T
Twisted
(Mis)quoting people out of context is generally un-useful, and
sometimes a part of an intentional attempt at deception or manipulation
of opinion.
(Mis)quoting people out of context is generally un-useful, and
sometimes a part of an intentional attempt at deception or manipulation
of opinion.
T
Twisted
Unfortunately, some apparently get ticked off at the proverbial drop of
the hat. In both groups.
The one place where I can't fault my respondents here has been on the
Java stuff (in other words, the actually-on-topic stuff). The contrast
there with c.t.t is notable, where technical answers that are
incomplete or otherwise don't "work out of the box" are fairly
frequent.
I don't remember enough to find it either; sorry. There have been
several cases, most of which didn't blow up into anything huge, of a
similar nature though. It may be that TeX is far more susceptible to
incompatibilities than Java, because there's no encapsulation or object
orientation and no package hierarchy to reduce naming collision
problems. This doesn't excuse all of them though, for example I can
recall at least one that went roughly like this:
n00b: I need some drop-in code to do X, and looking in the usual places
doesn't turn up how to do it. (I think X may have been fancier footers,
page numbering, page breaks, or some such.)
Other: Here. <code>
n00b: It made things worse -- now it won't compile at all, zero pages
of output!
Other2: Well it has to be wrapped in <foobar>, dummy!
Something to that effect. Definitely the last response pretty much
admits that something was missing from the first one that should have
been obvious to the first responder, but clearly wasn't (and shouldn't
have been expected to be) to the n00b, and definitely the last response
was less than friendly and suggested the n00b was somewhat backwards
for his simply cutting and pasting the code in as-is. I don't suppose
it occurred to the responders that if the n00b didn't have the
knowledge to invent that code himself, he presumably didn't regard it
as anything he was remotely qualified to fix or change or second-guess?
It seems to me that the most likely explanation for the above
paraphrased event was laziness on the part of "Other", or just
oversight or a failure to consider that "obvious" to him and "obvious"
to "n00b" are two separate things. But the tone of the second responder
was unconscionable.
I think there may have actually been several similar cases, at least
one of which did balloon into a huge thread of some length or another.
Others where a n00b asked how to bolt on something to do X and instead
gets told to go learn the whole ins and outs of programming the thing
at the low levels and then do it himself (when he was clearly focused
on, and his expertise clearly focused on, writing rather than learning
his document-preparation tools -- this was like someone wanting an mp3
player in place of the old am/fm radio in his car being told by the car
mechanic to learn the ins and outs of automotive electrical systems and
do it himself!) or where a n00b with a question has the book thrown at
him, with the expectation that he promptly drop a hefty sum at
amazon.com for the privilege, without considering what his budget is
likely to be (but with all the college students there, or even the fact
that someone's using this stuff instead of winword.exe, it's probably
safe to bet on "not very big"; and college students that have just been
gouged to the tune of half a grand for "required" textbooks are also
fairly likely to blow up at the suggestion that simply typesetting
their thesis neatly "requires" yet another, or two, or three...of
course, for those who enjoy flamewars, a good strategy for starting one
is to try to detonate one of these already-primed bombs, hmm?)
T
Twisted
Tom said:
Neither of us "gets" the other. That much is clear. We have different
goals, too. That much is clear. Mine is simply to not leave you as
having had the greater influence over the minds of our mutual audience,
at least not where your influence is being used to try to make them
hostile to me.
[snip some kind of terminologically-mangled, half-intelligible
explanation of his goals]
I don't give a shit what those goals are, but they sound frivolous and
non-Java-related, so pursue them elsewhere. Regardless, they don't
justify putting someone's character publicly into question (especially
not if they are in fact frivolous).
where undermining me simply is a way for you to stroke your own ego. It
just makes you a bigger asshole and one with a lower IQ. At least
undermining your coworkers has some rational, material gain motivating
it. It's nasty but not necessarily stupid. Your online behavior, on the
other hand, is both.
I'm no worse than you lot on that score. And there's only the one of
me, and several of you, so...
Unlike you, yes. Looks like by this score I come out ahead. I do
anything other than "by the book", and even when I point out that the
"by the book" approach hadn't been communicated to me at the time, I
get jumped on by multiple people. All of those can immediately be
charged with intolerance. Posting just to hassle or annoy someone is
something you pretty much admitted to just now, and others are clearly
doing. That looks hateful and/or spiteful to me. So does generally
putting people down, getting your jollies shoving other people
facefirst into muddy puddles and the equivalent, and various other
actions that you lot seem to do and that I do not.
If I did that, a) I have no guarantee that it *would* die. Perhaps,
emboldened by the lack of responses and sensing weakening prey, the
attackers will just press home a final assault instead. b) Even if
"playing possum" does work, the damage from their last bunch of attacks
will go unmitigated!
In further elaboration of a), there have already been false promises by
another of my attackers that they'd go away (which they didn't),
multiple times, so I don't have any reason at all to trust anyone's
claims about when or if they will shut up and leave me alone anyway.
It just looked like another doofus spelling error and/or a doofus
attempt to caricature far-eastern mangling of English to me.
Because it bloody well is! I harbor(ed) no harmful intent or ill wishes
towards anyone, and I did nothing irresponsible (foreseeably risking
someone else's harm without their consent) either (online, the only
example of such behavior I can think of at the moment is posting
someone's unmunged email address in the clear and thereby exposing them
to spam...)
Any behavior that is not intentionally harmful, nor negligent, is by
definition innocuous. It may be eccentric, but people can ignore it
with impunity (unlike, say, a knife-charge, or being exposed to spam).
[insults me]
Ah, now you show your true colors again, after a period of trying to
"reason with" (read: trick) me.
Wrong. I will behave as an equal to others and expect them to treat me
as an equal. This isn't a feudal caste-ridden society and I will not
bow and pay fealty to some tinpot would-be lord or duke. I will carry
myself with self-respect. Anyone who becomes hostile to me purely
because of this will receive my scorn or outright wrath, and never my
respect. This is the 21st century and I am in a democracy and I expect
to be treated as "equal under the law" by those I deal with, online or
off.
when you enter an arena where you dont know the background of the
And be seen and not heard, no doubt. That is the way I hear they do
things where you apparently come from (based on your attitudes and your
reference to Kim Jong-Il), but that is not the way of my part of the
world and it is not my way.
Wrong. First of all, you neglect to mention that the thing I disliked
about the answer I got was that it criticized me for what is actually
praiseworthy behavior: trying to solve the problem myself with some
research, and actually succeeding.
Secondly, I did not simply "start telling people to piss off". I argued
with them about why their criticism of me was unfounded. Apparently you
think that Certain People are not to be argued with by The Likes Of Me,
but since you come from some world of feudal lords and fealty oaths,
that's just you. Apparently, some other people here like to pretend
that they ARE feudal lords, and dislike being reminded that they
actually are not, but if so, they should go join the SCA, where they
are likely to find people more cooperative about that sort of
role-play, and leave me the hell alone. But nothing *I* did was wrong.
When I did get around to telling people to piss off, it was *long*
after it became abundantly clear that those specific people had nothing
constructive to say (albeit a few subtle, "constructive-sounding"
attempts to trick me into either letting their trash talk go
unchallenged or into actually "admitting" to the nasty things they
claimed about me).
That much is obvious, since most English-speaking countries these days
are secular democracies, and your place of origin is obviously some
kind of feudal monarchy or dictatorship.
That much is obvious just from the one sentence.
J
Joe Attardi
No it's not! The number of posts in a thread has nothing to do withThe number of posts in this thread (now nearly 400) is proof enough.
their content.
Or you could open a new tab (if you are using Firefox/Opera/IE 7) or a
new browser window like I do when I need to go find an earlier post to
reference.
You've been accusing people of insulting you ever since the first page
of this thread. It doesn't mean anybody has actually done such a thing.
Again, you can always just open a new tab or window to look it up. But
then that would mean you wouldn't find any messages that back up your
assertion.
Um, I use Google Groups too. It's not deficient in any way, nor am I
somehow "taking advantage" of it.
That's not really a good analogy. Any modern operation system lets you
run more than one concurrent application at once. You can open a second
browser window, or a second browser tab and navigate the thread to find
evidence to back up your claims.
