vika Fax: +47 35 54 87 99
NO-0120 Oslo, NORWAY Mob: +47 48 01 11 60
Try FAST Search: http://alltheweb.com/
Tim Bradshaw
> I see nothing wrong with amusing myself by abusing people like this.
I must admit that I only see something wrong sometimes: it's quite
hard to feel sympathy for our current troll. On the other hand what I
feel badly about - if anything - is mostly posting articles for my
*own* amusement, regardless of whether others might find them
amusing. That's just arrogant, I think.
--tim
Will Deakin
> * Joe Marshall wrote:
>>I see nothing wrong with amusing myself by abusing people like this.
> I must admit that I only see something wrong sometimes: it's quite
> hard to feel sympathy for our current troll.
the nickname of the Bethlehem hospital in London. In the C18 and C19th
is was fashionable to go an laugh and throw things at the chained up
inmates. My concern is that *I* have been involved in the usenet equivalent.
> On the other hand what I feel badly about - if anything - is mostly
> posting articles for my *own* amusement, regardless of whether others
> might find them amusing. That's just arrogant, I think.
What do you do then? How do you tell whether things are amusing or not?
Or do you not post things that are attempts at humour? Usenet would be a
much duller place without the humour and the `open-mike' posting!
:)w
Tim Bradshaw
> Tim wrote:
> I actually somewhat disagree with this.
Yes, so do I. I am in multiple minds about it (Do I contradict
myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain
multitudes.)).
> What do you do then? How do you tell whether things are amusing or
> not? Or do you not post things that are attempts at humour? Usenet
> would be a much duller place without the humour and the `open-mike'
> posting!
Well, I guess the trick is to have some concern as to whether other
people might find them funny rather than just posting stuff to amuse
myself by causing ilias to foam...
--tim
ilias
> * Pascal Costanza
> | Are there any successful patterns how to deal with trolls, perhaps from
> | other newsgroups?
>
> Stop responding to them.
>
> I get much more pissed off by the people who cannot understand that ilias is
> literally completely hopeless than by ilias, as I have made an exception to
"literally completely hopeless"
> my general principle not to kill-file people but listen to what a person has
> to say regardless of his record, but ilias stood out as hopeless from day 1.
"hopeless from day 1"
> He wore a sign on his forehead telling everyone that he is a useless specimen
> of the human race when he walked in the door. There is no point whatsoever
"useless specimen of the human race"
> in responding to him, as he gave every evidence of being learning-impaired
"learning-impaired"
> and worse from the outset. Yet even people I have deemed really smart keep
"worse"
> responding to him, keeping him alive, evidently believing that the community
> is somehow helped by it, at least by refuting his misinformation. It is not.
>
> This breed of untermensch lives for the response they get from real people.
"breed of untermensch"
> Unlike reasonably social human beings who attach importance to what they say
"unreasonable social human being"
> and do not need a response, this breed of untermensch attaches importance to
"breed of untermensch"
> how people respond to what they say, and only their responses. If they have
> to pester and annoy others to elicit a response from them, so be it. If they
> have to break laws and regulations to cause others to notice them, so be it.
> If they have to deface buildings with spray cans, so be it.
introducing: "criminal".
>
> When the Internet became a public resource, criminals had to come with it.
> We have spammers, Nigerian 419 scams, trolls on newsgroups, etc, just like we
> have criminals in the real world. The difference is that our governments sit
> on their hands and refuse to deal with them. ilias' ISP behaves exactly as
> stupidly as every other ISP and refuses to do anything about him. There is
> no way to stop the criminals. They even have anti-social defense lawyers on
"criminal"
> the Net to "protect" them from criticism, in our community exemplified by
> Coby Beck, who attack those who criticize the untermensch and want them to
"Coby Beck, the collaborationist of untermensch"
> have free reign of the newsgroups while ordinary, decent people are left with
> no choice but to stop reading newsgroups that are taken over by untermensch.
"taken over by untermensch"
>
> If it had helped to kill-file ilias, the problem would have been gone by now.
> The problem is all the people who think that /anyone/ in the known universe
> would believe anything that he produces. The crucial point when it comes to
> deciding whether to refute some claim or not is to decide whether anybody had
> reason to believe it to begin with. If not, and you refute it, you gave it
> credibility it did not deserve. If somebody did believe it, and you did not
> refute it, were you responsible for their confusion, for how long it took
> them to unconfuse themselves, for their spreading more confusion?
>
> Now, I have to ask all the people who respond to ilias: Who the hell do you
> think you are helping? Who could /possibly/ believe something he writes?
"writings not believable"
> Even if such people might exist, /why/ would you care about those people? It
"People who believe writings, don't care about them"
> should take less time to think about what he writes than to read a refutation
> to realize that he is totally, irrovocably hopeless.
"totally, irrovocably hopeless"
>
> Previously, kill-filing people was based on their annoying opinions and their
> tendency to stir up conflicts and flame wars. There is real danger in being
> insulated from "unwelcome" information with this practice, meaning that which
> tests your convictions, but if there is anything the Internet can offer us
> that the offline world could not, it is the free flow of counter-information,
> which is routinely suppressed by the formal publishing channels. However, if
> you listen to people who believe weird things, you realize very quickly that
"believe weird things"
> they will more likely than not be crackpots, which is why other people ignore
> them. It is your task, then, to be able to discern a crackpot from someone
> who has an valuable alternative view, and actually /listen/ to what people
> are saying, which sometimes require that you be much smarter than they are,
> or think much more about it than they have. People who protect themselves
> from alternative views therefore tend to be unable to distinguish crackpots
> in time, as well. When presented with an unfiltered medium like the Internet
> and Usenet newsgroups, those who have grown up on the filtered media will of
> necessity feel bewildered and confused. In very many cases, it helps to poke
> them with a cattle-prod and yell "THINK!" at them or treat them harshly as
> long as they do not engage their brain. Few cases are literally hopeless,
"literally hopeless"
> but when one comes along, it /should/ be easy to detect because you know how
> to sort an ignorant from an opinionated asshole and a person who believes in
> some faulty premises from an actual retard or nutcase.
"opinionated asshole"
"who believes in some faulty premises"
>
> I am puzzled by the fact that people who have lent no benevolence to people
> who have held intelligent views differing from their own, lend benevolence to
> ilias and his ilk. It is as if they cannot deal with intelligent rejection
> of their beliefs, but have no problems with misbehaving children. If people
> think and manage to enunciate their arguments instead of defending themselves
> personally and attacking their critics, their contributions may be still hard
> to deal with because it is intellectually demanding, but if you argue and
> listen with them, you may learn something valuable that changes the way you
> deal with the world around you. Now, this is what I cannot figure out: What
> could anyone possibly gain from converting ilias to his way of thinking?
>
> /Please/ do not respond to ilias.
>
-
"literally completely hopeless"
"hopeless from day 1"
"useless specimen of the human race"
"learning-impaired"
"worse"
"breed of untermensch"
"breed of untermensch"
introducing: "criminal".
"criminal"
"Coby Beck, the collaborationist of untermensch"
"taken over by untermensch"
"writings not believable"
"People who believe writings, don't care about them"
"totally, irrovocably hopeless"
"believe weird things"
"literally hopeless"
"opinionated asshole"
"who believes in some faulty premises"
-
...
...
-
The Leader Rules - The Sheeps Follow.
-
Silence is Accepting.
Will Deakin
> Yes, so do I. I am in multiple minds about it (Do I contradict
> myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain
> multitudes.)).
> Well, I guess the trick is to have some concern as to whether other
> people might find them funny rather than just posting stuff to amuse
> myself by causing ilias to foam...
