Twisted said:
It was clear that he rejected such claims in the second.
I think you inferred that he rejected such claims, but he never actually
explicitly did so. Which is why I think it's okay to not explicitly reject
every insult that comes your way. If someone calls you an idiot, just shrug
it off like Einstein did.
A situation with no analogy here. Some of this thread's participants
have behaved mildly (and chiefly discussed Eclipse or Java, at that).
And of course there is an unknown but probably nonzero number of
lurkers.
There is an analogy: The entire newsgroup asking you to leave. The fact
that it didn't happen doesn't mean it's not analogous with the hypothetical
entire-crowd-asking-him-to-leave situation.
Well, I suppose I *could* try asking Attardi et. al. politely to leave
the newsgroup, but I doubt it would work. (Even asking Attardi alone to
leave the thread didn't work; he kept saying he would, and then making
a liar of himself. At least three times now, and counting...)
You don't actually have to ask anyone to leave. In the case of a
lecture, if someone is speaking at the same time as the lecturer, those who
are genuinely interested in hearing what the lecturer has to say are unable
to do so. In a newsgroup, you can read the articles you want to read, and
ignore the ones you don't want to read.
As I explained elsewhere, those people are clearly special cases owing
to substantial fame or other factors.
In other words, it's possible.
You've picked some astonishingly poor examples. The one is reputed to
have committed suicide and may not have actually existed anyway (no
archaeological evidence or factual-type historical documentation, for
starters); the other was actually assassinated.
You believe Buddha commited suicide? We're actually speaking quite
informally here, as Buddha is more of a title (like "Pope") than a specific
person. I'm guessing we're both referring to Siddhartha Gautama. I think
historians generally accept that Siddhartha Gautama was a real person, just
like Jesus Christ was a real person, even if it's disputed as to whether
they actually did everything their respective religions claim that they did.
AFAIK, the story says Gautama predicted his own death and did nothing to
prevent it (I believe the same thing was said of Jesus). I wouldn't call
that suicide.
The implication is that people who don't do anything about arseholes
that mudsling at them in public either end up suicidal or get killed
before that can happen by the people the mudslingers eventually
convinced to hate them!
Or they die a peaceful, natural death? AFAIK, that's what happened to
Gautama. Buddhist monks were also brought up earlier. I suspect the vast
majority of them are neither assassinated, nor do they commit suicide.
Perhaps Ghandi was exceptional in this regard.
Your examples therefore support *my* position far more than they
support yours. By rebutting the insults it is entirely possible that I
am avoiding an early death, based solely on your latter example.
Yes, by rebutting insults, it is entirely possible that you will save
the entire universe from annihilation too. Almost anything is *possible*.
I'm not sure how *probable* rebutting insults is in avoiding death, though:
"Well, I was going to assassinate Twisted, but now that he has explained to
me that he's not an idiot, I guess I'm not gonna anymore."
If your main concern is avoiding assassination, perhaps you should put
less effort in rebutting insults and more effort in not upsetting people.
Believe it or not, rebutting insults is not nescessarily the best way to
avoid upsetting people. Just look at this thread for evidence of this.
No doubt this is while constantly doing things that prove "them" wrong,
rather than doing nothing to exert an opposite influence on the minds
of bystanders.
Although this is inconsistent with your earlier suggestion that he did
nothing at all (and eventually some roused rabble got up the gumption
to kill him).
If I said he did nothing at all (I don't remember making this claim),
then I mispoke. Rather, what he did was not bother to rebutt every insult
thrown in his direction. Isn't Ghandi the mascot of *passive* resistance?
The British did something that the Indians didn't like. The Indians
responded with hostility. It doesn't matter whether you consider yourself to
be the Indians and the regulars of cljp to be the British, or the other way
around. Either way, Ghandi criticized both sides, saying hostility is always
evil and could never be justified.
I don't really know Ghandi all that well. Never met him. I don't know if
I agree with all his policies (was he for or against gay marriage, for
example?), but I am in agreement with him in this specific policy: Drop the
hostilities -- it doesn't solve anything, not even when it's hostilities in
the form of revenge or payback for hostilities received.
And now, of course, they have golden reputations. There's only a few
spots near the top of a pyramid; that's why whatever that mysterious
Nigerian email seems to imply, only a small minority of us can ever be
rich. Or have untarnishable reputations, or whatever.
I don't think it works like a pyramid scheme. There's a finite amount of
money in the world. If I get more money, it means someone, somewhere out
there, has less money. Not so with whatever the currency is for measuring
untanishability of reputations. If I figure out a way to make myself more
resistent to insults, that doesn't nescessarily make anyone else there less
resistent.
[...]
But that doesn't make the situation symmetrical. You can't prove your
negative ("no harm is done"), but I can prove my positive and
*dis*prove your negative. The latter only requires one counterexample,
and I have a hat full of them, so you can't even claim that it was some
sort of fluke or one-off.
Did I claim "no harm is done"? What I meant was "you can change the
rules of the game in your favour".
What kind of success have you been having?