It's not impossible. It's simple. Again, I am using Google Groups too
for newsgroup access and there's nothing about any modern browser that
makes it impossible to fulfill my request.
You have done far more namecalling than anyone else in this thread,
Twisted.
Anybody else still posting in this thread seems to be in agreement that
you are being arrogant and rude. I'm not presuming to speak for
anybody, I'm just reading what they've posted.
Because they aren't true. When you make accusations, the burden of
proof is on you. And now who's presuming to speak for everyone in the
thread?
I'm not attacking you. My recent posts have done nothing but request
that you back up what you're saying with citations from previous
messages.
Do you mean this quotation:
"Twisted, you'll be glad to know that I'm wasting no more time on you
after this post."?
I don't see the word "promise" in there anywhere. Unless you mean to
imply that any statement should be treated as a promise? That doesn't
make much sense. You shouldn't take something as seriously as a promise
unless it is explicitly stated as a promise.
Whenever I have mentioned something that you did or said, most of the
time I have given either a link to a relevant message in the thread, or
a copied and pasted quotation from such a message. What I'm complaining
about is that you are making claims then refusing to back them up,
giving silly reasons ("I can't look through the thread at the same time
as writing a reply!".
Yes, you can AT THE SAME TIME AS YOU ARE EDITING A REPLY. Open a new
browser window. Or open a new browser tab. Navigate back to
groups.google.com and open this thread back up in the other window.
Your computer actually does allow you to have more than one web page
open at a time!
I don't know why you can't grant a simple request. These things you are
accusing me of, go back and find an instance where I did such things
and mention it in a follow-up. It's simple to open multiple windows and
switch between them, so I don't understand the difficulty or the
impossibility that you claim exists. Why do you continue to make
excuses that clearly make no sense?
J
Joe Attardi
How have I twisted it? Please put it back into context for me, because
it looks like you are starting fights like this everywhere you post.
Seriously, if I am taking it out of context, please correct me.
You took a discussion and turned it into a fight. You have done the
same thing in many other threads. This appears to be your modus
operandi. A troll. Mentioning that in a thread where you are doing the
same thing is hardly an attack.
OK, again. If I am lying, prove me wrong. Otherwise, I am not a liar.
You really like saying "****" every few sentences, don't you? Is it
possible to get through a round of messages with you without you
talking like a sailor? Ok, so I've called you a dumbass a couple of
times. But seriously man, do you think ALL CAPS and saying **** this
and Fucktard that really paint a picture of a "mild-mannered
programmer" ?
You keep saying how you are "forced" to respond lest you let someone
else "win" or "claim victory". This isn't a contest, there is no
victory condition. It's a discussion, albeit a very heated one. It will
eventually die down and end. There's not some victory condition that is
met and then all activity stops. So please stop acting like there is.
This isn't debate club in high school, it's an open unmoderated forum.
O
Oliver Wong
Twisted said:
I don't think anyone was being intentionally harmful, nor negligent,
when they asked you what advantages your approach had over
ClassLoader.getResource(), nor with the several other replies you initially
received but took as insults.
[...]
The Internet is not governed via democracy.
[...]
Why should the rest of this newsgroup conform to your way, as opposed to
you conforming to this newsgroups way?
- Oliver
O
Oliver Wong
Joe Attardi said:
I'm afraid I'll have to agree with Joe here. If you accuse Joe of
posting something, and Joe claims he didn't, then the burden is on you to
post a citation showing him saying what it is you're accussing him of
saying.
I don't even remember what it is you've accused him of saying, let alone
whether or not he actually said it or not. =P
- Oliver
W
wesley.hall
Twisted said:
You are a fool and obviously content to remain so.
I will shortly remove this post, and the others I have yet to remove
from the google groups archive. I have no desire for history to record
my involvement in this pointless thread.
The only thing I can bring myself to agree with you on is that there is
nothing anyone can do for you. I certainly tried my best.
W
wesley.hall
Twisted said:
....but it is OK for you to do it right?
T
Twisted
Oliver Wong wrote:
[snip reiteration of usual suggestion to ignore real damage]
The fact that it didn't happen *does* make it irrelevant though.
The problem is when there are attacks that will cause real harmful
consequences if they are simply ignored. Then whether I want to or not
I need to read them, to find out how bad the damage is and to formulate
a mitigation strategy (or, if it comes to that, a retaliation
strategy).
But not for everyone. Almost certainly not for me. (Or you, or any
other randomly selected current non-celebrity.)
I've read somewhere that he used a poisonous species of mushroom, in
fact.
The evidence actually suggests that Christ is a conflation of earlier
myths, including the Egyptian Thoth, and possibly even Prometheus.
It sure sound like it from where I'm sitting. And I have no intention
of emulating such examples either way you slice it.
They also don't have much of what you or I would call lives, though, do
they? I did mention earlier that hermitude looked like a possible
viable alternative too, at least for sufficiently small values of
"viable"...
I was attacking your extreme example of a non-rebutter by showing that
he obviously wasn't doing everything right, and the example itself is
therefore not much of an endorsement in light of any of my goals. As
for "not upsetting people", you can't please 100% of the people 100% of
the time. Even your exhortation to "become Superman" isn't going to
weasel out of that -- even Superman has enemies (notably one L. Luthor)
....
And some people seem to be extraordinarily easy to upset. Simply
stating the advantages of "my approach" when challenged to do so
instead of "admitting" that "my approach" is inferior (ignoring that it
is not; and obviously the answer they are actually hoping for) seems to
suffice for some people, for example.
You're getting two different things mixed up here. By the time insults
are there to be rebutted, obviously it is already too late to avoid
upsetting people, and any prevention strategy goes out the window to be
replaced by a mitigation strategy.
Well, I suppose some use of language on my part goes beyond defense to
include a bit of fighting-back, but it was only after quite a while,
and it was certainly not without provocation.
This is an odd thing to say, when your aim appears to be to support the
position of those attacking me rather than to support my position. Or
are you actually attacking both sides, as you say Gandhi was? (Note
spelling.) Even then you forget that the situation is not symmetrical.
I did not pick this fight. They did.
I'm not out for revenge.
Now go tell Attardi et. al to drop the hostilities. Maybe then this
execrable mess will end. Although I doubt it.
You (wilfully?) misunderstand. To have a globally bulletproof
reputation you have to have global fame, and there's only room on the
fame pyramid for a handful at the top (global fame). And of course if
yours isn't globally bulletproof, then there exist people you might
want to deal with in the future who might not be resistant to being
influenced towards hostility by rumours about you.
Did you read a word I said? Since real harm IS done, "changing the
rules in my favor" doesn't matter. Changing the rules would be like
altering the gun laws or the penalty for murder -- it won't necessarily
stop someone shooting people. And changing the rules to where they can
do so without any effort being made to a) stop them or b) punish them
after the fact will have the opposite goddamn effect!
[snippy]
Well, you sure do seem to be wanting me to pretend *something* in order
to please you, or worse, please my attackers. Obviously I can't even
consider doing anything to achieve the latter, since rewarding what
they have done will only encourage them to do it again, to me and to
other victims. Now that they have done things unjustifiable they must
be given no quarter!
That sounds like you're advocating a form of suicide, not to mention
something that simply isn't possible even if I wanted to. I don't have
the tools for do-it-yourself brain surgery, regardless.
If his aim is to be committed for psychiatric evaluation, maybe because
he wants free psychotropic drugs, then maybe.
I just lambasted Attardi for making a 180 degree about-face over the
space of a few paragraphs in his post, but this takes the cake; you did
it in *three lines*. (Line 1: "he should just smile and say "Haha,
yeah, this is great! I don't feel a thing!" while wincing." Line 3: "No
sense lying to yourself.")
This is insane. It isn't possible to have a rational discussion with
someone who is apparently incapable of reason.
This is not even close to analogous to my situation. This is more like
advocating that I buy a bulletproof vest after being threatened by a
gunman, despite being told that the gunman is threatening a hostage
that isn't wearing one rather than directly pointing it at me.
Even supposing I bulletproofed myself against insults directly paining
me, I couldn't bulletproof everyone I might want to deal with in the
future against being induced by hearing the same insults to disdain me.
