B
blmblm
[ snip ]
"Happy to be of service"?
You seem to be doing a remarkable job in this thread of keeping
your temper. That meditation and stuff you do must be working ....
[ snip ]
"Happy to be of service"?
You seem to be doing a remarkable job in this thread of keeping
your temper. That meditation and stuff you do must be working ....
J
Joe Attardi
Typo- that should be "as you continue to blow things out of
proportion".
OH NOES!!! I BROKE MY PROMISE!!! I AM A HUGE LIAR!!! PLEASE SPARE ME
TWISTED!!
"I am the terror that flaps in the net!
I am the IRC server that randomly disconnects you!
I am TWISTED! "
This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read!
T
Twisted
Oliver said:
I disagree.
[snip lots of stuff]
[snip admission he's hostile to both me and Attardi's bunch; there seem
to be 3 or more sides here]
[snip some more]
If I were out for revenge I'd be launching character assassinations
against Attardi and others, rather than simply debunking some of the
crap they keep saying.
Good luck.
OK, but they're a rather extreme exception most people would not want
to emulate. Also, if most people become hermits (leaving only those few
who become famous instead) then civilization collapses.
That would mean changing the way other people react to insults and
rumours though, which as I've explained ten thousand times is well
beyond my means.
Experiences that prove that the damage isn't zero, and that wishing
won't make the number change.
Let's check off a few shall we?
Suggested I pretend to agree with someone just so they shut up? Check.
Suggested I pretend insults wouldn't damage my reputation? Check.
Suggested I pretend to be happy even when I wasn't? Check.
And that's just for starters...
I am who I am. If I become someone different, then I die and someone
different is born. If I induce this intentionally, it's a form of
suicide (and parenting?)...and since I am who I am, I don't see any way
to change it anyway.
Finally, suggesting that people should change upon request leads down a
dangerous slippery slope to some kind of totalitarianism, or a
Borg-like hive mind, or some shit like that.
Oh.
Well, it's so completely in character for your various buddhist monks
and saints and nuns that it was in no way obvious. Which shows that
you're still just about as irrational as I said.
That's because I need to revise downwards my estimate of your IQ;
sorry. Be with you in a moment.
Where were we? Oh yes. Er, right, if I bulletproof myself against bad
feelings when someone insults me, it doesn't stop the insult affecting
someone else's treatment of me. Which is something we seem to keep
having to go over many, many times for some reason. Maybe you don't
care if people start to mistreat you, even if former friends do and so
does everyone else without any exceptions, but I do, and if everyone
was as unconcerned with such things as you apparently are, we'd either
have a planetful of hermits or a planetful of sociopaths, and in either
case no civilization to speak of.
Well, then I have to stop the bullets even being fired. There's no
other viable choice, unless you consider "letting them turn you into a
pariah" viable, which I don't.
Well that's just where the bullet analogy starts seriously breaking
down. It's more like a toxic gas. If you put on a gas mask, but
everyone else drops dead and you're left all alone, you're not much
better off than if you died too. Might as well try to prevent the gas
being released. (Of course, in the case of nasty rumours, the effects
are as if somehow for you everyone dropped dead, while for everyone
else it was you that did. So think of it as if the attacker has a gun
that can split the universe, into one parallel world where the target
is alone and one where everyone else is. Or something.)
Argh. Forget it. You're obviously far too dense ever to understand it,
since you haven't even when I've put it in really simple terms.
Well, then, you haven't been trying hard enough! Since you're a reality
denialist, quite willing to replace your experiences completely with a
fantasy created by your own mind and neglect entirely your real-world
circumstances as no longer relevant, you should be able to do better
than that. It's not like in your world where no matter what you're
always happy you can't print your own money or wish up a willing and
interested version of Daniela Pestova or something ...
Speak for yourself. Yours certainly aren't objective; and of course my
emotions are colored by my circumstances, as they should be; but facts
are facts, and what I infer by logic remains true no matter what. You
seem to reject all empiricism in fact, both with that statement (it's
reminiscent of Hume and other reality-denying philosphers) and your
repeatedly not accounting for my observation that insults have rarely
*failed* to cause genuine, grievous indirect harm through influencing
other people.
[snip more lunacy]
You can't falsify something that's true. You seem also to have
forgotten that a guilty person can fake that kind of protest to make
their guilt not obvious.
That's a completely off-the-wall model with no basis in reality. You're
proposing a strong systematic error rather than just noise in the
signal. That requires a persistant misalignment somewhere, which since
I am perfectly logical would require that everyone else, to the very
last one, be seriously abnormal in some respect and, in particular,
incapable of reason or basic English comprehension.
I suppose you're doing the usual thing and projecting your own traits
onto everyone else. Much the way thieves are paranoid about being
stolen from, and evil dictators think everyone is plotting to take over
the throne, and so forth. It's understandable -- our default model for
a generic, unidentified human being is our self-model (and for people
we know, or get to know, we add the known deviations from that model as
learned deltas). Unfortunately, when the person in question is highly
atypical, as you appear to be, the result tends to be wrong far more
often than it's right.