Well, I knew about Ant... And I don't seem to receive as much damage
from receiving insults as you do. And people don't continue to insult me,
despite my telling them to stop.
My own simulations indicate
that you:
a) Get embroiled in usenet fights (this one, for starters) same as I
b) Have an unknown but growing number of enemies spreading rumours
about you behind your back. So do I, but you aren't even trying to
combat them or refute them or hinder their recruiting efforts. It's not
hard to guess then which of us will get assassinated first.
My guess is neither of us will get assassinated, and we'll both die of
much more mundane causes. Like a car crash. Or high cholestorol. Or
lightning striking us.
What happened to "to thine own self be true"?
The two are not mutually incompatible, I think. "To thine own self be
true" to me says don't pretend to be someone you're not in order to please
others. First of all, when you're changing yourself instead of changing the
world around you, you're doing this not to please others, but to please
yourself. Second, I'm advocating actually changing yourself, not just
pretending to change yourself.
Think back to that story of the old man with the leather shoes and the
pebbly road. If he wrapped his foot in leather, but it *still* hurts to walk
on the road, he should just smile and say "Haha, yeah, this is great! I
don't feel a thing!" while wincing. He had a good idea of trying to make
some leather shoes, but it just didn't work out. No sense lying to yourself.
So the old man should go over to woodsmith and perhaps getting wooden clogs
made for him. Again, this is better (in the sense of less effort) than
hiring a carpenter to replace the road with a smooth, finished wood
panelling.
[...]
You know what? I think I've got this pegged. You're an idealist and I'm
a pragmatist.
To me, the idealist-vs-pragmatist contrast has the connotation that
you're more grounded in reality than I am. Other than that, I would agree
with you. However, I think that my perception of the world around me is just
as "real" to me as the your perception of the world around you is to you.
The difference is that I enjoy my world but you don't seem to enjoy yours.
Because they were the first to mention the event (and then with a
vehement denial). It's quite another matter if someone accuses them of
it first, and they *reply* with a vehement denial. An innocent person
will always react with a vehement denial. Some guilty persons also
will. Anyone who just gets all quiet like is certainly involved
somehow, perhaps guilty of the offence itself or perhaps a witness that
is being intimidated or who participated in something that went too far
over his objections, but involved.
Perhaps an innocent person will choose to be quiet (e.g. waiting to see
his lawyer), because he knows that if he's only quiet when guilty, and loud
when innocent, that it'll be trivial to determine whether he's guilty or
not, whereas if he always behaves the same in either situation, it's much
more difficult to determine innocence or guilt.
To minimize the frequency of this, an insult has been followed
meticulously with a rebuttal in a direct follow-up and within 24 hours.
This maximizes the likelihood that anyone who sees the former sees both
of them.
I think you misunderstood. I'm suggesting that people are reading your
posts, but they are not getting the message you wish to convey. I.e. you
could write a logically sound rebuttal, and what they'll see is
yet-another-post-from-Twisted-containing-swear-words, without actually
caring, acknowledging or remembering what it is you wrote, except for the
damning parts.
Yes, just as it is also physically possible for me to ignore someone
charging at me with a knife. That doesn't make it wise.
Right. But since this middle-step doesn't follow, the rest of your
argument is nullified. Perhaps what you meant to write is "I *think* the
optimal response is to retaliate", but I'm arguing that that's not actually
the case.
What planet are you from again?
Earth.
If thieves rob a store and get thrown
in jail, they stop (at least until they get out again). If thieves rob
a store and get shot by the proprietor, or just scared shitless, or
beaten up or something, this hopefully discourages them from doing it
again. If thieves keep trying to rob stores and being foiled by clever
locks or alarm systems, they should get discouraged and quit trying as
it's wasting their time and frustrating them. If on the other hand
thieves rob a store and get off scot-free, on the other hand, they've
just learned that robbing stores is easy money and carries little risk
of adverse consequence. If a whole society behaves as you recommend,
the robbers end up owning everything, and everyone else winds up in the
poorhouse. There is an exact analogy with any other crime and, indeed,
with any other antisocial, hostile act that harms others.
If the thieves break try to rob a store, and find nothing to steal,
they'll probably be disappointed and stop robbing this particular store.
You're assuming damage will always be done when someone insults you. I'm
saying that's not always the case.
If I let people who harm me get away with it, and society also lets
them get away with it (and in a lawless place like usenet the latter
will always happen), then they learn that they can have their way with
me and I won't resist, and that is the LAST thing I want these fuckers
to learn.
So don't let people harm you. And the easiest way to achieve that is to
develop an intrinsic resistence to their attacks. If you can do what the
shop proprietor in the store analogy above did -- shoot the thieves, scare
them shitless, beat them up, set up clever alarm or lock systems, etc. --
then by all means, do so. But I seriously doubt that your posting rebutals
up on usenet is scaring your adversaries shitless, cleverly locking them
out, or disabling them altogether.
OK, not solipsism exactly, but retreating into your own fantasy world
by whatever name you'd call that. Retreating totally from the world
because it's too damn hard to change it.