And that means the insults can still damage my future life or
opportunities despite the "bulletproofing", which makes it useless (or
worse than useless, a numbing of a pain that actually indicates a
possibly serious injury, resulting in letting the injury fester
untreated until it becomes gangrenous and life-threatening!)...
If the problem is that the *road* is being damaged by too much use of
spiky tyres, though, then clearly either the road needs to be armoured
or those tyres outlawed.
At this point, I'd think that everyone here would agree that that's
beyond dispute. (Except, of course, you, since you're not very grounded
in reality.)
There is another: you're living in a dream world, and I'm living in the
real one.
This fallacy assumes that every innocent person is going to be guilty
on some future occasion. In practise, most people do not commit any
serious crime, ever. It also suggests that if I should wait a short
while for my lawyer to show up and do something about all the nasty BS
people have been saying about me here. In fact I have zero confidence
that *anyone* will show up and do so, and every reason to believe that
I'm in this on my own.
There's nothing I can do about that. People misread things, as you
yourself pointed out before, and there's no apparent way to 100% proof
one's writing against being misread. Which isn't to say it isn't worth
being as clear as possible, mind you (so I am as clear as possible).
Revising the model to include a certain percentage of garbling in
transmission, all of my earlier conclusions are unchanged (now a
certain fraction of rebuttals are rendered ineffective by noise in the
receiver, but a similar fraction of insults can be assumed to suffer
the same fate, and the two cancel out).
The hell with continuing this bit. You're simply ignoring everything I
said before and then reiterating everything *you* said before, because
of the inconvenient fact that what I said disproves it. Your mule
stubbornness isn't going to magically make you right when all of the
empirical evidence and all of the rules of logic are stacked against
you.
You're wrong. Damage WILL always be done. In my past experience, the
rate of lasting adverse consequences stemming from a severe-enough
attack has been 100%. As in, not *one* exception.
So it's more like they hit the jackpot with over $50,000 in the
registers every single time. Far from being disappointed, they'd become
really enthusiastic, which is the last thing anyone else wants!
HOW? I already told you I don't have the necessary mind control
technology, you dimwit! And I wouldn't really want to use it even if I
did! So tell me HOW DO I PREVENT JOE BLOW WHO I DON'T EVEN KNOW FROM
HEARING OR BELIEVING OR OTHERWISE BEING INFLUENCED BY SOME INSULT THAT
I SEE? TELL ME!!! IF YOU KNOW A WAY TELL ME, AND IF NOT SHUT UP WITH
THIS CRAP!!! Jesus, you're thick! As *four* planks!!
Someone get me a tylenol!
I can not think of a single way unless the insult isn't widely
circulated and there's some means by which I can censor it so that it
never sees wide distribution. For a Usenet posting with no X-No-Archive
header it's pretty clear that the opposite is the case and it's
guaranteed to see planetary-scale distribution, as in anyone who looks
in the right place and has net access could see the insult and there's
no way to have it unpublished.
I'd have to switch from opposing to supporting "trusted computing",
hobnob with all the right political types, buy, steal, and cheat (or
even kill) my way to the top, and end up the guy entrusted with the
root crypto keys to have anything close to the capability to have any
badmouthing of me unpublished and wiped from all historical records.
And in actual fact, I don't want *anyone* to have that kind of power.
Not even me. Ever.
Which obviously means hermitage, or at best joining a cloistered order
of something or other (monks, Franciscan nuns, or what-have-you, just
so long as they are cloistered). Any other lifestyle and I'm not
resistant, intrinsically or otherwise, because I'll surely come into
contact with people that potentially get poisoned against me by
arseholes like Attardi. My own experience proves that even living a
relatively quiet, non-gregarious but non-cloistered-order lifestyle
exposes me to at least some poisoned people after 100% of such attacks.
It is to mitigate the damage to me, not to cause some to them. If I
wanted to, believe me, I would have by now, and you and everyone else
here would know about it. Their websites (for those who have them) all
going 404 at the same moment they all mysteriously shut up after having
shown no sign that they'd ever *voluntarily* do so would be among the
first clues.
You are not adapting to anything.
I already explained why for the type of damage I'm worried about, the
only way to avoid being damaged that way without directly countering
the damage in some way is by retreating to a monastery. That might be
your cup of tea, but it isn't mine, nor should it have to be. Besides,
I simply will not let any jerkoff come along and force me to choose
between becoming a recluse and being miserable, and then just go along
with that and do one or the other. Certainly not without a fucking
fight.
You don't think, then. You certainly did, and not that long ago.
The technical term is "efficient". "Lazy" is pejorative. Don't use it
to describe me.
The shoes are just a closer part of the environment. Changing himself
would really mean walking around in agony until thick calluses
developed, or mutating your DNA or something.
You're completely wrong. It *is* dangerous to think something like that
in something conditional on choices you make, such as crimes you might
commit. But the reasoning I was using was targeted at cases where the
alternatives are to believe or not believe something that results in a
bad outcome *un*conditionally.
In the case actually under discussion, you proposed that being insulted
was a losing game -- as soon as someone insults you, you've already
lost no matter what you do (or don't do). Combined with the fact (which
you intermittently dispute, but which is backed by loads of empirical
evidence) that losing the game in question has long-term bad
consequences in a similar manner to getting a bad credit history, and
also the fact that it is not feasible to completely avoid ever being
insulted even once, it follows that the "credit rating" is going to go
into the toilet pretty swiftly *unconditionally* on what you choose to
do, short of maybe joining a nunnery, and that this will mean your
quality of life (especially the bits involving social interaction) will
follow it there shortly thereafter.
In that case, you're automatically screwed, whatever you do, the moment
someone insults you (and sooner or later somebody will, whether you're
saint or devil). If you believe that, then you have no reason to do
anything but eat your gun right away and save yourself the downward
spiral and the misery. So better not to believe that.
You advocated a belief that, with a little application of reason, leads
to the inescapable conclusion that everyone is automatically screwed
and there is nothing they can do about it. (Unlike your later
cockamamie "disproof", in which you can avoid being screwed by not
committing certain violent crimes.) Either you didn't think things
through, or you are so far down the rabbit hole and into lala land that
you actually don't think this mass auto-screwage is reason for anything
but more self-induced phony happiness.
No, no, a thousand times no! Did you not read a single fucking word I
spent all that time writing?!?! Asshole! Read it again and again until
you understand it! Let me lay it out for you ... AGAIN:
Premise 1 (yours) - If someone insults you, you lose the "insult game"
automatically.
Premise 2 (empirical evidence) - It is not practical (or even perhaps
possible) to avoid ever being insulted.
Conclusion 1 - Everyone loses the "insult game", generally within a
short time after birth.
Premise 3 (conclusion 1) - Everyone loses the "insult game", generally
within a short time after birth.
Premise 4 (empirical evidence) - Losing the "insult game" has negative
consequences outside the game, particularly in social life and probably
in economic life (esp. as it seems likely to affect employability)
Conclusion 2 - Everyone's social life and probably economic life tanks
quickly.
Premise 5 (conclusion 2) - Everyone's social life and probably economic
life tanks quickly.
Premise 6 (self-evident) - Life as a pariah without money isn't worth
living.
Conclusion 3 - Everyone may as well go kill themselves right now and
avoid prolonged suffering. To strive, in particular, is futile.
Reasons to reject conclusion 3 (and therefore premise 1, the only
dubious one in the lot):
* If you suppose conclusion 3, you're screwed. If you don't, and
premise 1 turned out to be wrong, you have a chance.
* The empirical evidence is strongly against conclusion 3 anyway; the
suicide rate would be triple what it is and the world a lot different
and even shittier than it actually is if conclusion 3 were true.
This is laughable. Haven't I already told you TEN THOUSAND TIMES that
the insults DO cause significant damage? It doesn't matter if you
pretend that they don't when they make OTHER PEOPLE believe bad things
about you and then those OTHER PEOPLE mistreat you. I told you before
I'VE SEEN THIS HAPPEN MULTIPLE TIMES! You can pretend all you like that
no harm is being done but wishing doesn't make it so! Idiot!
If I pretend that, then people insult me, I shrug it off, and after a
while no-one wants anything to do with me anymore. I suppose if I had
your mastery over your own mind, to the point of being able to easily
delude myself at will, that I would shrug *that* off as well, but at
that point I might as well be some kind of druggie, a nut in a psych
ward doped up on Christ knows what, or a recluse -- in fact I *would*
be a recluse, though not by choice, regardless.
