You speak with disdain of those who think "absolutely," but your
behavior in this forum often amounts to a call for those who don't meet
your absolute standards of technical understanding to commit suicide and
recycle "the wasted resources that did not achieve contextual
understanding in its lifetime."

The only alternative is that you are being facetious with your calls for
those you dislike to commit suicide. But your repeated defense and
elaboration of these arguments suggests that you are not joking, and
mean what you say.

  Would you let us in on your inventions in telepathy?

  Just because you believe something does not make it fact.  You seem to
  have a /really/ hard time grasping this extremely simple concept.

| You speak with disdain of those who think "absolutely," but your behavior
| in this forum often amounts to a call for those who don't meet your
| absolute standards of technical understanding to commit suicide and
| recycle "the wasted resources that did not achieve contextual
| understanding in its lifetime."

  This would be the conclusion from someone who does not understand
  context.  Just as expected, in other words.

| Compassionate people think that there is something profoundly wrong with
| someone who values technical ideas above human life.

  Are you saying that you consider yourself /compassionate/?  *laugh* That
  /really/ takes the cake.  You are an abusive, obsessive nutcase who has
  such a huge hangup with me that you keep harping on the same string long
  after it has ceased to be relevant to anyone else.  You are a waste of
  space and a serious annoyance to this forum.  The only way you could
  improve on the condition in this newsgroup were to quit posting your
  abusive messages directed at me.  People need your poisonous bile like
  they need a punctured gall bladder.  Everybody here knows that you have a
  serious emotional problem with respect to me and that you are unlikely to
  ever get over it.  So who cares?  /You/ keep bringing the painful things
  up again and keep re-living it as if I should care that you inflict pain
  on yourself.  You could stop that any moment, but you don't.  Clearly,
  you are stark raving mad and instead of seeking help to get over your
  traumatic experiences, seek to inflict pain on others, as well.  This is
  evil.  This is why you think others are evil, too.  This is why you will
  never become a human being worth having compassion for.

  So go kill yourself, now.  OK?

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

  No, I did not, I ridiculed your idiotic psychological hangup and intended
  to inflict pain on you in the way you have shown me it works best.  But
  more importantly, I wanted to see if I had to revise my opinion of you,
  and now, thanks to your retarded response, I can conclude: You cannot
  possibly have an IQ above 70.  It is impossible for someone to be so
  stupid as you are without an actual deficit of capacity.  Therefore, I
  apologize for making fun of you in a way you were clearly unable to
  understand.  It is not nice to make fun of people with handicaps, so I
  apologize profusely for doing so.

| Despite your elaborate rationalizations, you completely gloss over your
| own abusive behavior.

  No, I do not.  Before I listen to criticism, I want abusive bastards who
  keep going after me to show me that you can stop doing what you do.  If
  you cannot stop, then you have no reason whatsoever to harangue me for
  your own failures, and you show me that you consider your responses
  appropriate to the stimuli you receive.  So do I for mine.  For some
  reason that is probably sufficiently explained by low IQ, you do not see
  the pattern involved here and think that the substance of what you do not
  like makes such a huge difference that any similarities are to be ignored.

  You make the same same mistake that any other retard does: They think the
  world is no more complex than they can grasp.  You have to have an IQ
  above a certain level to understand that the world is vastly more complex
  than any one person can grasp at any one time.  Some have set that at 85,
  other at 75 (1 sigma = 15).  You fall /way/ below either threshold.  I
  repeat from my previous message: Just because you believe it, does not
  make it fact.  You simply do not grasp this, do you?  That which Raffael
  Cavallaro believes, that also exists.  Therefore, whether you make claims
  about your beliefs or about facts makes no difference to you at all,
  because it is all the same to you.  This is why you actually /believe/ all
  the horrible accusations you pass my way, too, and I can only look at the
  deranged retard who screams at me from a street corner in Berkeley with
  metabolized sympathy -- that residual effect of having felt sympathy,
  except for the feeling of sympathy part.

| There's little point in continuing attempts to persuade you that you'd be
| a much greater asset to the Common Lisp you value so highly if you only
| treated posters to c.l.l better.

  I realize that your low intelligence makes it hard for you to understand,
  but you have to work hard at this particular question: Why should anyone
  do what you think is better?  What gives you the right to demand anything
  of anybody other than yourself?  When you clearly do not demand anything
  of yourself, least of all civil behavior, what you demand of others is less
  than worthless -- you are a parasite.  This is the crucial point that you
  have never been able to understand that has been questioned all along.