You have again mistakenly confused "everyone" with "everyone posting to
this particular thread". The latter is a very tiny subset of the
former, and is dominated at this time by my attackers. In fact, you're
using the posts my attackers have made as "evidence" that "everyone"
hates me when it is only evidence that my attackers do -- which is
obvious, since why else would they be attacking me? If you were
correct, my attackers would be exponentiating in number; in fact, they
are gradually diminishing, according to my latest statistical model for
this thread.
Not in the kooky comic-book-physics universe you just proposed, but
then that isn't the real world is it? Understandable, mind you, since
you appear to have very little experience of that world as opposed to
the fantasy world you spin to keep yourself happily deluded...
Only when you keep either ignoring something I say every time I say it
or failing to parse it even when it is stated in plain, fairly simple
English, and this happens hundreds of bloody times!
If you did nothing and I kept it up, you'd develop a sullied reputation
that would probably interfere with getting a job or having much of a
social life. I won't keep it up, since I only have outbursts like that
when faced with genuine idiocy or unbelievably mulish stubbornness
worthy of a Guiness record, so you probably have nothing to worry
about. (Your persistent confusions of fantasy with reality are probably
a much greater hindrance to your employability or social life than a
rumor I started could ever be, anyway.)
If someone somewhere is now less well-disposed towards you, then damage
was done. I'm not sure if I should apologize, but given that you've
admitted to hostility towards me, and given that you really do seem to
have a real hard time letting me get some points across, I'm leaning
towards "no" on that one.
No, but it's true. You specifically said my not googling Ant was lazy;
I remember that much; and you used the exact word "lazy".
You've gotten confused again. Let me help you.
What actually happened was:
* Everyone was raving about ant, but nobody had mentioned how to obtain
it or get more info when endorsing it, which I found rather curious.
* So I asked why.
* People misunderstood that as my demanding they post the URL, rather
than wondering why they hadn't done so spontaneously. They asked me why
I hadn't googled it.
* I then told them that I wasn't really looking for it at this time
anyway, and besides, it was highly unlikely to work seeing as the name
of the thing was a three-letter word with a far more commonly used,
mainstream meaning.
Apparently it turns out to be the exception rather than the rule in
this case, but it remains true that you're probably wasting your time
if you google such a thing. Hindsight is of course irrelevant, since
you don't have it yet at the time when you're making the decision of
whether to invest any time in a search before asking for more info or
not. When I judge that asking someone carries a higher probability of
success than googling, and that having to wait hours or even days for
the information isn't a problem, then I ask instead.
Unfortunately I don't see how it can possibly apply to insults and
rumours. Instead of changing everyone's minds to reject the insults,
I'd just have to change mine and anyone who got close by. But the
latter is still not actually possible...
But I don't have the option of playing the latter game because in the
real world it is unequivocally FALSE that "nothing happens" and I
refuse to retreat from reality the way you do and advocate doing.
See above.
You seem to have forgotten that anyone can draft anyone else into it
involuntarily simply by insulting them. I don't see a practical way to
ensure against being thus drafted, short of becoming a recluse.
Out of the question.
1. Budget(!)
2. I'd quickly starve and die in an environment in which I was unable
to procure food or engage in other basic transactions due to mutual
incomprehension(!!)
3. If everyone did as you suggest, the whole island-chain would
probably sink under the weight, and certainly its carrying capacity for
H. Sapiens would be overwhelmed(!!!)
You might yet, or lose friends before even having the chance to know
them (so ones you won't even know you've lost!)...
T
Twisted
Joe Attardi sets some kind of fucking world record for insult density
in a news post:
[snip nearly everything]
You want evidence that you're "attacking" me? Fine. Here's the fucking
evidence. This last gem of yours, alone, contained roughly 117 insults,
many of them explicit and far more implied. Every "[bleep!]" in the
quoted paragraph is one of the more explicit ones, and there are (count
them) seven of those. In the ONE PARAGRAPH. There are dozens more in
the crap that I snipped rather than giving detailed point-by-point
rebuttals to.
Oh, and for completeness and so you won't weasel out on a technicality
this time,
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/fdd610f4812bdf25
That's the most concentrated venom I've ever seen from any organism on
Earth, which means you've topped the king cobra, the sea wasp, several
other infamous cubozoans, the sea snake, AND the black widow spider. In
fact, you may have even topped a hypothetical hybrid of all of the
above into a giant poisonous movie-monster with the toxicity to kill
the population of a large city with a single accidental sneeze in its
general direction.
We hope you meet the same fate as the typical such movie-monster --
buzzed about by angry military helicopters (wasps will do in your case
I expect) and pinpricked to death in a rather slow manner.
And of course not a word of what you said about me is remotely close to
being true.
[More crap deleted]
Or about me?
[Parting insult deleted]
Anyone want to start a betting pool? I'm claiming 10 to 1 odds he won't
shut up. The minimum bet is one dollar and the betting period is one
day or until he posts to this thread (or the bogus NPE thread) again,
whichever comes first. Winner to be decided when both threads have been
inactive for a full week. I place one dollar on him *not* shutting up.
