From ... Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!newsfeeds.belnet.be!news.belnet.be!npeer.kpnqwest.net!reader3.kpnqwest.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: Freedom of different opinions was: Offensive Language and Rude Manners in comp.lang.lisp; An Example... References: <3BB7B98E.9FB09B00@freenet.de> <3BB8D11A.5C0B90BD@melbpc.org.au> <3bb90b82$0$13440$9b622d9e@news.freenet.de> Mail-Copies-To: never From: Erik Naggum Message-ID: <3210976355163755@naggum.net> Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway Lines: 168 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) Emacs/20.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2001 01:52:41 GMT X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@Norway.EU.net X-Trace: reader3.kpnqwest.net 1001987561 193.71.66.49 (Tue, 02 Oct 2001 03:52:41 MET DST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2001 03:52:41 MET DST Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.lisp:17229 * Stefan Kain | I didn't say what he has to do, but what I think would help everybody, if | he refrained from doing it. (which is insulting those who live in the | pity of having a different opinion than he has.) Could you at least refrain from insulting every intelligent person on the planet and understand that by perpetuating the Foderaroesque distortion of the truth that "different opinion" has anything whatsoever to do with any reaction at all, you are personally guilty of blaming someone for your very own lack of intelligence and willingness to understand an issue that portrays you as a moralistic tyrant who precisely tells people what to do, and not only that, you accuse them falsely of things you have no evidence to support and much evidence against. It is flat out amazing that people are so insulated from the process of thinking that they _stop_ at "different opinion". Do people never ask _why_ people have different opinions? Do you never consider that there is a _reason_ that people decide to stop understanding an issue when they have a "different opinion"? The problem is not people who have different opinions on the best pizza crust or the most tasty filling in pies, it is people who think that lying, misrepresenting, falsifying evidence, and flat out refusing to think portray something as _fact_ under guise of being an "opinion". People simply do not have "opinions" on whether there are two World Trade Towers in New York City or whether they have been destroyed. People _have_ "opinions" on whether the appropriate response is to intern every Arab and muslim in the United States, but if you stop to talk to those who have this opinion, you might discover that they are indeed enraged, frightened, and irrational and that they change their opinion when they calm down a bit and consider the consequences of their opinions. It is if they are permanently irrational, if they _keep_ arguing for such a fantastically misguided reponse even when they have calmed down and had time and reason to think about their position that there is something _wrong_ with their value systems. It did not stop at a difference of opinion. The discussion _started_ with a difference of opinion. It _ended_ when the person who keeps favoring interning people because of a group affiliation does not back down and start to think. There is nothing you _can_ do with people who _refuse_ to consider the arguments under discussion. That is a willful action of the strongest form of disrespect for the audience and one's discussion partners, and that is why such people cause hostilities in newsgroups _everywhere_. | I followed the thread between Anette and Erik and I _never_ had the | feeling, that she _is_ or _behaves_ like an arrogant jerk. She just | plain simply was wrong. People who are "just plain simply wrong" _and_ refuse to listen _are_ arrogant jerks. That is what an arrogant jerk _is_. | I think freedom comes with an obligation to also respect the freedom of | others to have a different opinion than you have. Nodoby has ever argued against this. If _you_ think so, take a _really_ good look at your own respect for other people and _their_ opinions, and you are even so disrespectful towards others that _you_ tell them what they think! You keep doing that, just like every other moralist who has ever tried to tell people to behave while disrespecting those he wants to behave. | It implies that you have the duty to protect the personal integrity of | your communication partner as you expect your personal integrity to be | left undamaged by your partners. I feel uncomfortable when people make comments about what others should do. If you do not say "I have the duty to ...", you are just plain wrong and should shut up. It is only yourself and your own behavior that you have the power to change or say anything about. You can motivate others to do what you do, but if you tell people to do something you do not, you _cause_ hostility and extreme disgust, just like John Foderaro regularly invokes with lots of people with his peculiar moral superiority that tells everyone that he is himself _exempt_ from having to behave as long as he thinks he can blame somebody else for his own behavior. There is nobody to blame! There is _never_ anyone to blame! Your behavior is _only_ your behavior. If you want changes, that is where you start to accept responsibility and that is where you start working. Nobody else. | Calling me a fascist is