  Here's the recipe for actually communicating that civility is valued.  It
  is one of the most difficult things in the world, if we are to watch the
  people who demand it from others, who think that it is not rude to call
  others rude.  Be prepared because this will come as a shock.  The one
  recipe for actually communicating that civility is the desired form of
  human communication is this one simple imperative.  OK?  All well
  prepared for the tremendous force of this recipe?  Here we go, then:

                                 Be civil.

  I know, whoa!, heavy.  But let it sink.  Let it affect you slowly if you
  cannot take it in all at once.  Then actually follow it.  Then save this
  for later, because it will take time to figure out how they are related:
  The one recipe for getting uncivil behavior from other people.  You need
  to know this because you need to know when you have be civil and have to
  resist the urge to say what you think.  Here is the recipe to get uncivil
  behavior from other people.  Now, remember, this is what you should /not/
  do if you want to be /really/ civil to other people.  This can be a heavy
  blow even though you have to save it for later when you have managed to
  internalize the previous heavy rule.  So, again, the recipe for getting
  uncivil behavior from other people, which you should /not/ do, is:

                                Annoy them.

  Please do not post about civility or rudeness or any such thing if you do
  not understand these recipes.  Thank you.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

*Everyones's* utterances are opinions in that there is no absolute knowledge,
truth etc. Dismissing what others say on this basis is a) stupid and b)
applies equally well to your assertions.

You keep using this technique to dismiss anyone's criticisms about
you. Apparently you think it effective.

I think it might be a public service to make the following point.  I
may be presumptuous here, but I will attempt to clarify Erik Naggum's
behavior in the hope that people will stop embroiling themselves in
useless flame fests.

The `secret' to understanding Erik Naggum is to realize that he cares
about other things more than he does civility.  He does not consider
civility a goal in and of itself, or at least, he does not consider it
a high priority goal.

Many people are civil because they want to be liked and accepted.
Erik doesn't care if he's liked and accepted.  He would like to be
respected, but even then he doesn't care if he's not respected by
people he doesn't respect.

You can call this arrogance, ego or whatever you want.  But that won't
change it.  If you don't come to grips with the above, you will waste
time in futile efforts to convince Erik that his behavior is uncivil,
because he doesn't care if it is or not when other things he values
more are at stake.

If, on the other hand, you were to convince Erik that something he
said were technically incorrect, that would make a difference.  I've
seen it before: he admits his error.

In other words, Erik's values are not yours.  I personally would
prefer that he had different values; I regret very much his chronic
feuds with Erann Gat, for example.  But I don't expect to change him
by yelling at him. (Or change Erann, for that matter.)

One more thing.  Erik claims that his detractors don't care about
civility either.  That's because they themselves are willing to
sacrifice civility when they are offended.  This is a good point.  You
know how much you value civility by finding out when you are willing
to abandon it.  It's like the joke about the man who asked a woman if
she'd marry him for a million dollars.  She said, "Sure."  Then he
asked her if she'd sleep with him for fifty dollars.  She was greatly
offended.  "What kind of a woman do you think I am?" she replied.  He
said, "We've already established that.  We're just haggling over the
price."

On 4 Oct 2002, Ray Blaak wrote:

The most damning criticism of this type of philosophy is that it is
inherently paradoxical.  Suppose it is correct.  Some people believe it,
others don't.  But this means that people that believe in absolute truth
are WRONG and people that don't are RIGHT.  In other words, the philosophy
itself is absolutely true!

Nowadays there is also the philosophy of "tolerance", which basically says
that every culture should tolerate other cultures.  But this philosophy is
also paradoxical.  What if another culture is intolerant?  Do you tolerate
that?  Suppose you do tolerate intolerance.  Your own culture has tolerant
and intolerant people; since you have decided to tolerate intolerance you
should tolerate the intolerant people in your own culture.  But then the
philosophy of tolerance is vacuous, since it is no different than no
philosophy.  On the other hand, if you decide to not tolerate intolerance
then you are imposing your own cultural values (tolerance) onto other
cultures, which violates the idea of tolerance.

  However tasteless it is to use names in the Subject, this was a pretty
  good summary, actually.  That is probably a first in and of itself.

| He does not consider civility a goal in and of itself [...]