That might be a life you're willing to accept if it happens to you, but
I'm not you. I will do whatever I can (within certain limits) to
prevent this. If it happens anyway, I will rail against the fates, or
maybe take the law into my own hands and track down the people who made
me a pariah and kill them before turning the gun on myself, but I
certainly won't just lie down and take it, let alone delude myself into
thinking it's actually something pleasant.
You know what? The hell with you. You simply aren't rational. Nobody
who'd wilfully make themselves believe things are peachy when the roof
is caving in, there's no more food or money, and someone's rushing them
with a gun can possibly be capable of having a rational discussion with
me (or anyone else).
I don't see pretending something isn't a problem and wishing yourself
into feeling good as anything but a last resort, an alternative to
suicide maybe if things become otherwise chronically and irreversibly
intolerable. And it's really just a form of suicide anyway.
Of course I'm not, but you're also mistaken to focus on just one of
what proved to be several similar occurrences spread out over years and
in varying circumstances. None of what you claim is true; it's as
simple as that. At least not in Western society; maybe your beliefs are
shaped by a different culture (Japan's, maybe? They're bigger on bowing
and honor and stuff over there, and there was some blither recently
about how I should have bowed my head and been real quiet and
deferential in this ng not long ago...) and insults there don't fester
into rumours that then damage how people treat you later on.
But they do here in the west.
You moron! It doesn't matter what the game is they are internally
playing in their heads. The ONLY thing that matters is the actual
real-world consequences.
I am TELLING you, and this had BETTER be for the LAST FUCKING TIME!,
that:
* If someone insults you, at least if it's not adequately responded to,
in public, some of those who hear it ARE influenced. I know this from
EXPERIENCE so don't you DARE say it isn't true.
* The influence in question has actual bad consequences, like losing
friends, or not being able to find new ones in a community. Again this
is BEYOND DISPUTE because it ACTUALLY HAS HAPPENED SEVERAL TIMES. Some
of these times to me, and more of them where I was privy to events.
* If you pretend that nothing bad has happened, you've STILL LOST THE
FRIENDS, or whatever other consequences.
* If the insult has turned into a bad reputation, this is true EVEN IF
YOU PRETEND IT ISN'T.
It follows that a random person, historical figure or contemporary, who
pretended insults wouldn't have these effects and got insulted enough
(in front of an audience) would have wound up with a bad reputation
despite their pretending. You are claiming otherwise, against all
reason!
Yes, and if their reputations don't show any mark from it, obviously
they didn't just do nothing, because as I've said before I've SEEN WHAT
HAPPENS WHEN INSULTS SUCCEED IN INFLUENCING PEOPLE. Even sometimes when
some effort is made at damage control some negative effects remain,
nevermind when nothing is done about it at all.
Irrelevant. You can't disprove what the empirical evidence tells me is
the truth. The flaw in your argument here is simple -- it assumes I
don't hear any nasty rumor about the person. Then of course I won't be
affected. That doesn't mean nobody else was, and the ones that were
would have treated him worse. Of course though there should still be
some signs that whoever it was ended up in disrepute. Since that's not
common, even though my experience is that insults with an audience
invariably cause serious harm of exactly that sort, it follows that
most did something to mitigate the consequences whenever there were
public character assassination attacks directed against them.
No, just the people that he knew and whose opinions he cared about.
Small comfort to him that nobody else knew or cared after his wife left
him, his neighbors stopped having anything to do with him, and he lost
his job and couldn't find a new one without changing his name and
moving. Unless of course he mitigated the damage so that those things
didn't happen. (Worst case scenario for someone in the US or anywhere
else with a rotting sieve for a safety-net: actual death, by either
starvation or exposure. No more work -> no more food -> no more
breathing.)
[snip reiteration of usual suggestion to ignore real damage]
The fact that it didn't happen *does* make it irrelevant though.
The problem is when there are attacks that will cause real harmful
consequences if they are simply ignored. Then whether I want to or not
I need to read them, to find out how bad the damage is and to formulate
a mitigation strategy (or, if it comes to that, a retaliation
strategy).
But not for everyone. Almost certainly not for me. (Or you, or any
other randomly selected current non-celebrity.)
I've read somewhere that he used a poisonous species of mushroom, in
fact.
The evidence actually suggests that Christ is a conflation of earlier
myths, including the Egyptian Thoth, and possibly even Prometheus.
It sure sound like it from where I'm sitting. And I have no intention
of emulating such examples either way you slice it.
They also don't have much of what you or I would call lives, though, do
they? I did mention earlier that hermitude looked like a possible
viable alternative too, at least for sufficiently small values of
"viable"...
I was attacking your extreme example of a non-rebutter by showing that
he obviously wasn't doing everything right, and the example itself is
therefore not much of an endorsement in light of any of my goals. As
for "not upsetting people", you can't please 100% of the people 100% of
the time. Even your exhortation to "become Superman" isn't going to
weasel out of that -- even Superman has enemies (notably one L. Luthor)
....
And some people seem to be extraordinarily easy to upset. Simply
stating the advantages of "my approach" when challenged to do so
instead of "admitting" that "my approach" is inferior (ignoring that it
is not; and obviously the answer they are actually hoping for) seems to
suffice for some people, for example.
You're getting two different things mixed up here. By the time insults
are there to be rebutted, obviously it is already too late to avoid
upsetting people, and any prevention strategy goes out the window to be
replaced by a mitigation strategy.
Well, I suppose some use of language on my part goes beyond defense to
include a bit of fighting-back, but it was only after quite a while,
and it was certainly not without provocation.
This is an odd thing to say, when your aim appears to be to support the
position of those attacking me rather than to support my position. Or
are you actually attacking both sides, as you say Gandhi was? (Note
spelling.) Even then you forget that the situation is not symmetrical.
I did not pick this fight. They did.
I'm not out for revenge.
Now go tell Attardi et. al to drop the hostilities. Maybe then this
execrable mess will end. Although I doubt it.
You (wilfully?) misunderstand. To have a globally bulletproof
reputation you have to have global fame, and there's only room on the
fame pyramid for a handful at the top (global fame). And of course if
yours isn't globally bulletproof, then there exist people you might
want to deal with in the future who might not be resistant to being
influenced towards hostility by rumours about you.
Did you read a word I said? Since real harm IS done, "changing the
rules in my favor" doesn't matter. Changing the rules would be like
altering the gun laws or the penalty for murder -- it won't necessarily
stop someone shooting people. And changing the rules to where they can
do so without any effort being made to a) stop them or b) punish them
after the fact will have the opposite goddamn effect!
[snippy]
Well, you sure do seem to be wanting me to pretend *something* in order
to please you, or worse, please my attackers. Obviously I can't even
consider doing anything to achieve the latter, since rewarding what
they have done will only encourage them to do it again, to me and to
other victims. Now that they have done things unjustifiable they must
be given no quarter!
That sounds like you're advocating a form of suicide, not to mention
something that simply isn't possible even if I wanted to. I don't have
the tools for do-it-yourself brain surgery, regardless.
If his aim is to be committed for psychiatric evaluation, maybe because
he wants free psychotropic drugs, then maybe.
I just lambasted Attardi for making a 180 degree about-face over the
space of a few paragraphs in his post, but this takes the cake; you did
it in *three lines*. (Line 1: "he should just smile and say "Haha,
yeah, this is great! I don't feel a thing!" while wincing." Line 3: "No
sense lying to yourself.")
This is insane. It isn't possible to have a rational discussion with
someone who is apparently incapable of reason.
This is not even close to analogous to my situation. This is more like
advocating that I buy a bulletproof vest after being threatened by a
gunman, despite being told that the gunman is threatening a hostage
that isn't wearing one rather than directly pointing it at me.
Even supposing I bulletproofed myself against insults directly paining
me, I couldn't bulletproof everyone I might want to deal with in the
future against being induced by hearing the same insults to disdain me.
And that means the insults can still damage my future life or
opportunities despite the "bulletproofing", which makes it useless (or
worse than useless, a numbing of a pain that actually indicates a
possibly serious injury, resulting in letting the injury fester
untreated until it becomes gangrenous and life-threatening!)...