Do I hear any other bets? ...
in a news post:
[snip nearly everything]
You want evidence that you're "attacking" me? Fine. Here's the fucking
evidence. This last gem of yours, alone, contained roughly 117 insults,
many of them explicit and far more implied. Every "[bleep!]" in the
quoted paragraph is one of the more explicit ones, and there are (count
them) seven of those. In the ONE PARAGRAPH. There are dozens more in
the crap that I snipped rather than giving detailed point-by-point
rebuttals to.
Oh, and for completeness and so you won't weasel out on a technicality
this time,
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/fdd610f4812bdf25
That's the most concentrated venom I've ever seen from any organism on
Earth, which means you've topped the king cobra, the sea wasp, several
other infamous cubozoans, the sea snake, AND the black widow spider. In
fact, you may have even topped a hypothetical hybrid of all of the
above into a giant poisonous movie-monster with the toxicity to kill
the population of a large city with a single accidental sneeze in its
general direction.
We hope you meet the same fate as the typical such movie-monster --
buzzed about by angry military helicopters (wasps will do in your case
I expect) and pinpricked to death in a rather slow manner.
And of course not a word of what you said about me is remotely close to
being true.
[More crap deleted]
Or about me?
[Parting insult deleted]
Anyone want to start a betting pool? I'm claiming 10 to 1 odds he won't
shut up. The minimum bet is one dollar and the betting period is one
day or until he posts to this thread (or the bogus NPE thread) again,
whichever comes first. Winner to be decided when both threads have been
inactive for a full week. I place one dollar on him *not* shutting up.
Do I hear any other bets? ...
T
Twisted
Not knowingly, no. (And you can't fault me for not knowing, if it's not
self-evident, part of a standard Western education, basic Java
programming knowledge).
[snip remainder]
Why are you making a big issue out of it?
T
Twisted
They're also allowed to object to material that would unduly prejudice
the jury, in case you hadn't noticed that bit.
In any case, I don't recognize the jurisdiction of Attardi and palz'
little kangaroo court and will not dignify their "proceedings" against
me with any kind of legal niceties and allowances. I am beyond reproach
and that is non-negotiable.
Better yet, use the actual facts, as much as possible. A wifebeater
with a history of frequent hospitalizations for mental illness saying
2+2 is 4 is more credible to me than a regular law-abiding citizen with
an unimpeachable reputation who says it's 5.
T
Twisted
Joe said:
I claim my dollar now and the betting pool is ended.
Which is interesting, since you either made it up just now or pulled it
from somewhere else; I never wrote anything resembling that in this
thread.
W
wesley.hall
Twisted said:
You are usenet's biggest prick. Also non-negotiable.
T
Twisted
(e-mail address removed) wrote:
[insult deleted]
Short and sour. Just like the guy who posted it, I expect.
[insult deleted]
Short and sour. Just like the guy who posted it, I expect.
W
wesley.hall
Twisted said:
I am definatly one of those two things
O
Oliver Wong
Twisted said:
This might have been a bit defensive on my part. Without getting too
deeply into the issue, autism (and thus autist people) are considered
"abnormal", which I suppose is factually true. What ever the majority is, is
normal, by definition, and it just so happens that the majority of people
are not autistic. However, peopel then seem to associate an negative
connotation to "abnormal", like it's somehow "bad" being autistic. I think
being "abnormal" in the form of being autistic is no more bad than being
"abnormal" in the form of being a woman interested in computer science, or
being a stay-at-home dad, or being gay, etc. These people are not like the
majority of other people, but that isn't nescessarily a bad thing.
So when you contrasted my brain versus a normal brain, I may have read
more than you intended. Either way, I'll just point out that not having a
normal brain isn't nescessarily a bad thing: It's usually considered a good
thing to have an extremely smart brain, for example.
A slight exaggeration.
this thread"? OK, yes I was serious, deadly serious.
If you want me out of this thread, let me know. I'm communicating with
you because I assume you're (reluctantly?) interested in the information I
have to provide. If not, then there's no real reason for me to continue.
You're wrong that I know damn well what you claim I know damn well.
[...]
Any tone you might hear is all in your mind when reading USENET
postings.
I think even better would be for them to ask about your specific
circumstances, so they can determine which advantages (if any) are
applicable to your situation.
There will always exist one member of the audience who will find an
interpretation that implies someone is dumb.
Note that you called me "dummy" in this paragraph.
Anyway, I see you as more like the Australian in the above analogy. You
ask a question, someone answers. You think the answer is hostile, so you
tell them that you're not an idiot. The other person has no idea why you
brought up whether or not you're an idiot (since this is offtopic with
respect to which method is better), so they just repeat the solution (to use
the class loader). So you get angry, and start becoming nasty.
You have a habit of making metaphors, and then extrapolating appropriate
behaviour in your metaphor into behaviour on usenet, and thus reach IMHO
incorrect conclusions. I am no advocating that you ignore or shrug off
punches, for example. Just that you ignore or shrug off insults.
And yet I've been insulted on the Internet before (e.g. in this very
thread, by you, repeatedly). Didn't you claim that insults *always* result
in damage, 100% of the time, or something like that? It seems your claim is
false, as my social life is not getting messed up by your insults.