  Quite right.  I actually cannot stand people who are polite and civil but
  have nothing whatsoever to communicate or accomplish with it.  Civility
  is a protocol to get something done in a situation where people need to
  feel good about themselves.  It is vitally important when you want to get
  those things done that require it.  However, your "feeling good" is not
  something you can require other people to cater to without having a clear
  purpose to the exchange in the first place.

| Erik doesn't care if he's liked and accepted.

  Yes, I do, but I do not seek a professional, technical forum about
  (Common) Lisp to be liked and accepted.  If I do not find myself liked
  and accepted, I, too, feel unhappy, and I am actually quite hurt by the
  numerous evil people who do nothing on this newsgroup but attack me.
  What the fuck do they think this forum is for?  Take them away, and there
  is /very/ little hostile traffic in this newsgroup.  And I do /not/ start
  whatever remains.  Just look at the recent number of assholes who had to
  opine about me.  So, yes, I care very much when these assholes fill the
  newsgroup with hate rhetoric.

  However, it is more correct that I do not think being liked and accepted
  should take predence to technical matters /in a technical forum/.  It
  would be inconceivable for me to say "I like you as a person, but you
  post misinformation about Common Lisp in comp.lang.lisp".  I think that
  would be about as likely as a stock broker saying "I like you as a person,
  but you give your customers really bad stock advice", or a priest saying
  to another "I really like you as a person, but could you please cut down
  on murdering abortion doctors?"

| He would like to be respected, but even then he doesn't care if he's not
| respected by people he doesn't respect.

  It is because I fundamentally respect people that I think they should
  listen.  However, I find that the disrespect that people resort to when
  they do not "feel good" is quite alarming.

| You can call this arrogance, ego or whatever you want.

  I do not care much what people call it, but I fail to see how ranking
  being liked and accepted and resepcted lower than technical merits can be
  called ego, though.  In other words, I expect to be liked, accepted and
  respected for on technical merit /in a technical forum/.

| If, on the other hand, you were to convince Erik that something he said
| were technically incorrect, that would make a difference.  I've seen it
| before: he admits his error.

  I appreciate that at least someone sees this.

| In other words, Erik's values are not yours.

  This sounds a little too general.  I have found a lot more people who
  share my values that do not.  Very few people actually stand up and say
  they prefer a forum of civil and polite idiots to a forum of sometimes
  quarreling experts, and for the newbie who wants to learn and seeks help,
  fora that are rife with polite idiots who give bad advice is really not
  something you know how much you will hate until you experience it.

| I personally would prefer that he had different values; I regret very
| much his chronic feuds with Erann Gat, for example.

  I havea no idea why Erann thinks this forum is a suitable place to spew
  accusations against me and post so much poisonous bile.  What does that
  fucking moron expect to /achieve/?  That shithead is purely destructive.

| You know how much you value civility by finding out when you are willing
| to abandon it.

  Glad to see someone else make this point.  I have argued strongly that if
  your ethical standards are abandoned when you deal with people you do
  feel "enough" sympathy or empathy with, they are worthless.  The great
  invention of "due process" is precisely that which treats people with a
  fundamental /respect/ regardless of what they have /done/.  I really try
  to do this myself, but I find that even knowledge of the legal system and
  appreciation of the concept of due process is /missing/ in people who
  waste no opportunity to attack me, unfairly, unjustly, and most of all
  for things they /invent/ and which I have never done.  False accusations
  is the ultimate disrespect.

  But I can't quite get over seeing such an inflammatory Subject line above
  such accurate contents.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

(Of course, I cannot completely rule out the possibility that I am, as you
have claimed in the past, mentally ill, and that you have some
extraordinary power to accurately diagnose my mental illnesses through our
usenet exchanges.  I have actually considered this possibility more
seriously than you know.  (The number of people who support you in this
newsgroup has given me serious pause.)  But I have reached the tentative
conclusion that I am sufficiently sane to judge my own motives and beliefs
better than you can.  So on matters of my beliefs, yes, I will be
correcting you when you get it wrong.  Everything else is just my
opinion.)

(BTW, I am repeating your own words to you not to mock you but because I
believe that much of what you say is very sound advice.  My main
disagreement with you is that IN MY OPINION you do not practice what you
preach.)

Not only am I receptive to evidence that would falsify my position, I have
in fact suggested an experiment with a possible outcome that would falsify
my position.  But I cannot conduct that experiment, only you can, so that
ball is in your court.  (I notice, by the way, that seems to be exactly
what you're doing.  So I am going to try to reciprocate by going back to
talking about Lisp now -- in another thread.  This one's worn out.)