If the problem is that the *road* is being damaged by too much use of
spiky tyres, though, then clearly either the road needs to be armoured
or those tyres outlawed.
At this point, I'd think that everyone here would agree that that's
beyond dispute. (Except, of course, you, since you're not very grounded
in reality.)
There is another: you're living in a dream world, and I'm living in the
real one.
This fallacy assumes that every innocent person is going to be guilty
on some future occasion. In practise, most people do not commit any
serious crime, ever. It also suggests that if I should wait a short
while for my lawyer to show up and do something about all the nasty BS
people have been saying about me here. In fact I have zero confidence
that *anyone* will show up and do so, and every reason to believe that
I'm in this on my own.
There's nothing I can do about that. People misread things, as you
yourself pointed out before, and there's no apparent way to 100% proof
one's writing against being misread. Which isn't to say it isn't worth
being as clear as possible, mind you (so I am as clear as possible).
Revising the model to include a certain percentage of garbling in
transmission, all of my earlier conclusions are unchanged (now a
certain fraction of rebuttals are rendered ineffective by noise in the
receiver, but a similar fraction of insults can be assumed to suffer
the same fate, and the two cancel out).
The hell with continuing this bit. You're simply ignoring everything I
said before and then reiterating everything *you* said before, because
of the inconvenient fact that what I said disproves it. Your mule
stubbornness isn't going to magically make you right when all of the
empirical evidence and all of the rules of logic are stacked against
you.
You're wrong. Damage WILL always be done. In my past experience, the
rate of lasting adverse consequences stemming from a severe-enough
attack has been 100%. As in, not *one* exception.
So it's more like they hit the jackpot with over $50,000 in the
registers every single time. Far from being disappointed, they'd become
really enthusiastic, which is the last thing anyone else wants!
HOW? I already told you I don't have the necessary mind control
technology, you dimwit! And I wouldn't really want to use it even if I
did! So tell me HOW DO I PREVENT JOE BLOW WHO I DON'T EVEN KNOW FROM
HEARING OR BELIEVING OR OTHERWISE BEING INFLUENCED BY SOME INSULT THAT
I SEE? TELL ME!!! IF YOU KNOW A WAY TELL ME, AND IF NOT SHUT UP WITH
THIS CRAP!!! Jesus, you're thick! As *four* planks!!
Someone get me a tylenol!
I can not think of a single way unless the insult isn't widely
circulated and there's some means by which I can censor it so that it
never sees wide distribution. For a Usenet posting with no X-No-Archive
header it's pretty clear that the opposite is the case and it's
guaranteed to see planetary-scale distribution, as in anyone who looks
in the right place and has net access could see the insult and there's
no way to have it unpublished.
I'd have to switch from opposing to supporting "trusted computing",
hobnob with all the right political types, buy, steal, and cheat (or
even kill) my way to the top, and end up the guy entrusted with the
root crypto keys to have anything close to the capability to have any
badmouthing of me unpublished and wiped from all historical records.
And in actual fact, I don't want *anyone* to have that kind of power.
Not even me. Ever.
Which obviously means hermitage, or at best joining a cloistered order
of something or other (monks, Franciscan nuns, or what-have-you, just
so long as they are cloistered). Any other lifestyle and I'm not
resistant, intrinsically or otherwise, because I'll surely come into
contact with people that potentially get poisoned against me by
arseholes like Attardi. My own experience proves that even living a
relatively quiet, non-gregarious but non-cloistered-order lifestyle
exposes me to at least some poisoned people after 100% of such attacks.
It is to mitigate the damage to me, not to cause some to them. If I
wanted to, believe me, I would have by now, and you and everyone else
here would know about it. Their websites (for those who have them) all
going 404 at the same moment they all mysteriously shut up after having
shown no sign that they'd ever *voluntarily* do so would be among the
first clues.
You are not adapting to anything.
I already explained why for the type of damage I'm worried about, the
only way to avoid being damaged that way without directly countering
the damage in some way is by retreating to a monastery. That might be
your cup of tea, but it isn't mine, nor should it have to be. Besides,
I simply will not let any jerkoff come along and force me to choose
between becoming a recluse and being miserable, and then just go along
with that and do one or the other. Certainly not without a fucking
fight.
You don't think, then. You certainly did, and not that long ago.
The technical term is "efficient". "Lazy" is pejorative. Don't use it
to describe me.
The shoes are just a closer part of the environment. Changing himself
would really mean walking around in agony until thick calluses
developed, or mutating your DNA or something.
You're completely wrong. It *is* dangerous to think something like that
in something conditional on choices you make, such as crimes you might
commit. But the reasoning I was using was targeted at cases where the
alternatives are to believe or not believe something that results in a
bad outcome *un*conditionally.
In the case actually under discussion, you proposed that being insulted
was a losing game -- as soon as someone insults you, you've already
lost no matter what you do (or don't do). Combined with the fact (which
you intermittently dispute, but which is backed by loads of empirical
evidence) that losing the game in question has long-term bad
consequences in a similar manner to getting a bad credit history, and
also the fact that it is not feasible to completely avoid ever being
insulted even once, it follows that the "credit rating" is going to go
into the toilet pretty swiftly *unconditionally* on what you choose to
do, short of maybe joining a nunnery, and that this will mean your
quality of life (especially the bits involving social interaction) will
follow it there shortly thereafter.
In that case, you're automatically screwed, whatever you do, the moment
someone insults you (and sooner or later somebody will, whether you're
saint or devil). If you believe that, then you have no reason to do
anything but eat your gun right away and save yourself the downward
spiral and the misery. So better not to believe that.
You advocated a belief that, with a little application of reason, leads
to the inescapable conclusion that everyone is automatically screwed
and there is nothing they can do about it. (Unlike your later
cockamamie "disproof", in which you can avoid being screwed by not
committing certain violent crimes.) Either you didn't think things
through, or you are so far down the rabbit hole and into lala land that
you actually don't think this mass auto-screwage is reason for anything
but more self-induced phony happiness.
No, no, a thousand times no! Did you not read a single fucking word I
spent all that time writing?!?! Asshole! Read it again and again until
you understand it! Let me lay it out for you ... AGAIN:
Premise 1 (yours) - If someone insults you, you lose the "insult game"
automatically.
Premise 2 (empirical evidence) - It is not practical (or even perhaps
possible) to avoid ever being insulted.
Conclusion 1 - Everyone loses the "insult game", generally within a
short time after birth.
Premise 3 (conclusion 1) - Everyone loses the "insult game", generally
within a short time after birth.
Premise 4 (empirical evidence) - Losing the "insult game" has negative
consequences outside the game, particularly in social life and probably
in economic life (esp. as it seems likely to affect employability)
Conclusion 2 - Everyone's social life and probably economic life tanks
quickly.
Premise 5 (conclusion 2) - Everyone's social life and probably economic
life tanks quickly.
Premise 6 (self-evident) - Life as a pariah without money isn't worth
living.
Conclusion 3 - Everyone may as well go kill themselves right now and
avoid prolonged suffering. To strive, in particular, is futile.
Reasons to reject conclusion 3 (and therefore premise 1, the only
dubious one in the lot):
* If you suppose conclusion 3, you're screwed. If you don't, and
premise 1 turned out to be wrong, you have a chance.
* The empirical evidence is strongly against conclusion 3 anyway; the
suicide rate would be triple what it is and the world a lot different
and even shittier than it actually is if conclusion 3 were true.
This is laughable. Haven't I already told you TEN THOUSAND TIMES that
the insults DO cause significant damage? It doesn't matter if you
pretend that they don't when they make OTHER PEOPLE believe bad things
about you and then those OTHER PEOPLE mistreat you. I told you before
I'VE SEEN THIS HAPPEN MULTIPLE TIMES! You can pretend all you like that
no harm is being done but wishing doesn't make it so! Idiot!
If I pretend that, then people insult me, I shrug it off, and after a
while no-one wants anything to do with me anymore. I suppose if I had
your mastery over your own mind, to the point of being able to easily
delude myself at will, that I would shrug *that* off as well, but at
that point I might as well be some kind of druggie, a nut in a psych
ward doped up on Christ knows what, or a recluse -- in fact I *would*
be a recluse, though not by choice, regardless.