Absolutely! In borderline cases this would characterise this as the
difference between a wind-up or a leg-pull...
;)w
Fred Gilham
The bible has some interesting things to say about trolls...I mean
fools. Some of it might even be applicable to the current situation.
All from the book of Proverbs:
12:15 The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man
listens to advice.
12:16 The vexation of a fool is known at once, but the prudent man
ignores an insult.
18:2 A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in
expressing his opinion.
One of my favorites:
26:4 Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him
yourself.
26:5 Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own
eyes.
Oops --- a contradiction. I wonder if the author noticed.... :-)
27:22 Crush a fool in a mortar with a pestle along with crushed grain,
yet his folly will not depart from him.
29:9 If a wise man has an argument with a fool, the fool only rages
and laughs, and there is no quiet.
29:11 A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man quietly
holds it back.
There are also some good ones about lazy people, but they hit too
close to home. :-)
--
Fred Gilham gil...@csl.sri.com
[Some of the] Top ten reasons why the God of Jesus Christ makes a
better God than `Caesar':
9. God has a better retirement package.
5. God only wants 10%.
4. God has fewer laws.
1. Caesar wants you to send your sons to die for him. God sent his
Son to die for you.
ilias
>
> Erik Naggum wrote:
>
>
>>* Rolf Wester
>>| No surprise, I expected that answer.
>>
>> I am Norwegian and I am very sensitive to people from the Wehrmacht telling
>> Norwegians what to do or not to do. You tried that once and it left serious
>> scars in the Norwegian soul. Will you pay attention to my sensitivity or
>> consider it my problem? I think you should do the latter and that it is
>> obscene to bring up personal sensitivities because of one's /nationality/.
>
>
> You are right. I will keep that in mind.
the poster is not right.
he makes a faulty generalization.
-
additionally:
decouple motivation from action.
you have reacted to a trigger-word.
*maybe* due to a 'wrong' motivation.
but your reaction was correct.
gain the essence of the post [1].
your intuition acts, immediately.
you *maybe* choose your words 'wrong'.
-
subconscious, preconscious, conscious.
-
>
>
>> So your nationally induced sensitivity is your problem. Keep it to yourself.
>> If you do not, you very strongly communicate that your sensitivities are more
>> important than every other sensitivity to which the author has already paid
>> due respect. Such egoistic behavior is typical of people who want others to
>> feel bad because they perceive themselves as victims. Cut it out.
>>
>> The whole world is well aware of the guilt-ridden German psyche, but I have
>> one piece of /really/ good advice for you: Get the hell over it.
yes, get over it.
over the *unhealthy* part of the guilt.
*guilt* protects.
*healthy* 'guilt'.
be *proud* of your nationality.
but *never* forget.
*watch* - Germans, Norwegians, Greeks, Americans...!
*watch* *humans*.
the 'Uebermensch' [4], is between us.
>
>
>> "Untermensch" is defined by Oxford's excellent dictionaries of the English
>> Language this way
>>
>> a person considered racially or socially inferior.
>>
>> Of course it is a strong term that should elicit emotions,
I thought that "Untermensch" [5] is a german word.
Can Oxford's (excellent or not) dictionaries of the English Language
supersede a nations language? Especially a word with such a deep
historical meaning?
I don't know.
I'm undereducated.
-
But it doesn't even matter.
View "Untermensch" - "a person considered racially or socially
inferior." ...
...in the context it was used: [1]
You'll get the 'german' 'definition' [2].
View "Untermensch" - "a person considered racially or socially
inferior." ...
...isolated.
analyze it.
"a person considered racially or socially inferior."
?
>
>
> Do you know who first used that word and how it was meant then?
> In my perception this word is meant to refer to a whole group not a single person
> which makes a great difference of course.
there is *no* difference.
there *is* no difference.
there *is* *no* *difference*.
>
>
>> but the arrogance
>> and haughtiness of Germans who think their personal sensitivities should
>> cause other people to curb their language and the things they can talk about
>> is one of the most appalling cases of emotional blackmail and censorship
>> around.
>
>
> You are right again. I take back my first post.
this sounds like "Der Kluegere gibt nach" [3]
But i must take care.
How is "Der Kluegere gibt nach" defined in Oxford's excellent dictionaries?
>
>
>> (Another most appalling case of same is how the Jews /milk/ their
>> tragedy more than 50 years later.) People who prey on the guilt that they
>> want other people to feel should receive no sympathy whatsoever.
*healthy* 'guilt'.
>
>
> Rolf Wester
>
i'm happy that the new pizza-taxi i've tried has good pizza.
headache is better now.
i'm so tired.
time is running away.
and i'm still not ready.
today it looks like this.
-
-----------------------------------------------------------------
[5] Subhuman
^
-----------------------------------------------------------------
[4] Suphuman (Superior human being)
^
-----------------------------------------------------------------
[3] The smarter give on {free translation)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
[2]
Norwegian:
http://www.museumsnett.no/perspektivet/utstillinger/
English:
http://www.museumsnett.no/perspektivet/utstillinger/index-en.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------
[1]
a summary:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=amv45e$m7v$1...@usenet.otenet.gr
Duane Rettig
> One of my favorites:
> 26:4 Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him
> yourself.
> 26:5 Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own
> eyes.
> Oops --- a contradiction. I wonder if the author noticed.... :-)
Most defintely. In modern times, the author would have started
the passage with "Riddle me this:"
--
Duane Rettig du...@franz.com Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/
555 12th St., Suite 1450 http://www.555citycenter.com/
Oakland, Ca. 94607 Phone: (510) 452-2000; Fax: (510) 452-0182
Coby Beck
"ilias" and others wrote
> "Coby Beck, the collaborationist of untermensch"
I can see my name coming up in some very strange future google
searches...But I would guess I have worse public perception issues than that
over all this...
:o/
--
Coby Beck
(remove #\Space "coby 101 @ bigpond . com")
Erik Naggum
| Wow, you really take things seriously.
My intention is to make people think about things they tend not to think
about. This means taking things seriously. You appear not to be used to be
taken seriously and consider your flippant comments harmless because of your
harmless intent. Such is the opposite of sensitivity. However, it appears
that you do not have a well-developed concept of public vs private, so I hope
to show you how differently one would think and react with such a developed
concept.
| It seems we have somewhat of a misunderstanding here -- shall we try again
| rather than bringing out the verbal nukes?
There are no verbal nukes. I am frankly puzzled by the need for people to
liken words to physical threats. The images you conjure up from a word are
your own responsibility, even when emotive words are used. However, it
appears that you need to imagine your opponent instead of reading and trying
to understand what he says and then prefer the more emotional images to the
more reasonable. Such is consistent with taking sides.
Why would we need to try again? Just when did you imagine that I had
finalized my judgment of you? Or is it that you arrived at /your/ jugdment
prematurely (again consistent with taking sides) and therefore are willing to
re-open /your/ case? Just trust me when I say this: I judge quickly whether
someone thinks or not, but slowly about what they think about. You will find
me fantastically hostile to non-thinkers if you are used to throwing flippant
comments around and not used to be taken seriously, but also find me patient
with people who actually express ideas and reason well.
| If it's someone I have a certain amount of respect for, my tolerance for
| their sensitivities goes up.
That is, if you do not like people, you can treat them any way you want.
This is a pretty common way for people to interact in real life and the cause
of almost all the idiotic fights and wars that people get themselves into, as
well as the fundamental cause of the need for legal systems to ensure that
proper procedure is followed when society takes over the function of exacting
revenge for wrong-doing from the people who were quite happy to take revenge
on a personal level in their "natural", i.e., uncivilized state.