I'm not retreating from the world. I'm adapting to it. If the
environment around me is causing me damage, I change so that I'm no longer
damaged by it.
(And you called *me* lazy?
(1) I don't think I ever called you lazy. I might have said you did not
put effort into doing one specific action (googling "ant"), and that was a
true claim: You *didn't* put effort into doing that action. I did not make a
comment whether not putting effort is characteristic of you or not.
(2) I don't think being lazy is nescessarily bad. I'm very lazy, for
example. Physically, at least. I find it much easier to think through a
problem, than to use physical strength to try to brute force my way through
it. I.e. I like to spend less energy when possible. So yes, I'm lazy.
It's in the nature of tool-using primates to change rather than accept
the things they don't like about their environment; you are behaving
rather more like a mouse or some other non-sentient, non-tool-using
denizen of this planet, from all indications.)
I don't have anything against using tools. In the change-yourself fable,
the old man wrapped his feet in leather shoes. That's a tool, right? I
pointed out that here, he's changing himself (by wearing shoes) rather than
changing his environment (by paving the entire road with leather).
Unacceptable. If I were to believe that it is a "losing game" with no
way out, then an unacceptable conclusion would be inescapable. Anyone
could, at any time, do irreversible harm to me simply by insulting me
publicly. If you're to be believed, nothing at all that I do will
mitigate the damage or deter such attacks.
It then follows that anyone can harm me with complete impunity at any
time, with real negative consequences for me, zero for him, and no way
for me to undo the damage or convince him not to do it again (and
again, and again).
That conclusion leads in turn to a conclusion that to strive is futile,
because enemies (and there are always enemies, since no-one can please
100% of the people 100% of the time) will always be able to destroy it
all and undo everything and ruin my life on a whim and at a moment's
notice and without any chance of my preventing this or even taking them
down with me.
There are three possibilities. I can believe as you apparently do, and
conclude that it's all futile because there's nothing I can do to
prevent the enemy (any enemy) from destroying me at any time, and
there's no way I can prevent ever having an enemy, in which case I
don't try to accomplish anything since it's useless anyway, and a bad
outcome results; I can continue to believe as I do, but you happen to
be right, and a bad outcome results; or I can continue to believe as I
do, you turn out to be wrong, and a good outcome may result.
Note that the only chance of a good outcome requires that I *not*
believe you.
Therefore, I won't.
This is dangerous thinking: "I believe in something because I like the
outcome that that belief produces". E.g. "I believe that if I rape, murder,
do other nasty things to people, nothing bad will happen to me. Why? Because
if I believe otherwise, bad things will happen to me when I *do*
rape/murder/whatever. Whereas if I stick with my belief, there's a chance
that a good otucome will happen after the rape/murder/whatever."
Anyway, you seem to have misunderstood my position (again). You seem to
think that you can't change the rules of the game, and therefore everything
is futile. And you're right that *if* you can't change the game, everything
is futile. But you *can* change the rules of the game. Don't consider
insults on usenet so significant a form of damage, and suddenly you're not
in a guaranteed-bad-outcome situation anymore.
Well, either it's a trick or you're as thick as two planks.
After
all I've done, including provide evidence that verbal attacks
(especially persistent ones) cause genuine tangible harm, you still
don't believe me.
I'd ask you to tell me what it is that happened between your friend and
you, but I'm not sure if you're willing to share it over usenet.
Worse, I don't think you even thought the two moves
further ahead that were sufficient to see that your belief leads to a
conclusion of futility. If being insulted automatically enters you
unwillingly into a losing game, with genuinely negative consequences,
then since there's no practical way short of hermitude to prevent that
ever happening *life* is a losing game in which nothing you do will
matter, because eventually everyone will hate you and not care what you
accomplished in your life. As soon as you believe anything that leads
to such a conclusion, you *have* lost the game -- permanently, unless
you one day change your mind.
Of course, there's also empirical evidence that you're wrong. If it is
an automatically losing game, which anyone can force you into at any
time (one insult does the job), then anyone can ruin your life without
any way for you to stop them succeeding, and sooner or later someone
will dislike you enough to do so. Only being a hermit might save you
from that eventual fate. It follows that nobody who is elderly or
actually dead should have good reputations, save perhaps hermits.
Since there are plenty of examples of people (nobodies and celebrities
alike) who died at a ripe old age with a reasonable reputation, it
follows that you were wrong.
Actually, I think the problem is that you seem to think that all these
people were playing the same game as you. I suspect they weren't: They were
playing the same game as me, which is how they ended up with reasonable
reputations.
Most of these people, the nobodies with good reputations, have probably
been insulted at one point in there life, right? Do you know what this
insult was that they received? Did you ever hear this insult? Even if you
did hear it, would you care about that insult, and now think of this dead
person less favorably? Probably not. Probably you don't really care about
that dead person, let alone the insults they may or may not have received.
The very fact that they're nobodies shows that any insults they received had
no effect with respect to your opinion of them. And probably it had no
effect on the vast majority of the 6 billion other people on this planet.
Nobody cares. Insults are fleeting.
- Oliver