That might be a life you're willing to accept if it happens to you, but
I'm not you. I will do whatever I can (within certain limits) to
prevent this. If it happens anyway, I will rail against the fates, or
maybe take the law into my own hands and track down the people who made
me a pariah and kill them before turning the gun on myself, but I
certainly won't just lie down and take it, let alone delude myself into
thinking it's actually something pleasant.
You know what? The hell with you. You simply aren't rational. Nobody
who'd wilfully make themselves believe things are peachy when the roof
is caving in, there's no more food or money, and someone's rushing them
with a gun can possibly be capable of having a rational discussion with
me (or anyone else).
I don't see pretending something isn't a problem and wishing yourself
into feeling good as anything but a last resort, an alternative to
suicide maybe if things become otherwise chronically and irreversibly
intolerable. And it's really just a form of suicide anyway.
Of course I'm not, but you're also mistaken to focus on just one of
what proved to be several similar occurrences spread out over years and
in varying circumstances. None of what you claim is true; it's as
simple as that. At least not in Western society; maybe your beliefs are
shaped by a different culture (Japan's, maybe? They're bigger on bowing
and honor and stuff over there, and there was some blither recently
about how I should have bowed my head and been real quiet and
deferential in this ng not long ago...) and insults there don't fester
into rumours that then damage how people treat you later on.
But they do here in the west.
You moron! It doesn't matter what the game is they are internally
playing in their heads. The ONLY thing that matters is the actual
real-world consequences.
I am TELLING you, and this had BETTER be for the LAST FUCKING TIME!,
that:
* If someone insults you, at least if it's not adequately responded to,
in public, some of those who hear it ARE influenced. I know this from
EXPERIENCE so don't you DARE say it isn't true.
* The influence in question has actual bad consequences, like losing
friends, or not being able to find new ones in a community. Again this
is BEYOND DISPUTE because it ACTUALLY HAS HAPPENED SEVERAL TIMES. Some
of these times to me, and more of them where I was privy to events.
* If you pretend that nothing bad has happened, you've STILL LOST THE
FRIENDS, or whatever other consequences.
* If the insult has turned into a bad reputation, this is true EVEN IF
YOU PRETEND IT ISN'T.
It follows that a random person, historical figure or contemporary, who
pretended insults wouldn't have these effects and got insulted enough
(in front of an audience) would have wound up with a bad reputation
despite their pretending. You are claiming otherwise, against all
reason!
Yes, and if their reputations don't show any mark from it, obviously
they didn't just do nothing, because as I've said before I've SEEN WHAT
HAPPENS WHEN INSULTS SUCCEED IN INFLUENCING PEOPLE. Even sometimes when
some effort is made at damage control some negative effects remain,
nevermind when nothing is done about it at all.
Irrelevant. You can't disprove what the empirical evidence tells me is
the truth. The flaw in your argument here is simple -- it assumes I
don't hear any nasty rumor about the person. Then of course I won't be
affected. That doesn't mean nobody else was, and the ones that were
would have treated him worse. Of course though there should still be
some signs that whoever it was ended up in disrepute. Since that's not
common, even though my experience is that insults with an audience
invariably cause serious harm of exactly that sort, it follows that
most did something to mitigate the consequences whenever there were
public character assassination attacks directed against them.
No, just the people that he knew and whose opinions he cared about.
Small comfort to him that nobody else knew or cared after his wife left
him, his neighbors stopped having anything to do with him, and he lost
his job and couldn't find a new one without changing his name and
moving. Unless of course he mitigated the damage so that those things
didn't happen. (Worst case scenario for someone in the US or anywhere
else with a rotting sieve for a safety-net: actual death, by either
starvation or exposure. No more work -> no more food -> no more
breathing.)
W
wesley.hall
Twisted said:
....But it's OK when you do it right?
T
Twisted
Oliver said:
Like monkhood or nirvana or some such thing? Thanks, but no thanks. Not
my cup of tea. And it isn't your place to tell me (or worse, everyone
in the world) to become some such thing "or else".
A slight exaggeration.
Whoa, wait, did you just say "backing out ofthis thread"? OK, yes I was serious, deadly serious.
Oh, so now you presume to tell me how I interpret things? I'd be
rushing to find my tinfoil if I actually believed you, but I don't.
That's among friends. This is random people I don't know, not to
mention in front of a live studio audience. I can't afford not to take
it personally. Especially when it's as plain as the nose on my face
that it is not "all in good fun".
It depends on the tone of course.
That's why we have "I prefer Z; it has these advantages <lists some>
although those may not be applicable in every circumstance" and the
like.
Don't be silly. Just the ones that imply something bad. For example
questions worded in such a way as to suggest that the person who asked
them is really thinking of this one: "Are you sure you aren't doing
something dumb?"
That's why you respond to a rude gesture in some other way than
immediate violence, dummy. And why I responded to hostile suggestions
about my IQ with polite statements explaining why these suggestions
were false, rather than with counterattacks. I may have gotten nastier
later, towards specific participants, but only once it became clear
that those participants were indeed deliberately and wilfully being
hostile and weren't responding to reason or to the massing evidence of
the futility of trying to "sneak one past me".
You know what I meant.
As has become evident, you haven't had a nasty rumor started online
actually seriously mess up your social life before. I have. You are
singularly unqualified to make that judgment, unlike me. I'd take the
punch, as long as it wasn't going to cause actual lasting injury.
Well, at least you're willing to admit that when you're discussing an
area where you clearly lack expertise. It remains true that people will
often read into such a statement a claim that it is factually true,
though, and some of them may start thinking that I might need
"straightening out". It only takes a suggestion or planting the notion
in someone's head and letting it fester to poison someone's mind
against someone, unfortunately, and not a strong proof. That's why
regardless of the strength of their case a defense lawyer and his
client have the right in most sensible legal systems to object to
innuendos in the courtroom that might prejudice the jury. As soon as
prejudice is created, even with a strong logical argument for its
inaccuracy the defense is fighting an uphill battle.
I wouldn't think that I needed "straightening out" in the first place.
If somehow I did anyway, I'd keep it to myself unless serious
hostilities were called for. And I wouldn't consider the posting you
replied to with that comment to warrant such a response.
The latter would only make sense if he will be, and in the case that I
do so as well we both would be.
You also didn't consider a purely defensive response.
In the part you either hadn't read yet or conveniently snipped, I
described exactly how.
No, but you suggested not only not insulting someone back, but not even
trying to do damage control, or call in any kind of police, or anything
else either. In other words, to let them get away a) unpunished and b)
actually having done their damage successfully. Even if the damage is a
side effect and not their main goal, lots of people will do likewise
and because they aren't punished nor is the damage prevented the damage
will just keep accumulating. (Punishment would make them seek less
harmful means to achieve their goals, or abandon those goals entirely,
at least some of the times. Perfectly preventing the damage would make
the whole issue moot.)
Unless a serious storm caused serious damage or trauma or loss, I don't
see how this can be comparable to the lasting harm mentioned above.
(4) in the snow is to allow it to accumulate until the city's traffic
grid is paralyzed rather than plowing it away. (Without heating fuel,
food, or the ability to evacuate, most of the population dies within a
few days, in case you were wondering.)
That's not possible. Again, my reputation is being held hostage. If I
give the hostage-takers what they want they have a) no reason to keep
their word to release the hostage unharmed (not that in this instance
they have even said they would anyway) and b) no reason not to do the
same thing again, and again, and again anytime they please. If instead
they are prevented from doing any harm, the whole issue is moot, and if
they discover some nasty consequences from their behavior, they are
discouraged from doing it again.
T
Twisted
Joe Attardi forgot he was supposed to **** off:
[snipola]
An awful lot of inconvenience and extra work and RAM usage to go to
just on your say-so, don't you think?
You have a lot of gumption to suggest something as astonishing as that
I might not have been insulted, given how bloody fucking obviously
false that is!
[Further insults and nonsense snipped, including more timewasting
suggestions and more hostilities]
That's impossible. Since I do so only when attacked, and nowhere near
all of the time, it follows that I have done so in less than 50% of the
namecalling posts to this thread. There are an equal number of
namecalling posts not by me in the form of those posts' parents, and an
additional, substantial number not by me that I responded more mildly
to.
