> 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
On Wed, Sep 25, 2002 at 12:41:07AM +0000, Wade Humeniuk wrote: > "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 <mdan...@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."
* Kenny Tilton | 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, 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.
* Brian Palmer | 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?
-- 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.
> 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.
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 <wes...@ilt.fhg.de> wrote in message <news:3D9163CE.95C4A177@ilt.fhg.de>... > [...] > > the most terrible criminals in world history
> Not counting a certain other regime farther east...
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.
Joe Marshall <j...@ccs.neu.edu> writes: > Tim Bradshaw <t...@cley.com> writes:
> > 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.
Ilias, on the other hand, sees nothing wrong with abusing himself by amusing people like this :-)
* 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. 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 wrote: > * 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.
I actually somewhat disagree with this. The word Bedlam is derived from 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!
* Will Deakin wrote: > 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...
Erik Naggum wrote: > * 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"
Tim wrote: > 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.)).
I feel very much like this also. Hmmm.
> 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...
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.
>>* 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.
>> "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)
Fred Gilham <gil...@snapdragon.csl.sri.com> writes: > 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:"
> "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/
* Brian Palmer | 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, 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.
* Tim Bradshaw | 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.
-- 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 <e...@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?
I suppose it's still too early, but who knows? And what better test forum than c.l.l?
Vassil Nikolov wrote: > Jacek Podkanski <jacekpodkan...@supanet.com> wrote in message > <news:aJ6k9.11187$DR.849561@newsfep2-win.server.ntli.net>... > [...] >> 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.
I mean uncompressed files. Mostly pdf and Postscript. Thank you for the link. I will have a look at your HyperSpec. -- Jacek Podkanski
The world rejoiced as k...@shore.net (Kurt B. Kaiser) wrote:
> Erik Naggum <e...@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
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.