This surprises me. You take insults more seriously that I thought.
Note though that that wasn't what I admitted. Instead, I admitted that I
could be wrong. Sometimes I'm wrong about topics in an area where I *do*
have expertise (I've been wrong about stuff on Java, for example).
Right, but as I said earlier, on the Internet, for almost every possible
interpretation, there will be someone out there who will have that
interpretation, regardless of what you write. This is why I think you
shouldn't give so much importance to what people on the Internet think of
you, and is one of the reasons I think arguing that you're (the generic
you, not you specifically) not an idiot is not effective.
If you're speaking with one specific person, you can try to establish a
common understanding via the back and forth exchange. By seeing their
responses to your message, you can try to guess what parts they understood
and which parts they didn't understood, and then focus more energy on the
parts not understood. This is what's happening between you and me, for
example. From my perspective, you are having trouble understanding my
"change yourself" advice, so I'm focusing my energy there. From my
perspective, I think I have a fairly good idea of what you're trying to say,
but perhaps from your perspective, I'm a blithering idiot who can't follow
what you're trying to say at all. But there is a feasible solution: Just
keep communicating.
In the case of addressing the Internet at large, which seems to be what
you intend to do, there is no feasible solution. You have no idea what the
lurkers are thinking, what they understood from your post, and what they
misunderstood. I've suggested elsewhere that your arguing that you're not an
idiot may actually cause them to further believe you are an idiot, for
example. I see some evidence of this in the replies you're getting. What if
the lurkers all have this interpretation as well? There's simply no way to
know!
No, I mean, if you thought I needed straightening out, and you told me
so, and now I'm asking you to apologize for it. Would you do so, in the
interest of social graces, or would you consider it more important to tell
the truth, and say you're not sorry in the least?
[(b) was snipped, so I just snipped the whole thing, since it's all lost now
anyway]
So in other words, there are cases where it's okay to insult someone,
and not get punished for it.
What makes you think I didn't?
I had read and snipped a lot of your text. In none of it did I see an
explanation of how my suggestion is similar to negotiating with terrorists.
[...]
This is the epiphany I want you to focus on.
I'm just saying that snow causes lasting, if negligeable, harm. In other
words, the fact that the harm is lasting does not necessarily imply that it
is significant harm. I can tolerate lasting harm (e.g. in the form of snow),
if the actual amount of harm dealt is low.
No, (4) in snow is that a single snowflake falls in all the entire city,
and that snowflake happens to land on you. How unfair, right? Nobody else
suffered, but you did. So now, what are you going to do about it? Cause
global warming? Call the cops? Hide in your house? Or just do nothing?
Again, there care cases where 4, to do nothing, is the optimal solution.
The fact that you can imagine scenarios where 4 isn't the optimal solution
does not falsify the claim that there do exist cases where 4 *is* the
optimal solution.
You seem to assume that you would do less harm to your own reputation in
your attempt to rescue it than the hostage takers would.
- Oliver
O
Oliver Wong
Actually, I don't think meditation really has anything to do with it. I
even forget why meditation was brought up in the first place. I don't
generally label what I do "meditation", but I'd find it difficult to draw a
line between when the mind is in meditation and when it's just bored.
I'm not sure what the trick is for not getting angry. I'm not even sure
that if I knew my own trick, it would be applicable to others. For now, I'm
just trying to convince that you can choose to not become angry so often.
And once you realize that this choice exists, you now have the freedom to
decide whether you want to continue going through life getting angry, or
not -- but where to go from there, I leave up to each individual person. I
can offer advice at a peer-to-peer level, but I don't feel qualified to be
anyone's personal mentor or guru or whatever you want to call it.
- Oliver
O
Oliver Wong
Twisted said:
Haha. Actually, I merely said I'm criticizing both sides. In this
regard, I'm only as hostile as Gandhi was when he criticized the Indians and
the British for being hostile to each other.
You go a bit further than debunking. I recall you referred to Joe
Attardi as "Retardi" or something like that, right?
Good luck.
Why? I succeeded, didn't I? I wanted to tell people to stop acting
hostile, and I did so. Mission accomplished.
Unless you thought that the mission was to actually *get* them to stop
acting hostile, as opposed to merely telling them to stop. In which case I'd
be falling into the trap of desiring to change others, instead of changing
myself.
I'm not suggesting that people become hermits either. You're reading too
much into my text. I'm just falsifying your claim that you need global fame
to be globally bulletproof.
No, you don't need to change others -- only to change yourself.
Citation? I don't remember making any of these suggestions. However, for
that last one, pretending to be happy, perhaps you were thinking of that
old-man-leather-shoe fable in which I accidentally wrote "should" instead of
"shouldn't"?
If that's your definition of suicide, then I commit suicide almost
constantly. I'm always learning something new, and this changes my
perspective on things, and my reaction to events. If someone had asked me
five minutes ago if I've ever typed in the world "ventriloquised" into a
USENET post, I would have said no. If they ask me again now, I'd say yes.
I've changed just by the act of making this post.