You conveniently ignore lurkers. Some of the posters seem to be mild in
their behavior as well, and their hostility either absent or expressed
far more subtly than a mind of your low caliber is evidently capable
of.
[Some violent insults snipped]
Not when a cursory inspection of this thread in any news reader will
provide more than ample proof, fucktard.
In the process implying that you think I'm a liar. I call that
attacking me. And your less-recent posts have included plenty of even
clearer examples of you attacking me!
You aren't getting off on a technicality, asshat. You said you would do
X (not that you *thought* you *might* do X) and then you didn't do X.
And to top it off this happened repeatedly, then and on several
subsequent occasions.
Which merely shows just what a staggering amount of time and effort you
are willing to devote to character assassination, as opposed to doing
anything remotely describable as "productive".
I am not willing to put in the same effort just on your say-so in a
thread that I don't feel should even be continuing? Damn straight. Nor
do I think the audience is too stupid to go browsing about themselves.
Although any that have been following the thread for a while will not
have any doubts that you're wrong, unless they are insane, since your
behavior is plain as day. You, on the other hand, clearly take our
mutual audience for a bunch of fools unable to do anything themselves
who you have to spoon-feed. I wonder why?
You are in no position to give me orders, and especially not ones that
are inconvenient and waste resources at my end, asswipe.
Because the request came from you, it's onerous, and you're an asshole,
that's why!
[remainder of attack post snipped]
Go to hell.
[snipola]
An awful lot of inconvenience and extra work and RAM usage to go to
just on your say-so, don't you think?
You have a lot of gumption to suggest something as astonishing as that
I might not have been insulted, given how bloody fucking obviously
false that is!
[Further insults and nonsense snipped, including more timewasting
suggestions and more hostilities]
That's impossible. Since I do so only when attacked, and nowhere near
all of the time, it follows that I have done so in less than 50% of the
namecalling posts to this thread. There are an equal number of
namecalling posts not by me in the form of those posts' parents, and an
additional, substantial number not by me that I responded more mildly
to.
You conveniently ignore lurkers. Some of the posters seem to be mild in
their behavior as well, and their hostility either absent or expressed
far more subtly than a mind of your low caliber is evidently capable
of.
[Some violent insults snipped]
Not when a cursory inspection of this thread in any news reader will
provide more than ample proof, fucktard.
In the process implying that you think I'm a liar. I call that
attacking me. And your less-recent posts have included plenty of even
clearer examples of you attacking me!
You aren't getting off on a technicality, asshat. You said you would do
X (not that you *thought* you *might* do X) and then you didn't do X.
And to top it off this happened repeatedly, then and on several
subsequent occasions.
Which merely shows just what a staggering amount of time and effort you
are willing to devote to character assassination, as opposed to doing
anything remotely describable as "productive".
I am not willing to put in the same effort just on your say-so in a
thread that I don't feel should even be continuing? Damn straight. Nor
do I think the audience is too stupid to go browsing about themselves.
Although any that have been following the thread for a while will not
have any doubts that you're wrong, unless they are insane, since your
behavior is plain as day. You, on the other hand, clearly take our
mutual audience for a bunch of fools unable to do anything themselves
who you have to spoon-feed. I wonder why?
You are in no position to give me orders, and especially not ones that
are inconvenient and waste resources at my end, asswipe.
Because the request came from you, it's onerous, and you're an asshole,
that's why!
[remainder of attack post snipped]
Go to hell.
T
Twisted
Joe said:
You haven't even posted any excerpts yet, just threatened to on
multiple occasions, with the implied threat of twisting and otherwise
distorting things (since otherwise it would just show me to be harmless
and you a fool of course).
No. It might be true that people are picking fights like this with me
everywhere I post, but I can't take responsibility for their behavior
now can I? If they respond to some harmless eccentricity with
intolerant flamage, that's their own damn fault, not mine, and I won't
become a cookie-cutter conformist just to stop such idiots doing so, or
to please you, or for any other reason for that matter.
That's a bald-faced lie. As I have REPEATEDLY stated, which none of you
seem to be letting into your THICK skulls, I DIDN'T THROW THE FIRST
PUNCH. I was attacked for not using getResource rather than because I
attacked first, remember? Moron!
[Calls me a name and then claims that doing so is "hardly an attack",
of all the ludicrous things, and proceeds to suggest that I'm a liar
and do other evil things. None of it is true.]
Yes. You could be a nice guy with no history of attacking me and post
something polite and interesting. Well, someone can, but it's pretty
obvious that *you* can't, but you know what I mean. Or of course you
could shut the **** up.
I'm not *trying* to paint a picture, asswipe. I'm expressing anger and
frustration that you continue to hassle me instead of fucking the hell
off! Nobody, however "mild-mannered", remains so when sufficiently
provoked, nor does any reasonable person expect otherwise. Idiot.
Then why are you putting so much effort into it, hmm? You yourself just
admitted to opening extra browser windows and doing extensive googling
and research just to support your thesis that I'm an idiot, or an
asshole, or whatever it is you're on about now. That isn't the behavior
of someone to whom it's anything less than a blood sport.
Also, you mischaracterize why I respond. I couldn't care less if you
declared victory, as long as nobody believed you, or any of the BS
you've said about me. It is undoing your effect on the opinions of me
held by your audience that is my goal. Even if that effect is only a
side effect to you.
It's a war, one you are prosecuting in some sort of vendetta against me
for only Christ and your psychiatrist know what pathological reasons.
I certainly hope so. Why not help it along now by shutting the hell up?
Especially if, as you claim, you're not out for any sort of victory? If
that's true, you won't be losing by walking away from this.
[Snip suggestion of being some grade school kid]
**** you.
T
Twisted
Oliver said:
Carelessly wording a question so that it implicitly calls my
intelligence or competence into question as well is certainly what I'd
call negligent. Deliberately doing it is worse still.
Which is beside the point. We were discussing whether hypothetical
eccentricities of mine were innocuous, not whether the crap that
started this fight was innocuous.
Yes, it is. There are formalized procedures involving voting for things
like RFCs, etc.; and it certainly is not the sort of feudal lordship
being suggested by some where everyone must bow before the King or
else.
This newsgroup doesn't have a "way"; it is a collection of people that
basically don't know one another at all. It's an anarchy, or perhaps a
bit of an adhocracy at most. And any one of the posters might be a dog
for all we know. There can be no castes, hierarchies, lordships, or
kingdoms here to whom fealty is owed, even if you could think up a
theory whereby such a personage could claim jurisdiction over people
that, for the most part, are not even in the same country as he is.
T
Twisted
Oliver said:
**** this BULLSHIT!
You're saying that any time they want to anyone can FORCE me to do lots
of research on their behalf? **** you!
Any MORON in the audience who has been following HALF of this thread
has read post after post by Attacki attacking me for Chrissake -- there
is NO burden on me to prove that he did every single fucking time I
make reference to his behavior when everyone reading it has SEEN that
behavior repeatedly exhibited for the last FUCKING WEEK! Next you would
ask me to give citations to various newspaper articles if I said that
it's been a cold and rainy November in front of a bunch of people in my
area who have all been experiencing the same weather? Or insist on my
wasting hours of my time digging up references to support the thesis
that there has been significant road traffic on the nearby highway
every day this week?
You know what? Go to hell. Both of you.
BS. I accused him repeatedly of two things: lying about quitting the
thread and attacking me. You must remember him attacking me, since he's
done it several times a day for about a goddamn week now. As for the
lying part, he himself quoted the necessary bit FOR me not long ago,
while trying to weasel out on a technicality!
The hell with you two though. I am boilerplating all the remaining
replies to you two. Something like
So-and-so wrote:
[snip BS]
None of the unpleasant things So-and-so said and insinuated about me
are true. Go about your business.
O
Oliver Wong
Twisted said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddhartha_Gautama#The_Great_Passing
<quote>
According to the Mahaparinibbana Sutta of the Pali canon, at the age of 80,
the Buddha announced that he would soon enter Parinirvana or the final
deathless state abandoning the earthly body. After this, the Buddha ate his
last meal, which, according to different translations, was either a mushroom
delicacy or soft pork, which he had received as an offering from a
blacksmith named Cunda. Falling violently ill, Buddha instructed his
attendant Ananda to convince Cunda that the meal eaten at his place had
nothing to do with his passing and that his meal would be a source of the
greatest merit as it provided the much-needed energy for the Buddha.