just another example of overkill by Eriks | responses. No, it is just another example of your self-serving moralistic opinion. | I think Erik simply doesn't know how unnecessarily he hurts others. However, I _know_ that you have never asked me what I think, but instead prefer to post _your_ thoughts about me as if you knew me. If you do not understand how much you insult every intelligent and probably _sentient_ being on the whole planet with that kind of idiotic behavior, you are guilty of being a moral hypocrite par excellence. However, most people are _unable_ to think in sufficiently broad terms to understand what it means to pretend to know others so well that you no longer need to find out what they think -- the most likely explanation is that others can know _you_ that well, and you _really_ do not want _that_ to be true. If you have at all cared to think about what you are observing, why has is not occurerd to you to even think for a second that maybe _I_ am hurt by others? I associate such lack of objective thinking with emotionalism and a desire to tell people that they are how you think they are. People are _not_ how you think they are, _ever_. They are always something more than you have been willing to give them credit for. That is why the only think you can criticize is people's concrete behavior in a very limited context. Smart people understand this. Moralists do not. John Foderaro does not, and keeps posting his inflammatory filth because he has lost the capacity to understand that his moralism is based on a demonization of something that he has proven time and time again he is unable even to _observe_ properly. You are beginning to show signs of the same kind of limited thinking capacity. This problem relates to how you terminate your search for answers with "different opinion" (just like he does). Specifically, you have made up your mind about something, call it your "opinion", but you have made up your mind so much that you no longer think of it as an opinion. You begin to think of it as a _fact_ on which you can base your actions without impunity and without concern for verifying that your "opinion" still holds water after you have attempted to act on it. People who do that consistently cannot be trusted with _anything_, not code, not business, not design ideas, _nothing_. People who are unable to think about the _factness_ of their assumptions or vice versa, but treat them all as largely the same thing, live in a world where their assumptions make intelligent discussion impossible. Such people are very common on USENET, and if I am only guilty of one thing, it is that I smoke them out, and they hate me for it, like John Foderaro _obviously_ does. | It is a sad thing indeed, because from at least a few postings I get the | impression that he is quite an intelligent and humorous individual. | Viewing a few photos on the web even let's me think that he can be quite | a humorous party guest! :-) You make another mistake, here. Your interest pretends to be in me as a person, but you are not really interested in me at all. You are _using_ me as a vehicle to push your moralism and for talking about how _you_ think everybody else should behave. That is indeed the core of fascism: _Using_ people for your own ends. | He does a lot of damage to himself without noticing it. See, this is where you let your opinions get confused with facts. You think so and so, and therefore it is suddenly a _fact_ that so and so. Such incredibly sloppy thinking is symptomatic of an intellect that has _never_ been exposed to any rigorous exercise, but has only sort of been able to go on at random without observing or controlling itself. If you have no concern for distinguishing your opinions and assumptions from what you can observe, you _will_ become an evil person who accuses people of things you only think they have done, who portray people as something they are not, who take a false personal interest in others only to hang them out to dry because _you_ dislike them. This is the fate of almost all moralists, however. They simply cannot back down and shut up, either, even _after_ apologizing and realizing that they have abused a forum, like you did. I regert accepting your apology -- I should have known better and that you would simply return with more of the same. | I will just ignore the hatred in his messages from now on and try to | concentrate on the technical stuff he talks about, which usually has an | amazing high quality compared to his verbal lapses. Just like Anette Stegmann's amazingly silly response to this forum just recently, there is the same incredulous need for some people to tell people what they are _not_ doing. John Foderaro does it all the time, and you hopefully just doing it this once, but the only way to ensure that you have _no_ risk of looking like a hypocritical idiot _and_ do what you think you should do is simply to _do_ it, without talking about it, without announcing anything, without trying to look like a saint or hero at somebody else's expense. It is probably well-meant, but it is still a fairly insidious way to make yourself _look_ superior to others, which you are _not_. Anyone who is more concerned about the behavior of others before his own is morally _inferior_ to those others and should approach others from this position to have an effect. Those who start off thinking they are personally or morally superior will _always_ fail. ///