  Let me know when you have words of your own to share with us.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

  People who openly favor lynch mobs are not evidencing mental health.
  People who actually congregate for mutual support, do not turn hateful.

--
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

I hoped to make you see that you engage in the same behavior that you
decry in others.  It is astonishing to me that anyone can read (or write)
the paragraph above and not be rocked by its blatant hypocricy.

Many people whom I believe could make constructive contributions here have
fled c.l.l. because of you.  I know because they have sent me private
emails encouraging my efforts here.  I hoped to change things so that they
might return.

I hoped to change things so that visitors to c.l.l. would not made to feel
like pariahs for taking umbrage when someone calls them a shithead.

I have not made as many technical contributions to this newsgroup as you
have.  I nevertheless stand proudly behind my record of contribution to
the Lisp community.  I helped Lisp get into space.  I taught Lisp to
students.  I published one of the very few studies comparing programming
languages that shows quantitatively how Lisp is superior to Java and C++.

I created jobs for Lisp programmers.

Those are all things that I was trying to accomplish.  You win some, you
lose some.

Now I have had my fill of it for a while, so I am going walkabout (again)
where there be not Naggums (to paraphrase one of the people who has
written me privately concerning my efforts here).

If there's anyone left out there who still cares about what I have to say,
my email address is g...@jpl.nasa.gov.

Bye for now.

The original subject line came about in the heat of composition; I
didn't think about it enough.

I think I'm going to post a Lisp question and try to get my name
associated with something more on-topic....

I myself was very surprised when I first made this experience, because
it seems illogical at first that these things matter so much in a
superficially purely technical context. But they do.

The Writers' Workshop format has been adapted from a similar format for
literature/poetry workshops, so there is a traceable history.

http://hillside.net might be a good starting point to learn more about
the Writers' Workshop format. For example,
http://www.hillside.net/patterns/EuroPLoP/details.html contains a small
section about it. Richard Gabriel has written a book about it - see
http://www.dreamsongs.com/Books.html for more details.

So essentially it is not only conceivable that saying first some nice
things is "better", it's a proven technique. (I guess you can also draw
some evidence from psychological studies, but I am not sure in this regard.)

Of course, this wouldn't make sense in the example of "murdering
abortion doctors", but I guess this example was a bit exaggerated to
make your point clear.

I also have to admit that I don't know a lot about the "history" of the
arguments in c.l.l. So maybe my point is not so relevant in this
context. (Sorry in advance if that's the case.)

Not that I disagree. My tai chi teacher would always begin a (highly
technical) form correction by saying "what you do is good" or "i used to
do it that way" or "not bad". even when i knew he was just being nice it
still worked: it made me feel better about (and more receptive to) the
criticism I was about to receive.

I am too subtle sometimes. What I am after is for folks not to post
articles about anything other than, well, the Lisp family.  If you can't
get this through your fucking head...

...just kidding, but that is how I feel we end up in these death spirals
and how folks' personal names end up getting bandied about: frustration
with correspondents leads unfortunately to articles in a language NG
focused on individual frustrating posters.

Those who are ganging up these days on one such easily-frustrated CL
luminary are no better than he, in that their motivation is frustration
with someone posting on CL. We the chorus are often asked why we do not
castigate him, just as we castigate you for your attacks on him... that
is just more frustration on their part, this time with the community.

Hazarding a guess, we the community have abstracted away from each side
of the issue to the higher sin of both sides focusing on individuals.
[Aside: I was delighted to read EN's assertion of something I have long
suspected, viz, that respect for the individual underlies his attacks on
them.]

anyway, ask not how c.l.l. can pummel for you your adversaries, ask how
you can stop being adversarial in c.l.l.

Still, I take it back. Erik is not stark raving mad. He does have his obvious
lucid moments, after all.

I now think he has Tourette's Syndrome, usenet style.

The typical naggumite encounter goes like this:

moron #1: [being a moron]
erik: [chastizing moron #1]
moron #1: "why are you so mean?"
erik: [flamage]
moron #2: "hey, that's rude. stop that."
erik: [thermonuclear flamage. moron #2's continent razed to sea level]
moron #3: "um..."

Sweet jesus, man! If you think you are being lynched, just what in holy hell
do you call your moron elimination tactics?