Letting your treatment of others depend on how much you "like" them is the
very antithesis of ethical and just behavior. The whole point of having laws
in addition to ethics in a society is to ensure that those who suffer from
selective empathy do not hurt people they do not respect or like. The need
for this is alarming -- many people actually believe that they do not need to
act morally if they can believe they are taking revenge for something the
other guy did. However, revengeful people tend not to listen to what the
other guy has to say, because they neither respect his sensitivities nor his
word, so whether he did it or not is immaterial. This kind of lynch mobs is
the most base, most evil form of the human group psychology, an undeveloped
stage that one would have hoped evolution would have taken care of, but our
advanced societies are still so young that such primitive properties remain.
To the primitive pre-intelligent human, "us vs them" is a question of rights.
"We" have rights, "you" have none, and so "we" can murder and destroy "you"
if it serves our purposes. Mistreatment of those who land in the "them"
category is legion the world over, and the very ability to understand human
rights and the concept of justice appears to be unavailable to people whose
selective empathy is not curtailed by education and serious training in how
to cope with the unpleasant. Non-thinking people take sides based on fickle
emotional responses and feel no compunctions about mistreating those on the
other side. Thinking people realize that taking sides is a primitive tendency
that predates reason and ethics and rights, dating back to primordial times
when one's survival was intimately tied to the group's. This is no longer the
case, and especially so on the Internet and on Usenet, where we can all assume
that all possible fundamental needs are satisfied and secured for the future
-- or people would presumably be out there in the real world catering to such
needs. Therefore, no one is under threat when they participate in discussions
on the Net and there is no group survival at stake, either. Continuing to use
the primitive survival-directed emotional responses is counter-productive and
inexpedient, and the reasons to think in terms of proper procedure and rights
of those who make unpopular and unpleasant arguments or appearances are very
good -- "survival" on the Net is a question of intelligence and intellect in
action much more than it is in the real world, and it is much more personal.
Your physical ability to intimidate and ward off an intruder increases with a
group to back you, but appealing to your group decreases the value of your
arguments, meaning that it could not and would not stand on its own. Most
things that work well in near-physical combat do not work at all intellectual
battles. Some people appear not to figure this out at all, and think they are
in physical combat on the Net and have to be defeated on such terms before
they figure out what is going on.
| It's fairly easy in a local community where people often share similar values
| and sensitivities.
The group agreement on sensitivities is simply an agreement not to "offend"
one's peers with information or arguments that is known to be historically
hurtful in that community. For instance, Germans who are reminded of the
atrocities of WW II tend to become defensive in counter-productive ways and
Common Lispers tend to get annoyed with the repetitive nonsense from Schemers.
However, the "similiar values" part can be seen from two vantage points: There
are those who have attractions in common and those who have avoidances in
common. People congregate because they are all for or all against something,
but that agreement is actually quite precarious. The best reason to respect
people's sensitivities in real life is that you do not want in-fights in your
group; divisive elements get thrown out of the group, without which they are
much less able to achieve their goals, so it makes good sense for individuals
to abide by the sensitivities of others in order to keep the group alive.
However, when groups of people meet with much less interpersonal contact,
call it the size of the area of interface, the group survival issue vanishes
and it becomes a question of the individual's value to the group as opposed
to the group's value to the individual. A member of a group who presents his
sensitivities for others to respect when there is no group survival at stake,
is the divisive element -- quite the opposite situation from real life.
The core principle we respect when the group's survival is at stake is that
the group would feel the loss of the individual member. However, this
presupposes that the group is the individual's primary protector. This is
true of social groups and small physical communities. It is not the case for
professional groups and public fora. Some people have no concept of the
public as different from the private (see «The Fall of Public Man» by Richard
Sennett, 1992 paperback edition ISBN 0-393-30879-0), and therefore lack the
professional dimension to their interaction with other people, leading them
to inject and interject personal matters into their public discourse.
Now, we all have emotions, and getting rid of them is a bad suggestion, but
there is the question of whether you feel personally or professionally about
something. I am not threatened personally by misinformation, but I want to
protect my profession from misinformation. I want to help people learn and
understand, not because I want to take part in their personal lives, but
because I want better professionals around me in my carreer. Chances are
pretty high that I would like people from other professions better personally
than fellow programmers, just as I would expect to socialize with people
because I bring something of social value, not my programming prowess, to
parties and dinners and the like. Therefore, personal questions should not
interfere with professional conduct in professional fora.
| How this scales to communicating in a forum such as this, where there are
| many different nationalities and backgrounds interacting, I don't have all
| the answers on that one.
I do. Leave your personal issues at home when you enter professional fora.
If you want somebody to heed to your personal issues, write them personally.
If you make such issues public, you not only flaunt your personal life, you
invade that of others with your personal concerns, as well.
| What are your views?
In general, I think people need to rediscover the role of public man and
learn to totally avoid personal issues in public. That does not preclude
personal warmth, of course, but asking people in public to take part in one's
emotional life is incredibly insensitive to others. I firmly believe that
people need to have their house in order before they venture into the public
space. If they seek to satisfy or fulfill personal needs in public places,
they feed off of other people's unwillingness to be harsh in return. I think
of people who take their personal problems public as demanding beggars.
Erik Naggum
| it's quite hard to feel sympathy for our current troll.
I find this an odd statement. I am overwhelmed with sympathy for him, which
is why I want nothing to do with him at all. It is precisely because this is
such a sympathy-inducing creature that he has no place in a public forum.
This is a person about whom I have two unwelcome choices: To care about him
personally or not care about him or anything he says at all. Nothing he says
invites me to respond professionally to his questions. He asks me to take
part in his personal life, which is a disgraceful request in public. It is
like using the public announcement system of a full football stadium to ask
someone for a date. It is not only embarrassing in itself, it puts you in a
position where you understand that answering in the negative will be a
terrible blow, and you therefore understand that doing it in public may be
nothing short of a manipulative move to make you answer in the affirmative
because you at least feel enough about the stupid requestor to save him from
a crushing defeat. In short, I find the overwhelming sympathy obscene. It
is for the very same reason that I find street prostitutes distasteful -- it
is not that they sell their body in a degrading manner, it is that anyone who
understands what they are doing is forced to either care personally or to
block any and all sympathy from reaching them, causing either an overwhelming
personal involvement in the personal tragedy of strangers or a dehumanizing
lack of emotional response to their plight. Both are deeply offensive to me.
Ben Olasov
Erik Naggum wrote:
> * Pascal Costanza
> | Are there any successful patterns how to deal with trolls, perhaps from
> | other newsgroups?
>
> Stop responding to them.
Right. This is definitely a case where doing nothing dominates doing something.
Kurt B. Kaiser
> However, if you listen to people who believe weird things, you
> crackpots, which is why other people ignore them.
One of these days someone with a weird mentality like our friend is
going to turn out to be a program. And it will be tireless, does that
sound familiar?
I suppose it's still too early, but who knows? And what better test
forum than c.l.l?
KBK
Jacek Podkanski
I mean uncompressed files. Mostly pdf and Postscript. Thank you for the
link. I will have a look at your HyperSpec.
--
Jacek Podkanski
Christopher Browne
> Erik Naggum <er...@naggum.no> writes:
>> However, if you listen to people who believe weird things, you
>> realize very quickly that they will more likely than not be
>> crackpots, which is why other people ignore them.
>
> One of these days someone with a weird mentality like our friend is
> going to turn out to be a program. And it will be tireless, does that
> sound familiar?