Is there anything in particular you'd like to do that monks are
forbidden from doing? I think you can drink alcohol, take drugs, and have
sex, all without becoming any more suceptible to insults sent over usenet
(unless you're posting while drunk or high, and behave obnoxiously).
I don't know if Buddha and the others did everything right. That wasn't
the point. I was just pointing out that it's possible to become invulnerable
to insults.
Personally, if I had to choose between "admitting" my approach is
inferior and assassination, I'd go with admitting. But I bet neither of us
would "admit" that our approaches were inferior if we didn't truly believe
it to be so. So I guess neither of us are all that worried about
assassination from pissed off newsgroup participants. So perhaps it isn't
unreasonable to try to behave like Gandhi without fear of being
assassinated.
If someone insults you out of the blue, maybe they've been having a bad
day or something. They're uspet, but not nescessarily upset at you. If you
retaliate though, then they will focus their anger towards you, and that's
when you start having problems.
I *did* criticize (I wouldn't call it "attack") both sides.
I don't think the Indians vs the British situation was symmetrical
either.
I vaguely recall you saying something about needing to rebut every
attack made against you. That's what I'm saying to drop. Forget this "an eye
for an eye" stuff.
Okay. Attardi, others; if you've been acting hostile towards Twisted,
please stop doing it.
That's not true. You gave the example of hermits having bulletproof
reputation. They certainly aren't globally famous.
[...]
Actually, changing the rules would be like making it so that bullets
deal zero damage to you. If you can do that, it'd be great, right? 'Cause
then guns wouldn't be a problem for you anymore.
I don't think we can do that with guns. But I do think we can do it with
insults over usenet. I know you say you've had experiences contradicting
this, but I can't really comment on that without knowing more details, which
I don't think you will provide.
I don't see how you inferred my asking you to pretend anything.
I wouldn't call changing yourself a form of suicide. And people have
been able to change themselves without brain surgery.
I guess I made a typo. That should have said "He shouldn't just smile
and say [etc.]".
Uh... I don't see the similarity...
I think you're confused about the analogy, but I agree that it'd take a
lot of effort to bullet proof everybody. That's exactly what the fable tells
you to NOT do.
And now you're mixing metaphors. If you're properly bulletproof, the
insults can't still damage your future life or opportunities.
Right. But luckily the road *isn't* being damaged by too much use of
spiky tyres, right? I have no idea where you're going with this.
[...]
I wouldn't call my world a "dream world". It's pretty good, but not
quite that good. I haven't been dating supermodels or swimming in cash
recently, for example. And I couldn't get my hands on a Nintendo Wii before
they sold out.
Your emotions, experiences, personality, etc. all colour your world.
Most of your perceptions are not as objective as you might think.
No, only that *some* particular innocent person *may* be *accused* of
*something* on *some* future occasion. This is vague enough that it's
practically a tautology.
I think most people don't need to evacuate from an airplane either.
Doesn't mean it's a bad idea to prepare for that event, just in case.
The "innocent person" remark had nothing to do with what you should or
should not do in this thread. It was only to falsify your claim that an
innocent person will always vehemently protest anything accused of him/her.
Revise the model so that now, for every message you send out, it is
garbled in a specific way so as to cause other people to think poorly of
you. 'Cause that's what happening in this thread, right? You're posting
logical, neutral replies, and everyone is interpreting them as idiotic,
hostile ones.
Is the best strategy still to continue sending out these messages?
You've been insulting me a lot in this thread. Calling me a dimwit,
telling me I'm thick as some number of planks, that I'm a moron, etc. Notice
how I didn't bother to dispute any of these accusations. Notice also how
your insults don't seem to harm me at all.
Hopefully, this is evidence enough for you that it's not the case that
damage is always done when someone gets insulted over usenet.
Can you provide a citation?
Okay. So maybe you should stop being so efficient that you don't bother
to google "ant" before making assertions about what such a google query will
return.
If you want to call it a "close part of the environment", then fine.
Change the "close parts", and don't bother changing the "far parts". The
moral of the fable remains the same.
[...]
No, I'm saying the game in which when you get insulted, you lose points
or take damage or whatever is a losing game. The game in which you get
insulted, and nothing happens isn't nescessarily a losing game.
[...]
If you're playing that particular game, yes. That's why I recommend
playing a different game.
[...]
So far so good...
Conclusion 2 seems to assume that everyone decides to play (and thus
lose) the insult game. Some people have chosen to play different games
instead, and thus don't suffer from having lost that particular game.
[...]
If you really believe this, then there's an obvious solution: Move to
Japan.
You called me a moron. I won't dispute it. And I claim that I haven't
lost any friends as a result of your calling me a moron and my not disputing
it.
- Oliver
J
Joe Attardi
Spare me, Twisted. I'll continue posting here if I damn well please.
Can you stop exaggerating for one single post? Extra work and RAM
usage? Give me a break! You're just making excuses yet again for your
inability to back up any of your claims.
In other words: You have no intelligent response, so you'll just omit
it.
You really are a child, aren't you? Namecalling? What are you, 5 years
old?
If anyone's mind is of a low caliber, it is yours. You are complaining
that opening a second browser tab or window is too much of a task for
you.
If that's the case, then why are you so reluctant to provide proof? Oh,
right, because you're a liar.
Doesn't matter. I didn't promise a thing, so you just need to shut up
about this non-issue already.
I only said it once. I'd ask you when the other times I said it, but
you've already more than proven you don't have the mental capacity to
do that.
Character assassination implies that what is said is false.
Hahahahaha! If you don't feel it should be continuing, then don't
continue it.
The fact that you refuse to back up your accusations to me proves that
you are nothing but a liar and a troll. Your other fights you pick in
other newsgroups also prove that you are a troll.
You are such a crybaby. People don't agree with you, criticize you, and
you cry that everyone's attacking you.
Of course, the root of the issue is that you are incompetent, and
extremely lazy and arrogant. Instead of discussing the issues at hand
you'd rather cry like a little bitch about how you are forced to keep
responding to everyone's "attacks". When asked to show evidence of such
attacks, you blubber like a grade-school girl about how you don't have
to. Which solidifies your position as a huge fucking liar.
Since you made such a big production about it last time, this time I
will promise that I've got nothing more to say to you, because you
obviously aren't going to stop bitching in this thread. So, I will
watch with great interest are you continue to blow things out of
proportion.
You are such a little bitch.
B
blmblm
Agreed.
However, I don't agree that the snipped quotes (in which you seem
to be saying that you never do anything wrong) constitute "quoting
out of context". As best I can tell from your other posts in
this thread, you *do* believe that you never do anything wrong.
How is it quoting out of context to isolate particularly explicit
statements of this belief? unless the remarks were meant as
hyperbole or sarcasm and I didn't catch that?
B
blmblm
That would be me, maybe? On the assumption that it is -- disregard
if not -- :
You have posted in two newsgroups I browse/follow. I have observed
this. (No, I don't always notice who posts what, but I do generally
notice identities of newsgroup regulars as well as frequent
participants in particularly interesting threads.) I followed
up on a post in this newsgroup in which you mentioned the other.
I don't quite get how this constitutes stalking, but I guess as
long as you describe it as "relatively harmless" I don't much care.
What initially attracted my attention to this thread, by the way,
was that it seemed to be generating a lot more posts than the subject
line would seem to merit. Often this indicates that the topic
of discussion has drifted, so I tuned in, so to speak, to find out
whether the new topic was of interest, and found .... something not
very interesting for its technical content, but interesting in the
interaction of personalities. (That was meant as a neutral statement
making no claims about why the thread has gone on for so long and
drifted so far afield.)
In a court of law in the US, aren't lawyers allowed to bring up
otherwise irrelevant material that might be used to support, or
impeach, the credibility of a witness? Or is that only in popular
fiction about courts of law?
Of course this is not a court of law, but the principle would seem to
be similar -- when two parties disagree, it seems reasonable to me
to decide which one to believe based on their relative credibility,
and past behavior of both parties might be helpful in assessing that.
[ snip ]