Upon internal request. When I change, it's not because you ask me to,
but because I ask myself to do so.
In your analogy, wouldn't the hostage be the person in trouble, rather
than you? I.e. the fact that it's someone else who's a hostage does not
nescessarily mean it's a bad idea for you to wear a bullet proof vest. If
everyone followed the advice (they all wore bullet proof vests), then we
wouldn't have this hostage problem in the first place. Those who don't
follow the advice have problems, and those that do are immune to the
problem.
If your concern is for others, then imagine the old man is now happily
walking down the road, wearing his wooden clogs, and encounters another man
who's walking barefoot and in pain. The first man shouts to the second "Why
don't you wear some shoes? I have an extra pair right here." And the second
man says "That's impossible". Sure, this first man is saddened that the
second man is unable to see the solution which seems obvious to him, but
there's nothing he can really do to force the second man to put on the
shoes.
Or how about we drop the analogies and stick with the issue at hand?
Well, then, you haven't been trying hard enough! Since you're a reality
denialist, quite willing to replace your experiences completely with a
fantasy created by your own mind and neglect entirely your real-world
circumstances as no longer relevant, you should be able to do better
than that. It's not like in your world where no matter what you're
always happy you can't print your own money or wish up a willing and
interested version of Daniela Pestova or something ...
Actually, I can't do all that stuff. I can't (or find it difficult to)
change the world around me, remember? What I *can* do is change myself. That
you made this mistake indicates to me that you still don't "get" what I'm
trying to tell you.
If your personality is such that your happiness is conditional on dating
Daniela Pestova (I don't know who that is, but I assume she's some famous
super model), then you'll probably spend the majority of your life unhappy.
Even if you do manage to start dating her, a lot of relationships don't
last, and you may eventually end up breaking up. The trick, then, is not to
change the world so that you end up guaranteed dating Daniela Pestova for
the rest of eternity. Rather, the trick is to change yourself so that your
happiness is no longer conditional on dating her.
Well, you went from "insults cause harm 100% of the time" to "insults
have rarely failed to cause harm". That's some progress.
Lucky for me, then, that your claim isn't true.
What makes you think I have forgotten this? Anyway, if the above
evidence didn't convince, consider this simpler one:
Accuse me of something which is trivially false. E.g. claim that I've
destroyed the entire universe. I'm obviously innocent of it, right? But I
won't vehemently protest it. This falsifies your claim that an innocent
person will always vehemently protest anything accused of him/her.
Now, I fear you'll probably take this next part as an insult, but it's
not intended to be. It's a statement of fact about you. And you might think
it's unpleasant, but I believe that it's objectively true. So brace
yourself. Maybe make yourself a cup of tea, calm your nerves down, and try
to read this with as little negative emotions as possible: This isn't the
first time you've made a logical error. If you feel your temper rising, take
a few breaths and count to ten. We all make mistakes. I make mistakes too.
It's part of being human. No rational person would think poorly of someone
just because they made mistakes.
Ok, so if you acknowledge you've made logical errors, would you be
willing to reconsider some of the assertions you've previously made? They
may have been made in error as well. Probably most of them weren't, but some
of them may have been. It's always good to do a little introspection, and
review and challenge your own beliefs.
Or that for the emitter to be broken in some form. Maybe certain English
words don't mean what you think they mean, at least to the other posters in
comp.lang.java.programmer.
Very insightful. Thank you for that.
There may be a sampling bias, yes. But if 100% of the people posting
seem to interpret your messages as being idiotic and hostile, then it's hard
to extrapolate any meaningful figure for how many lurkers may think your
posts are logical and neutral. Personally, I'd take a long, hard look at
that 100%, as opposed to disregarding it as a statistical anomaly.
Okay, good.
It might be.
Somehow, I doubt it. But it'd be an interesting experiment. Please
continue to insult me, even when I do nothing. I'd like to see how much
control you can exert over my life. I suspect it to be none, and would like
be to corrected if it turns out I'm wrong.
Yes, you are right. *I* have a lot more control over my life than you
do. And that's mostly true for everyone (perhaps not for young children):
They are in control of their own lives. You are in control of your life.
What you do or do not do has a much greater impact on your employability and
social life than a rumor someone on the Internet might start. Or so says my
experience. I know you claim to have had a different experience. However,
your experience really is unimaginable to me.
Don't apologize. As you said, damage was done, but it's as negligeable
as the damage a single snowflake causes when it lands on my winter jacket
while I'm wearing it. My jacket, and thus my body temperature, has cooled
slightly, and thus I will need to eat a slightly more calories to maintain
good health. But again, it's such a trivially small damage that I just
ignore that snowflake.
This is the passage I'm assuming you're referring to. Notice that the
word "lazy" never appears in there:
http://groups.google.ca/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/5bb8ccd2d3a98131
<quote>
It's not your "obvious lack of google-fu" that they're pouncing
on, but your "obvious lack of effort". The problem wasn't that you put in
the wrong Google query. The problem is that you didn't even bother to try
googling at all. And the even bigger problem is that you automatically
assumed that Google would not return useful results without even trying it.