There were some responses to 'the unnamed' that were pretty clearly
produced by Eliza, so there is precedent...
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "moc.enworbbc@" "sirhc"))
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/
"I have stopped reading Stephen King novels. Now I just read C code
instead." -- Richard A. O'Keefe
Xah Lee
I resent your uncouth advice on dealing with trolls. To the average
intellects rampant in comp.lang.lisp, the "gospel of ignorance" seems
to be the sage advice for dealing with trolls, but has anyone noticed
that it is rhetorical advice and never worked?
Alas, it is never going to work, because, like corruption or thievery
or mistrust, it takes a single cell to thwart the whole system, where
society necessarily became law-laden, lock-decorated, and mistrustful,
and that is the nature of things.
i have been more and more viewing things from A artificial life
dynamic system point of view. Ignoring trolls is indeed a
above-average advice, because it is a form of education, of the
probable theorizing of how troll operates. However, it is a bit
valueless if one do not understand the core of the problem, or never
took time to think and analyze the complete picture. There are indeed
many perspectives and questions to be asked on the subject of troll.
For example, why do trolls troll? What is their ilk, if any? What
caused their disposition? Apparently a simple first question like this
already calls for researches that likely no one has examined well
scholarly. Immediately the question begs how do we define a "troll".
As with "intelligence", i'm sure it is elusive. Of the liberally or
literally endowed, one can probe on the writing styles of good trolls,
such as mine. Now, have you observed, that certain trolls tends to
exhibit phantasmagoric reconditeness in their produce? Say, the Erik
Naggum fellow, who has i'm sure in various times been labeled a troll,
and a big monstrous one at that. As you can see, a clear definition of
troll now becomes painfully necessary. Just exactly who is troll and
who is not? Is it by intent or by result? ...
the issue of how to deal with a troll is in fact a stupid question not
realized. If one traces the origins of troll, she'll find that it is a
human phenomenon, not particular to newsgroups. The world trolling has
somewhat specific meaning in the beginning. According to the Jargon
File (http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/), it originally means the act
of message posting that ensure fire, knowingly or not. Today, the word
troll are both verb and noun, and are applied loosely to any outsider.
If you don't like someone's manners, he is a troll. If you don't like
a gadfly, he is a troll. If you don't like a philosopher, he is a
troll. If you don't like a inquirer, he is a troll. If you don't like
a humorist, he is a troll. If you don't like a teacher, he is a troll.
If you don't like witches, they are, well, witches and must be
witch-hunted. Thusly, from weirdo to witches, from teachers to
philosophers, from gadfly to firebrand, from loner to gay, they are
all trolls online at your call. Quick spun the guild of killfilers and
troll-criers. Anyone who has contrariwise things to say or the manner
of saying it is a troll.
Before the internet, there are epithets of weirdo, geek, oddball,
screwball, crank, kook, crackpot, jester, queer, fruitcake, firebrand,
gadfly, hell-raiser, rabble-rouser, outsider, loner, desperado, witch.
Their owners exists everywhere, from your highschool to your
workplace. As you can see, trolls were not born with the internet. It
was with us from the dawn of time. It is of course oblivious to the
mainstream. After all, who like witches?
now what about the process aspect? I'm sure all of you who read me
have at least ten years of living experience. Of these years, 2/3 of
time your eyes must be open. So, you must have some inkling of the
general situation of human activities. In conglomerations, people do
all kinds of things; and throughout a life time, view changes,
behavior changes, life-style changes. What is it, that have every
online discussion groups plagued with the troll phenomenon? Of course
both troll and troll-dealers are responsible, but what made them tick?
Now coming back to our original sagacious advice of ignoring trolls,
why would it _never_ work? Could you now see the complexity of the
problem? From a process point of view, troll-criers feeds trolls
because that made them both happy. Spatting and babbling is an
inherent part of discussion. Do you honest think there should or would
be a pure society filled with perfect logicians who have unilateral
goals and impeccable manners? Good trolls, such as myself, ENJOY
trolling. Troll-feeders, enjoy spitting on their targets. (a basic
human need.) Troll advisers, enjoys giving troll-dealing advice.
Bleeding-hearts, enjoys speaking out for so-called trolls. The more
open a forum, the more diversity. Nothing can be less natural.
i don't know if i should have some conclusive remarks about troll. You
see, i'm beginning to view things as a process, a ever changing
dynamic system, a artificial-life model. The human-simpletons are just
little insignificant entities in a environment of billions of them,
each effecting local happenings in a diverse and extreme complex way
with some simple but fuzzy needs, along which some emergent phenomenon
arises, among them trolling.
PS i as a troll is rather special because i tend to put a final say on
things, in contrast with one-liner trolls i myself despise. (In a
sense i'm an anti-troll, untroll, or an atrocious atroll.) At first i
balked at being branded a troll. Now i revel it. I as a troll is
rather recent, beginning and getting worse about in 1998. I have been
using online discussion medium since 1990. Perhaps one day i'll write
"how i became a troll". It is bound to be a tragedy.
I'll find a day to massacre them all,
And raze their faction and their family...
William Shakespeare, in Titus Andronicus
--
gratuitous poem:
magic a scissor i wish
so sharp and so cross
so that i can chop
chop off brainless heads
i would like to swing
a giant ax swing
off with their heads
of priests and deans
evil wish i be
hatred i behold
the righteous and the main
torture with no death
befalls to them
--
recently i read,
mankind was not kind,
Charles Bukowski,
how i love you so.
speak truth you do,
of folks on this earth,
pettiness and conceit,
fucking asses and holes.
humble and polite,
decent and all-right,
God this, children that,
motherfucking lies.
i'm on your side,
let us make a friend,
power shall we hunger,
death to those differ.
we shall speak truths,
truths of our own kind,
just like mankind,
fuck opposing kinds.
ethics we device,
moral we indite,
praying we force,
down mankind's throats.
mankind you fuckface,
we are truth harbingers,
conform and revere,
lest God strike you down.
ilias
>>| I'm German and I'm highly sensitive concerning this kind of words.
>>
>> Not my problem.
>
>
> Please note that "Untermensch" is a more dangerous expression than
> "Übermensch" (Nietsche never used the former, btw!). You didn't want
> Godwin's Law to be applied, did you?
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/Godwin's-Law.html
"
Godwin's Law prov.
[Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a
comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a
tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over,
and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument
was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence
of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is
also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of
Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be
unsuccessful.
"
ilias
> * at news wrote:
>
>
>>the savages react to this posts.
>
>
>>mainly off-topic.
>
>
>>c.l.l. is trolling me.
>
>
>>unprofessional beasts.
>
>
> Well, you see, since we're all such a bunch of savages, and we
> obviously don't know anything about Lisp really as you've made so
> clear, and we're trolling you and unprofessional beasts and all,
> wouldn't it be really a much better use of your time to just not post
> to cll any more?
primary:
'you' are not cll.
additionally:
there are 'highlights'.
finally:
i've hope.
> It must be really a huge waste of your time having
> to deal with us unprofessional beasts who understand nothing and
> refuse to learn from you,
no it isn't.
> and I certainly don't think there is
> anything that we can teach *you*.
every human can teach me.
after i teach him.
how to teach me.
> You are *clearly* so far beyond the
> rest of the Lisp community that you would be far better starting your
> own community of disciples -
no need.
The Spirit of Lisp.
> we are just a bunch of stuck-in-the-mud
> retards who, in 20 years, have failed to see the many glaring faults
> in our standards and implementations.
>
hard words.
repeat them.
Vassil Nikolov
[...]
