Subject: Re: Understanding Erik Naggum
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 13 Oct 2002 12:07:15 +0000
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3243499635529321@naggum.no>

* Erik Naggum
|  You show a characteristic unwillingness to consider that your opponent's
|  position may be good, and instead devote nearly all your effort to
|  defend yourself and claim that your opponent's position is no good.
|  This is fantastically stupid.

* Abhijit Rao
| All the more annoying so when the person who says the above thing is
| also exactly doing the same thing.

  Well, first of all, you show me here that you understand the argument and
  think it is a valid point, but still defend yourself instead of grasping
  its applicability to yourself.

  And no, Abhijit Rao, I do not.  I spend considerable time and effort when
  I reply to people who stumble through the language and fumble through
  their thoughts to understand precisely what they are saying and meaning.
  That you use it as a cheap retort says something about your ability to
  reason to which you still should listen carefully.

  It is /such/ a cheap shot and so indicative of your playing a stupid game
  of one-upmanship, where the point with what you feel are "arguments" is
  not to understand anything your opponent says, but to use any stupid
  trick in the book to get "ahead" your opponent, even by a dirty trick
  that shows that you are unable to participate in an adult discussion.
  Just realize that I sprinkle my articles with "bait" that I people would
  ignore if they knew what they were doing, but would take, hook, line, and
  sinker, if they do not know what they are doing and want to make fools of
  themselves in public, instead.  So if this is the best you can do, please
  read up on argumentation, rhetoric, and logic.  This is a newsgroup where
  /discussion/ is the key, not stupid game-playing.  It may make you feel
  better in the very short-term to feel you beat someone with a dirty trick
  or a fancy rhetorical device, but when you lose long-term and do not hang
  around because you felt you made an ass of yourself, it really does you
  worse than no good.  Many people sacrifice the long-term for a quick and
  easy gain.  I want to learn this about people: It tells me that they do
  not think they can win in the long term, so they have nothing to lose.

| I am going alone, not because of choice, but necessity.  No one else
| wants to do Lisp.

  Thanks for using your full name.  Going it alone has a high price, no
  matter what you do.  You seem to be unaware of it as of yet.  It is only
  sometimes worth paying.  Lisp seems like a good choice.

-- 
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.