And an even bigger problem than that was when people told you googling for
"ant" *would* return a useful result, you argued with them, despite that
there existed a trivial, easy to repeat experiment to demonstrate that you
were wrong: namely to try actually googling for "ant".
So really, your google-fu level had nothing to do with why you got
pounced on, IMHO.
You seem to have a different memory of the events than I did. People
tell you to learn Ant. You cliam the reason that you didn't was that no one
has provided you with the URL. Note that it's not that you're asking WHY
people don't provide you with the url, but that you really are complaining
that no one provided you with the URL.
http://groups.google.ca/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/e6b8b26eee195c65
Actually, there are several other reasons. Notable among them is that
nobody has yet mentioned anything remotely resembling a URL for it, and
it should be fairly obvious that a google search with the query "ant"
is unlikely to produce anything relevant here.
</quote>
Many people tell you googling for "ant" is indeed useful.
http://groups.google.ca/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/b6c9ce89c7293d94
Actually that simple query returns the required item as the very first
entry!
</quote>
http://groups.google.ca/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/d6b70d20371aad3d
<quote>
http://www.google.com/search?q=ant
See it for yourself.
</quote>
You then argue with them:
http://groups.google.ca/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/f827088ae5d207ca
That is illogical. The top hit for "ant" should be entomological in
nature, since the most widespread mainstream use of the word "ant"
refers to insects.
</quote>
http://groups.google.ca/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/c6659d5e65348907
If, as you claim, the top hit for "ant" isn't the dictionary definition
or even remotely related but is instead for some obscure software that
only a minuscule fraction as many people have even heard of, then
Google clearly does have much to learn -- from *somebody*, anyway.
</quote>
http://groups.google.ca/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/65d0b882a49ea745
Yes. So I assume that the types of results most likely to be relevant
for Joe Blow will dominate the first N hits. Esoteric software used by
only a narrow demographic is unlikely to be relevant for Joe Blow.
</quote>
Why you argued with them, instead of just checking it out yourself, I
have no idea.
If one of your main concerns is not having the lurkers think you're an
idiot, I don't think arguing with people about what a google query for "ant"
would return, without actually trying that search yourself, is the optimal
strategy. Your actions are not consistent with your words.
For me, you just ignore the insults, and other people tend to also
ignore them automatically. For your specific case, I don't know what advice
I can provide without knowing what problems you've specifically encountered
when trying this strategy.
No: I don't get drafted into the insult game just because someone
insults me.
This one is a biggie, yes. But if I place happiness over money. I'd
rather be in debt and happy than rich and miserable.
Actually, it's very easy to get food without speaking Japanese (assuming
you have the money to afford it). Every restaurant I've been too either had
food, or actual 3D model replicas of the dish they're serving. The prices
are written in Arabic numerals (the same numerals that English uses, i.e. 1,
2, 3, etc.), and the value of the Japanese currency is also written in
Arabic numerals.
For a job, apparently it's easy to get one if you're caucasian, as
there's a lot of demand for caucasian mascots. You don't even need to speak
Japanese. I'm out of luck in that regard, because I look Asian.
I'm not suggesting everybody move to Japan. I'm only saying given the
problem description unique to you, it sounds like moving to Japan might be a
solution worth considering.
Right, but for every action, this is true. The fact that you posted this
reply, instead going out to socialize, means you might have lost the
opportunity to make friends there.
- Oliver
O
Oliver Wong
Twisted said:
I don't know about B.L., but to me, your stance of "I never knowingly do
anything wrong, and you can't fault me for not knowing" is quite radical.
Maybe that's why a big deal is being made.
- Oliver
O
Oliver Wong
Twisted said:
How do the 10-to-1 odds work in a betting pool? If I bet $1 that he will
shut up, and I win, does that mean I get $10? If only you and I bet (and we
each bet $1) and I win, where will the missing $9 come from?
- Oliver
M
Mark Rafn
If someone creates a betting pool, it can offer whatever odds the participants
agree to. Twisted is asking someone else to set up the pool, and offering to
make a bet.
It's unclear what "claiming 10 to 1 odds" means - either he's saying he'll
wager his $1 against some taker's $10, or his $1 against some taker's $0.10.
So far, there is no $10 to pay you. If you and Twisted agree on a bet, that
bet should specify payoffs and conditions.
The normal reaction to such an offer is to ignore it and assume it's purely
rhetorical. If you want to take him up on it, you can counter-offer a wager
that's more completely specified, and if he agrees, you have a bet.
If you're dealing with someone you know well enough to consider the offer
real and fully specified (or you trust each other to behave well in case of
ambiguity), the response is "booked for my $1 against your $10". But I
doubt you and Twisted have that level of understanding yet.
T
Twisted
Oliver said:
On the other hand, any suggestion of yours that requires do-it-yourself
brain surgery for me (or the majority of people) is one I'll have to
pass on, tyvm.
[Snip a vehement denial of ... something, coupled with something that
looks like an insult -- what were we discussing?
][Snip a fairly predictable claim that something's all in my head]
To some extent, sure. (For most of the things that arose, the relevant
things would have been single/multiple person project, small/large
project, and similarly.)