> Thank you for the
> link. I will have a look at your HyperSpec.
You are welcome; of course, it is not mine.
Kent Pitman did a *Very Good Thing* by making it.
---Vassil.
ilias
> Erik Naggum <er...@naggum.no> writes:
>
>
>>* Rolf Wester
>>| I'm German and I'm highly sensitive concerning this kind of words.
>>
>> Not my problem.
>
>
> Please note that "Untermensch" is a more dangerous expression than
> "Übermensch" (Nietsche never used the former, btw!).
The 'defense' of Nietsche.
> You didn't want Godwin's Law to be applied, did you?
Asking for applying a Law.
'Diplomatic Immunity'.
ilias
-
The Predators Instinct.
_
Translucency.
-
Robert Hanlin
> > we are just a bunch of stuck-in-the-mud
> > retards who, in 20 years, have failed to see the many glaring faults
> > in our standards and implementations.
>
> hard words.
> repeat them.
Wow, he's starting to get more insightful. (I'm not just talking
about the part I quoted.) Erik Naggum is not about to pester ilias
for advice anytime soon, but that's just a matter of time.
ilias
yes, i think he'll be able in about... 20 years to overcome his ego.
have a good night.
Jacek Podkanski
Ooops, I meant recommended by you.
--
Jacek Podkanski
Erik Naggum
| Erik Naggum is not about to pester ilias for advice anytime soon, but that's
| just a matter of time.
Geez. Do you think you could any /more/ focused on people?
One toxic effect of catering to people like "ilias" is that people who have
nothing whatsoever to offer anyone feel they have something to offer.
--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway Today, the sum total of the money I
would retain from the offers in the
more than 7500 Nigerian 419 scam letters received in the past 33 months would
have exceeded USD 100,000,000,000. You can stop sending me more offers, now.
Robert Hanlin
> Geez. Do you think you could any /more/ focused on people?
I must. Names are the label associated with everyone's posts, and I
filter accordingly.
> One toxic effect of catering to people like "ilias" is that people who have
> nothing whatsoever to offer anyone feel they have something to offer.
Presumably you are speaking about me. But I've written two useless
posts to c.l.lisp that I remember, and both times were a result of
your harsh words to someone. Clearly you are not helping clear the
newsgroup of noise, perhaps you are even forcing ilias to compensate
for your stupidity by being even more determined, so why not change
strategy?
Anyway, I seem to recall that you were one huge problem with this
newsgroup as a representative of the community. While you may have
interesting lisp experience, it is unfortuately inseparable from your
bile, as if there was one little piece of crap in the main course that
always drew attention. So perhaps you should apologize to me for
being "focused on people."
Rob
Erik Naggum
| I must.
OK, I understand this to mean that you do not have the mental wherewithall to
understand that focusing on people is a choice, opposed to focusing on the
arguments, on information, on ideas, on knowledge, on understanding, etc.
Prmitive minds focus on people, react to people, and blame people. Advanced
minds relate to ideas. Those who focus on people are actually broken people
themselves and therefore look at other people to discover that they are not
alone in being broken. Functional people have an actual /purpose/ to their
communication and do not find casting blame and spreading their hatred far
and wide conducive to their purposes. Dysfunctional people focus on feeling
well, because they do not feel well, and think this is somebody else's fault.
If you do not feel well, you should stay home and repair yourself, not impose
your personal problems on other people. This is a really simple guideline.
| Presumably you are speaking about me.
Yes, you have proven yourself to be toxic to us. However, you are, by your
own admission, unable to act more intelligently than you do, so you are sort
of excused for your inability to do better. By your own admission, your own
"contributions" here must be judged according to their sender, not according
to their contents. Since you do not understand anything beyond a primitive
level of interaction with other people, you will not understand that you have
any alternatives and will never improve or behave differently towards people
you think are at fault for your lack of feelings you can cope with.
| So perhaps you should apologize to me for being "focused on people."
Far from it. Focusing on people is a disease. You spread that disease with
your actions and your toxic articles, which, by your own admission, do not
carry intelligent communication relevant to this forum. This are, however,
simply actions and choices on your part, and you can make other choices if
you realize that you have a choice. As long as you think you "must" focus on
people, you must be judged accordingly, as a diseased, broken person.
Your own actions have brought focus on yourself and your response to cast
blame on me is simply stupid and does you no credit at all. You have nothing
to offer this forum except your own personal relations with people here,
which you abuse the public forum to flaunt, and as such are a useless piece
of shit. So go stink up some other forum, please. If you have no bowel
control of your own, seek help. This is not the proper forum to get help.
Now, please leave this forum to people who can focus on its purpose, which
is, probably to your amazement, not your personal animosity towards me, but
the programming language Common Lisp and/or the language family Lisp. Do you
understand this or will you continue to attack me and not get the message?
You will get preicsely one -1- opportunity to behave better than you have
before you are judged an incorriigible idiot and menace to society. Make
your choice wisely.
Robert Hanlin
> is, probably to your amazement, not your personal animosity towards me, but
> the programming language Common Lisp and/or the language family Lisp. Do you
> understand this or will you continue to attack me and not get the message?
> You will get preicsely one -1- opportunity to behave better than you have
> before you are judged an incorriigible idiot and menace to society. Make
> your choice wisely.
Oh, you would not like an attack? You prefer to call ilias an idiot,
use the word "you" all the time when trying to defeat cancers in your
newsgroup yet chide me for focussing on people?
All right. I merely charge that "you," in the abstract (who must be a
nice individual in the particular), disrupt the normal cycle of
learning in newsgroups like this. In other newsgroups, people learn
by making tentative posts without quite understanding the culture,
they are corrected in the main, and eventually become members who
enforce those norms. You ruin this process by playing the role of the
newsgroup-supported toxic granny, whom no one wants to be dominated
by.
http://www.winternet.com/~mikelr/flame5.html
What do you consider an important, enlightening post to c.l.lisp? I
notice that most of the time it's some variation of "Why don't people
like Lisp?" It comes in the guise of posts like "Why don't those
Python guys just use Lisp," or "Why is it so hard to get a normal job
doing lisp?" Maybe you don't like them, but since I've seen few
complaints, presumably that's considered a Useful topic here. So I'm
being precisely topical, because I think there is something about Lisp
which supports bureaucrats like a Naggum, someone who sits in his
comfortable space after having learned lisp and spends his day
flaming.
So more than attacking you, because you're unwilling to be attacked,
is that there's a problem with Lisp being sufficiently dull due to its
stability, and so there's not enough desire to build apps on top of
lisp because it's simply not enjoyable.
I presume that Graham will be successful with Arc, not so much because
of his interesting insights, but because it's a new language that
people can learn actively rather than passively.
Now to make this whole discussion concrete, let me point out one
discussion where you took part. Someone was trying to get a simple
Unix operation to work in Lisp, which struck him as a bit silly as he
didn't realize that the Lisp solution was more general if a bit
verbose. You responded that Lisp's handling of filesystems are
general, but wrapped it in paragraphs of bile. And he gave you an
insight that you cheerfully ignored! People think that computing
history started with Unix, which lifted everything out of the muck!
And so when people are faced with the prospect of learning loads of
generality when they just want to practice lisp by reading and parsing
a file, they can either be flamed or go to Python.
The Lisp cheerleaders TOLD them that Lisp was more powerful. They did
not tell them however, of the interesting generality. So it becomes
painful, not interesting, and they consider it an "academic" language
that doesn't work for the Real World. No one pointed out that, "Oh,
here's a macro that makes the learning curve flatter, just load this
in..." or "You may think that Unix is the phat, 'home boy,' but there
is so much history behind everything, take a look at this faq which
describes a different world than your 'crib.'"
> You will get preicsely one -1- opportunity to behave better than you have
> before you are judged an incorriigible idiot and menace to society.
Since your one -1- mechanism to do any more than this is a killfile, I
suggest you compromise with me and give me a couple more chances to
make mistakes before I learn to sit well in your culture and produce
insightful posts. After all, this is a social forum, and while it's
about ideas, you really shouldn't ignore its underlying nature of
people.
But do as you wish, I get the sad feeling that you've run an Eliza bot
against me, customizing some parts by hand before sending it to the
newsgroup... and I appreciate the fact I'm playing the straight man.
Rob
Kenny Tilton
Robert Hanlin wrote:
> Oh, you would not like an attack? You prefer to call ilias an idiot,
> use the word "you" all the time when trying to defeat cancers in your
> newsgroup yet chide me for focussing on people?
There are two kinds of folks on the Usenet. Those who engage in
protracted hand-to-hand combat with other posters, and those who do not.
:)
kenny
clinisys
Erik Naggum
[ deletia ]
Thank you for making the best choice you could possibly make given your
intellectual capacity. Your choice has been duly noted and will of course
be respected. If people want to read long stories about me by a disturbed
individual, they will know where to find them. If they want to read articles
on Common Lisp, they will know where not to find them. Thank you for
playing.
Robert Hanlin
> There are two kinds of folks on the Usenet. Those who engage in
> protracted hand-to-hand combat with other posters, and those who do not.
Don't worry, this is the first time I've started replying to his
posts, and it's clarified my thinking on what's missing from the lisp
community. I'm sorry if it's been stressful for anyone else, but at
least it was enlightening for me.
I would personally like to see c.l.lisp invaded, to be a place where
there can be interesting discussion for people who are new to lisp.
Naggum is perfectly rational in flaming me, since I really think his
culture should be destroyed.
These are the things I see with c.l.lisp today:
- it's been co-opted by Common Lisp, which is misleading for learners
- discussion concentrates too much on little historical quirks, than
on the deeper philosophy of Lisp
- more rewarding for some denizens to write pages of flames rather
than make a nice website to simply link to
- it's a natural meeting place for new people, but is not geared
towards them
- like some software packages, both lisp users and software have grown
sophisticated enough that the community has become forbidding to new
folk
- some smart people are emotionally sensitive, but that is no reason
to lose their thoughts
I did contribute something decent to c.l.lisp, at least so said the
people at Lambda the Ultimate; the Backus paper "Can Programming Be
Liberated from the von Neumann Style?"
http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs242/readings/backus.pdf
For all the "lisp" (really Common Lisp) advocacy here, no one
mentioned it. I had to stumble upon it via a random google search.
It's a million times more convincing than normal lisp advocacy, but
even knowledgable profs haven't found it on the net. Therefore,
c.l.lisp is a suspect place for really understanding the philosophy of
lisp. You probably can't expect a broad, evenhanded discussion here.
Clearly all this means it's sort of up to someone like me to play the
archaeologist and write up what I've learned about lisp, in a way that
new learners can appreciate the power and tradeoffs of the lisp
family. While I for some reason feel religious feelings towards
lambda, smart learners need to be respected.
Well, those are my thoughts. Maybe they can form into something
useful.
Rob
Erik Naggum
| Naggum is perfectly rational in flaming me, since I really think his
| culture should be destroyed.
Thanks for your candor.
| - some smart people are emotionally sensitive, but that is no reason
| to lose their thoughts
I think the best approach is to invite people over to an entirely different
service where they can have some say over the noise level. Usenet with a
volume knob, so to speak. Since the number of opinionated idiots on the Net
is only increasing, and good people leave because people like you want to
destroy what made it interesting to use the forum, there is no other option
but to give the interesting people an opportunity to be relieved of idiots.
| You probably can't expect a broad, evenhanded discussion here.
/You/ sure cannot expect that.
Vassil Nikolov
[...]
> I did contribute something decent to c.l.lisp, at least so said the
> people at Lambda the Ultimate; the Backus paper "Can Programming Be
> Liberated from the von Neumann Style?"
> http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs242/readings/backus.pdf
Did you contribute the paper, or the link to it?
> For all the "lisp" (really Common Lisp) advocacy here, no one
> mentioned it. I had to stumble upon it via a random google search.
> It's a million times more convincing than normal lisp advocacy, but
> even knowledgable profs haven't found it on the net.
Until now, I would have thought that paper was routinely mentioned in
the course of the first or second year in any decent computer science
curriculum, but I must have been wrong.
---Vassil.
Kenny Tilton
Robert Hanlin wrote:
> I would personally like to see c.l.lisp invaded, to be a place where
> there can be interesting discussion for people who are new to lisp.
Actually, newbies are well treated here in c.l.l. Even ilias was taken
seriously and given solid advice until one by one we all gave up on him.
Gratuitous efforts such as yours to clean up c.l.l. only add to the
noise. c.l.l. itself does not fret over c.l.l., and we are here day in
and day out. Knights in shining armor need not apply.
We should file this under Troll Patterns. You are not the first to
conclude that c.l.l. in general and EN in particular contribute
significantly to lisp being less popular than other languages, and go so
far as to try to raise a lynch mob to silence him. Never works. (Your
"seem to recall...huge problem...EN as representative" is not supported
by the archives.)
The pattern includes: such folk then blame c.l.l. for complicity or
cowardice rather than accept that they have misjudged things. But that
is terribly condescending towards the veterans here, so the trolls then
have tarred themselves with unsociability and soon stomp out the c.l.l.
door muttering unkind parting shots at us all.
> Naggum is perfectly rational in flaming me, since I really think his
> culture should be destroyed.
Oh, please. Sound the trumpets! Turn loose the hounds! Way too
self-important and grandiose. Simply joining c.l.l. and making positive
contributions would have been more consistent with your stated goal.
Even taking issue with others as you see fit is dandy. Just speak for
yourself and ease up on the crusadespeak.
Sorry for nagging you, but try as I might I have not been able to break
into the Top Ten statistics around here so I am posting articles I
usually discard once composed.
:)
kenny
clinisys
Duane Rettig
> Kenny Tilton <kti...@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> > There are two kinds of folks on the Usenet. Those who engage in
> > protracted hand-to-hand combat with other posters, and those who do not.
>
> Don't worry, this is the first time I've started replying to his
> posts, and it's clarified my thinking on what's missing from the lisp
> community. I'm sorry if it's been stressful for anyone else, but at
> least it was enlightening for me.
No stress here. I just hope it's not too stressful for you, once you
realize your thinking isn't as clear as you think.
> I would personally like to see c.l.lisp invaded, to be a place where
> there can be interesting discussion for people who are new to lisp.
> Naggum is perfectly rational in flaming me, since I really think his
> culture should be destroyed.
There are many ways to interpret this paragraph:
1. Erik Naggum is a cultured person, and he should be turned into
a barbarian.
2. Some Lisp purists should come into c.l.l and destroy Erik's pet
culture, Common Lisp.
3. Someone should break into Erik's lab and destroy his petri dishes.
Others, anyone?
> These are the things I see with c.l.lisp today:
OK, but I don't see them the same way as you do:
> - it's been co-opted by Common Lisp, which is misleading for learners
Let's talk about the history of Common Lisp. In a nutshell, it was an
effort by Lisp users and vendors of many different philosophies and
dialects to come together as one, and Common Lisp was the result. Yes,
Common Lisp was co-opted as Lisp, by Lispers, if you take the first
meaning of the word co-opt in my dictionary (which means "to vote
into a body by joint action or by votes of the existing members" (World
Book). After the co-opting, users of most of the other Lisp dialects
chose willingly to abandon their dialects, with a few exceptions
(scheme, elisp, and autolisp being the most obvious).