[Snip discouraging, empirically-useless suggestions]
Because I'm pretty sure that this has come up before, and some of the
things I said (as well as the entire first half of this thread)
evidently didn't penetrate.
Why? The logical thing to do is move on. There's no point in repeating
yourself on usenet, unless it's become important to drill something
through somebody's thick skull anyway.
I'm drawing analogies to try to get you to understand things that seem
to be lost on you when they're described as-is. I suppose I should stop
as it is now becoming evident that the analogies just confuse you even
more, for some reason.
It seems to depend on the severity, and perhaps the persistence of the
insulters. But whenever I've seen campaigns by multiple people to slam
one person reach a scale a little larger than this incident's, there
has invariably been lasting harm to the victim's reputation. Hence my
putting out fires hoping to smother this before it reaches the same
kind of size. It does seem to be finally succeeding; the serious BS
posts are down to single digits a day and the bulk of the postings not
by me seem to be fairly mild again.
Given what happened several times before, yes I do.
That is illogical. You may have misunderstood the definition of
"expertise"...although for a large subject like Java there can be
expertise in one area (e.g. the language proper) and significant gaps
in another (the standard library for example; it's huge!)...
My own experience is that failing to give importance to such things
leads eventually to tragic outcomes.
In your case, that seems to be all of it, as often as not.
I understand it perfectly, but it's not within my means, and even if it
were I'm not sure it would be a good idea.
You, on the other hand, don't seem to understand *that*, although I
said it a time or two before.
It does look that way.
I suspect there are key facts that aren'tpenetrating (or that you irrationally refuse to believe might be true?)
that prevent anything else from being communicated successfully. That
real damage can and often does result from online mudslinging campaigns
is one of those facts, and arguably the most critical.
So far, it doesn't seem to be working.
It's only important to address the same subset that sees the insults.
And that's easy -- followup to the insults, as 99% of the time someone
who reads a post also reads any particular immediate descendant of it.
Neither do you. Or my attackers, for that matter. It's guesswork there.
I've chosen to model them as people of varying credulousness and
comprehension ability, wherein the effect of a message (insult,
rebuttal, whatever) is proportional to the former and has a random,
zero-mean gaussian distributed component added dependent upon the
latter. It's a fairly simple model. I suppose individual idiosyncrasies
will largely average out and can be modeled as part of that gaussian
random component. Where there are facts (e.g. technical stuff about
Java) their opinions should converge on the truth; where there are just
opinions (e.g. about people) they should end up largely unmoved if
nothing major goes by without a counter, modulo those idiosyncrasies of
course.
You do invent some strange, topsy-turvy "what-if" scenarios. Anyone who
tends to believe the opposite of what anyone tells them is probably
seriously in need of professional help. I doubt there are many. In any
event, the model treats them too, if one permits credulousness to be
negative. Everything still cancels out to leave approximately zero even
for them, under that model.
If you're suggesting that there are people who believe anything
negative but the opposite of anything positive (minus the square?
whatever) then I expect those also to be rare, and obviously nothing
can convince them of anything good at least in an area devoid of facts
rather than just opinions, so they might as well be ignored. Nothing
can be done about them anyway. Same with anyone with a strong
preconceived belief that will not be budged (e.g. the attackers
themselves).
Best to assume that the lurkers are, by and large, reasonable. The
replies you speak of are coming from the attackers, so they fall into
the preexisting entrenched immutable belief category. I don't expect to
convince them of anything; I assume those few are indeed a lost cause.
The model treats their opinions as initially minus-infinity, and
consequently unmoving.
I suppose I wouldn't apologize because I wouldn't say it in the first
place unless it actually were true. It would have to be based on
evidence and not just a vague opinion though.
Perhaps if you're insulting them *back* and it's of roughly equal
magnitude.
You didn't mention it.
It was fairly simple -- letting them a) get away with it and b) have
caused damage will send a clear message that anyone can do the same and
achieve their goals without risk. So more such damage occurs.
Prevent the damage entirely and it's moot -- if you only care about no
damage occurring, then just prevent it and let morons try (and fail) to
cause it. On the other hand, if that isn't feasible you have to do
something to deter the behavior instead.
I've *been* trying to minimize the damage. You've been trying to
convince me not to, so it will just accumulate! (Apparently in the
delusional belief that there is no damage, even after I've told you a
thousand times that there frequently are tangible negative
consequences.)
It's not lasting. It melts in spring, or even the next day depending on
the weather. It doesn't leave you with a traumatic memory for life or
anything either, unless it causes a severe accident on the road or
something.
A single snowflake doesn't do any sort of damage. It takes large
amounts to have consequence.
On the other hand, there is no way you can liken this current ...
whatever the **** it is to anything less than a goddam blizzard.
There's also the letting them get away with it factor. If they do
something bad to me and I just sit there and let them, then they will
do it again, and more will join in, because now they know they can do
so without encountering resistance, where before that was an unknown
quantity.
Even if the "something bad" can't be (completely) undone, or even if
it's actually made worse, if it also is much rarer because of a
deterrence then the long term accumulation might still be slower.