> - discussion concentrates too much on little historical quirks, than
> on the deeper philosophy of Lisp
Hmm, I see you're stuck on Lambda Calculus and FP. What makes you think
that these define Lisp today?
> - more rewarding for some denizens to write pages of flames rather
> than make a nice website to simply link to
How about http://www.lisp.org?
> - it's a natural meeting place for new people, but is not geared
> towards them
The internet is definitely _not_ a good place to meet new people.
> - like some software packages, both lisp users and software have grown
> sophisticated enough that the community has become forbidding to new
> folk
I had thought that this list of yours was one which you considered to
be Bad Things. How is this a Bad Thing? If I ever need surgery, I am
certainly grateful that the community of surgeons doesn't make it too
easy for new folk to join.
> - some smart people are emotionally sensitive, but that is no reason
> to lose their thoughts
Take care for your own sensitivities, lest you get lost in your own
thoughts.
> I did contribute something decent to c.l.lisp, at least so said the
> people at Lambda the Ultimate; the Backus paper "Can Programming Be
> Liberated from the von Neumann Style?"
> http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs242/readings/backus.pdf
>
> For all the "lisp" (really Common Lisp) advocacy here, no one
> mentioned it. I had to stumble upon it via a random google search.
> It's a million times more convincing than normal lisp advocacy, but
> even knowledgable profs haven't found it on the net. Therefore,
> c.l.lisp is a suspect place for really understanding the philosophy of
> lisp. You probably can't expect a broad, evenhanded discussion here.
Of course not. After all, we are talking about Pure Functional Lisp,
here, aren't we?
Why would we want to mention a paper which only mentions Lisp 3 times,
once by reference to McCarthy (whom I'd rather reference directly),
and twice referring to Pure Lisp (which it even admits doesn't exist)?
How is such a paper enlightening? How is it possibly evenhanded?
> Clearly all this means it's sort of up to someone like me to play the
> archaeologist and write up what I've learned about lisp, in a way that
> new learners can appreciate the power and tradeoffs of the lisp
> family.
I'd be delighted to see your theorys about what makes Lisp powerful
and separates it from other languages. Draw on all the archaeology
you desire.
> While I for some reason feel religious feelings towards
> lambda, smart learners need to be respected.
Hmm, religious feelings? Shouldn't that be Lambda then?
> Well, those are my thoughts. Maybe they can form into something
> useful.
That would be very interesting.
--
Duane Rettig du...@franz.com Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/
555 12th St., Suite 1450 http://www.555citycenter.com/
Oakland, Ca. 94607 Phone: (510) 452-2000; Fax: (510) 452-0182
Marc Spitzer
news:c427d639.02092...@posting.google.com:
> Kenny Tilton <kti...@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
>> There are two kinds of folks on the Usenet. Those who engage in
>> protracted hand-to-hand combat with other posters, and those who do not.
>
> Don't worry, this is the first time I've started replying to his
> posts, and it's clarified my thinking on what's missing from the lisp
> community. I'm sorry if it's been stressful for anyone else, but at
> least it was enlightening for me.
>
> I would personally like to see c.l.lisp invaded, to be a place where
> there can be interesting discussion for people who are new to lisp.
> Naggum is perfectly rational in flaming me, since I really think his
> culture should be destroyed.
From what I have seen of Eriks culuture here is the culture of a master
craftsman who takes great pride in his craft and tools. And he is more
then willing to help new people learn lisp/programming, as long as you
behave in a professional and adult mannor. People who do not behave this
way get incouraged to do so in his unique style. In fact my first
interaction with Erik was getting a dose of his uniq corrective language in
responce to a a post of mine. The odd thing was he was right, so I
apoligized and that was the end of it. I have also seen Erik apoligize
here when he has been shown to be wrong, to his satisfaction.
The other attatude is the learn X in 21 days crapola. Well I do not think
that is any way to build a carier that is mesured in decades.
Remember learning a craft is like growing up, when you get to 30 or so you
tend to relize that dam near all the stuff that your parents taught you, or
tried to when you were 16 and knew it all, was correct.
>
> These are the things I see with c.l.lisp today:
> - it's been co-opted by Common Lisp, which is misleading for learners
What other versions of "lisp" are out there in widespread use do not have
their own news groups?
> - discussion concentrates too much on little historical quirks, than
> on the deeper philosophy of Lisp
zen and the art of lisp coding???
> - more rewarding for some denizens to write pages of flames rather
> than make a nice website to simply link to
Are you saying that people should put up websites full of flames and just
link to it? And why do you think that Erik finds it rewarding? Could it
be he just feels it may be nessary to do?
> - it's a natural meeting place for new people, but is not geared
> towards them
No place worth staying is geared to new people. When it is for new people
they leave when they are not new. I want a place that is for experts so I
have a shot at becoming one by learning from them.
> - like some software packages, both lisp users and software have grown
> sophisticated enough that the community has become forbidding to new
> folk
There is a cost of entry, both socal ant technical. If you do not
want to pay it fine you will not get in.
> - some smart people are emotionally sensitive, but that is no reason
> to lose their thoughts
But are they well manored? If they are civil or try to be they do not get
flamed, most of the time.
>
> I did contribute something decent to c.l.lisp, at least so said the
> people at Lambda the Ultimate; the Backus paper "Can Programming Be
> Liberated from the von Neumann Style?"
> http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs242/readings/backus.pdf
>
> For all the "lisp" (really Common Lisp) advocacy here, no one
I just took a quick look at it, it is an APL paper from what I skimed. And
this is what you consider a real meaningful contrabution to the group, one
url from a google search? You want praise and respect for that? It apears
that you set very low standards for yourself, you should fix that.
> mentioned it. I had to stumble upon it via a random google search.
> It's a million times more convincing than normal lisp advocacy, but
> even knowledgable profs haven't found it on the net. Therefore,
> c.l.lisp is a suspect place for really understanding the philosophy of
> lisp. You probably can't expect a broad, evenhanded discussion here.
>
> Clearly all this means it's sort of up to someone like me to play the
> archaeologist and write up what I've learned about lisp, in a way that
> new learners can appreciate the power and tradeoffs of the lisp
> family. While I for some reason feel religious feelings towards
> lambda, smart learners need to be respected.
I am reminded of a quote from the Supranos, "If you want respect you give
respect" rough quote. You do not apear to give respect to others so why
should other people give you any?
>
> Well, those are my thoughts. Maybe they can form into something
> useful.
Here are some things for you to think about:
On a purly practical level Erik is very useful and you have not proven to
be of much, if any, use.
And once you start down this path you are in for a long haul and you will
not win from what I have seen here.
marc
>
>
> Rob
>
Frank A. Adrian
> These are the things I see with c.l.lisp today:
> - it's been co-opted by Common Lisp, which is misleading for learners
In what way? Which "learners" are being confused? What other Lisp vehicles
are available to learners? If by the previous, you mean scheme or emacs
lisp, there are other newsgroups better suited towards them. If by
learning Lisp philosophy, it probably cannot be well-taught outside the
context of a particular Lisp, which leads you back to either Common Lisp or
other languages or dialects with other, more appropriate newsgroups. If
you want to cry over dead implementations like T or OakLisp, that's just
too pathetic for words.
> - discussion concentrates too much on little historical quirks, than
> on the deeper philosophy of Lisp
I haven't seen this. I would not be so arrogant to think that I could
understand Western philosophy without also understanding historical
"quirks" such as Greek democracy or that rise of Papal power in Western
Europe. Why do you think you can understand the "deeper philosophy of
Lisp" without understanding some of the historical features behind its
development?
> - more rewarding for some denizens to write pages of flames rather
> than make a nice website to simply link to
Well, we try to keep the riff-raff out, but folks like you keep butting back
in...
> - it's a natural meeting place for new people, but is not geared
> towards them
Why should it be geared towards them? I think one of the worst things that
has happened to newsgroups is that people have come to believe that they
can waltz into them without even having done a Google search on the topic,
say "Explain it all to me in two sentences", and expect an answer other
than "Fuck off, you lazy little shit." You seem to think that being lazy
and unprepared is a virtue that grants some sort of nobility of naivete
upon the idiot. This is a stupid idea. In addition, if someone comes in
and asks a question about Lisp that is obviously not homework, most people
here give answers in the spirit that question was asked. The only time I
have seen someone talked harshly to is if, after receiving the answer to
their question, they say something like "That's stupid," or "I don't think
it should be that way," at which point it is pointed out to them that maybe
they ought to learn something about the language before they stoop to
criticize it.
> - some smart people are emotionally sensitive, but that is no reason
> to lose their thoughts
I haven't noticed any thoughts being lost.
> I did contribute something decent to c.l.lisp, at least so said the
> people at Lambda the Ultimate; the Backus paper "Can Programming Be
> Liberated from the von Neumann Style?"
> http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs242/readings/backus.pdf
Yeah, most of us around here read Backus' paper when it was published as a
Turing Award lecture in the days before CACM became dumbed down by
attitudes akin to your desire to be relevant to newbies and oher denizens
of the unwashed masses. A great contribution you have made, pointing out a
paper that is 20+ years old, well-known in the community, and has little to
do with Lisp, per se. Maybe if you actually become familiar with the
literature, you can find something that is actually useful.
> For all the "lisp" (really Common Lisp) advocacy here, no one
> mentioned it.
Mainly becuase it's old and has little to do with Lisp. Besides you were
just bitching about us being too focused on "historical quirks", which is
what FP was. And, in case you haven't noticed, since that paper, there's
been a whole world of functional programming research that's been done.
Why is this research (which is more timely and probably just as relevant)
not more noticable than Backus' FP paper?
> I had to stumble upon it via a random google search.
At least you did one. Thank you for that, at least.
> It's a million times more convincing than normal lisp advocacy, but
> even knowledgable profs haven't found it on the net. Therefore,
> c.l.lisp is a suspect place for really understanding the philosophy of
> lisp. You probably can't expect a broad, evenhanded discussion here.
So you're having a little public snit because your expectations weren't met.
Tell me why I should care?
> Clearly all this means it's sort of up to someone like me to play the
> archaeologist and write up what I've learned about lisp, in a way that
> new learners can appreciate the power and tradeoffs of the lisp
> family. While I for some reason feel religious feelings towards
> lambda, smart learners need to be respected.
There are already plenty of documents out there that do a good job. Because
you haven't found them, don't assume (a) that they don't exist or (b) that
you can do better. You could actually start with the papers from the two
HOPL proceedings on Lisp. These are historically valid, being written by
people who were there at the time (McCarthy for the first, and Gabriel and
Steele for the second) and give tons of references to other good material.
As for your own paper, please, have at it - when we see your result, it
might actually be reasonable. Just make sure that it's well researched an
factual before you go off spouting.
> Well, those are my thoughts. Maybe they can form into something
> useful.
Form your thoughts into something useful first, then figure out if your
little snit was worth having.
faa
Bruce Hoult
findler...@yahoo.com (Robert Hanlin) wrote:
> I did contribute something decent to c.l.lisp, at least so said the
> people at Lambda the Ultimate; the Backus paper "Can Programming Be
> Liberated from the von Neumann Style?"
> http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs242/readings/backus.pdf
>
> For all the "lisp" (really Common Lisp) advocacy here, no one
> mentioned it. I had to stumble upon it via a random google search.
> It's a million times more convincing than normal lisp advocacy, but
> even knowledgable profs haven't found it on the net.
I just read this paper again. The last time was in probably 1983. It's
interesting that it had a big effect on me back then, but now I can see
that he *totally* missed the subsequent major developments in computer
architecture that allow modern computers to largely side-step the von
Neumann bottleneck. Our RAM chips today have maybe 1/20th of the
latency of the RAM available when that paper was written, but computers
are more than 10,000 times faster.
Not that this negates his points about FP in the long run, but it sure
has extended the practical lifetime of FORTRAN/C by a lot.
-- Bruce
Robert Hanlin
> Gratuitous efforts such as yours to clean up c.l.l. only add to the
> noise. c.l.l. itself does not fret over c.l.l., and we are here day in
> and day out. Knights in shining armor need not apply.
Of course. Obviously your episode with ilias is one that will
eventually reach some nice conclusion, since while this is an
unmoderated forum, you guys have more investment and patience here
than do others. The downside is that a) you need to spend time
managing the forum and b) some good people don't have the patience and
leave. Erik sort of sacrifices himself as a necessity, and while he
occasionally kills off people who actually seem to be fine
contributing members to other forums (I've received a couple letters
from them), them's the breaks. Obviously no one likes that unclean
result.
Certainly, Naggum's assessment of my posts are right, and I notice
he's written two more posts that I have no interest in reading. Those
two minutes of his life are wasted, another demonstration of the
messiness of his job.
> Simply joining c.l.l. and making positive
> contributions would have been more consistent with your stated goal.
> Even taking issue with others as you see fit is dandy. Just speak for
> yourself and ease up on the crusadespeak.
I have no intention of actually following up on what I said, which
makes me a troll. Fortunately I do personally know people who are
actually doing what I alluded to, so no loss to you. There are other
mitigating factors. c.l.lisp is not the only place to discuss lisp.
There is a good body of literature on the subject which makes a lot of
discussion redundant. And the case studies of AI companies put things
like the Lisp Machine in perspective. No real complaints.
Rob
Robert Hanlin
> Did you contribute the paper, or the link to it?
I can't tell if you are asking me if I scanned it in for cs242 or are
asking me a rhetorical question whether I wrote it. If the former,
with all respect I already answered this; and if the latter, it's
probably a pointless piece of discussion if people who need it most
can't conveniently read it at leisure. (I didn't intend to credit
myself like Prometheus, if you happen to imply that.)
> Until now, I would have thought that paper was routinely mentioned in
> the course of the first or second year in any decent computer science
> curriculum, but I must have been wrong.
It is mentioned as a footnote in SICP. But clearly "decent computer
science curriculums" do not hold much power over the IT industry.
(And I think you would like the industry to produce commodity machines
that run CS languages elegantly.) Maybe that's not a bad thing; the
industry is a domain where certain factors dominate pure technical
competence.
Rob
ilias
> Kenny Tilton <kti...@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
>
>>There are two kinds of folks on the Usenet. Those who engage in
>>protracted hand-to-hand combat with other posters, and those who do not.
[...]
> I would personally like to see c.l.lisp invaded, to be a place where
> there can be interesting discussion for people who are new to lisp.
patience.
The Spirit of Lisp.
> Naggum is perfectly rational in flaming me, since I really think his
> culture should be destroyed.
patience.
Selfdestruction.
> These are the things I see with c.l.lisp today:
[...]
> Well, those are my thoughts. Maybe they can form into something
> useful.
they form into.
Answers.
Translucency.