Hostage-takers again -- suppose a guy threatens to smash a ten thousand
dollar item and demands a thousand bucks. You can give him the
thousand, and he goes away with it, or you can attempt to subdue and
arrest him, which risks the ten thousand. Even if the *usual* result is
ten thousand bucks' damage, if nobody who does this actually ends up
with a thousand bucks and they all instead end up with jail time,
there'll be a lot fewer incidents than if they all get a free grand
just for trying this. Ultimately, you lose $10,000 on a few rare
occasions instead of $1000 on frequent occasions. And after a few years
of this, you may have lost $100,000 if your policy is to try to
apprehend, and millions otherwise.
You do the math for yourself, and see if I'm not right!
T
Twisted
Oliver said:
Boredom being bad, I'll just avoid anything that seems closely related
methinks.
Anger isn't the problem here. (Well, mine isn't, anyway.) Initially I
was calm, and Bad Things(tm) happened anyway, which proves that. To the
extent that my anger may have worsened anything, it still doesn't
matter given some way to avoid this kind of thing happening (but
without losing face vis-a-vis my Java credentials or whatever!) to
begin with, since then it can be prevented from ever getting to the
point of my anger having any effect at all.
T
Twisted
Oliver said:
And Attacki. I'm guessing that after the sheer amount of BS *he*
shoveled and the particularly vicious nature of many of his attacks,
even Gandhi would probably have snapped at him at some point. And
you've got to admit that with a name like that, he really should avoid
picking fights or use a pseudonym -- stones, glass houses, and all
that.
Besides, it's not like my handle hasn't also been abused to crack silly
jokes in this thread.
This some kind of a joke? The mission's only accomplished if they
actually shut up. If that hasn't happened, all you've succeeded in
doing is wasting some time to no useful effect.
Change them? I couldn't care less if they continued to be hostile, or
even began believing me to be Satan himself, so long as they kept it to
themselves or, at worst, to e-mail.
You have not falsified my claim, which is that being bulletproof is
impractical for the vast majority of the population. I've pointed out
that only a small fraction can be world-famous at any given time. Of
the rest, I've now pointed out that all of them becoming recluses is a
ridicolous solution as well as one with serious repercussions. You
have, however, yet to suggest a way other than those two to be immune
to having your reputation tarnished by other people badmouthing you in
public.
Either suggest such a way, or this particular branch of this debate is
over and I win. (And it better not involve packing my bags and moving
to fairyland, either!
)Once again you completely fucking miss the point!
I'm not going to reiterate it again. I'm clearly wasting my time with
you. I've said it again and again, that changing myself will not make
people magically behave differently if I'm badmouthed than otherwise,
and is infeasible anyway. You seem to think I should learn to not care
even if the entire world starts considering me a pariah one day, but I
don't think so. Your complete inability to grasp my position can't be
stupidity after all -- even uranium isn't that fucking dense. It has to
be wilful misunderstanding, and that means we can't have a rational
discourse here. So this part of the thread is over.
Sorry, I won't waste lots of time fumbling around with my browser for
you any more than for Attardi. In any case, if your memory is that
flawed it's a wonder we've gotten as far as we have, even though that
is about two feet from where we started three whole days ago.
Just to jog your obviously-poor memory:
* You suggested pretending to agree with "OK", and only later suggested
a noncommital, disagreement-implying "Whatever" as an alternative.
* You suggested I pretend my reputation into magically being repaired
again in THE VERY POST I'M REPLYING TO, about three paragraphs back.
Had yourself checked for Alzheimer's lately? I hear they can now at
least slow its progression if it's diagnosed early enough...
* Half your posts advocate self-induced happiness divorced from any
external cause for Chrissake! (It's probably already too late to slow
that progression.
)That is not the kind of substantial change you're obviously
considering, which seems to require hacking myself and overwriting
large chunks of my core personality(!) rather than just acquiring new
information.
Most of the suggested overwrites seem likely to involve functions like
"void emulateFloormat()", at that.
What are you -- one of those self-improving AIs I heard somewhere would
herald the end of the world? I don't know of anyone with the sort of
capability to rewrite their own core operating software you are
claiming...I suppose this means I should stock up on canned food, or
find a god and pray to him, or blow all my money on prostitutes and
then wait for the end, or something.
No, but it does mean that it's a bad idea to think that wearing it
ensures a happy ending.
Unfortunately, in the reputation game that stops being true (and you
warned *me* about problem analogies?)
For one thing, there are two different "bulletproofs" -- a thick skin
when you are yourself insulted, and rejecting any unfounded insults you
hear regarding other people. The latter has to be universally adopted
for even one person's reputation to be absolutely safe. Forcing it to
be isn't feasible, and empirical evidence proves that it isn't already
universal.
This doesn't seem to have any connection with, well, anything. I have
no way of controlling whether other people believe something nasty they
hear about me, save to maximize the likelihood that those who do hear
both sides of the story. Which is what you are dissing, so ... I don't
get it. I don't get *you*.
I DID NOT MAKE A MISTAKE.
Do not suggest otherwise again.
I was not suggesting you change the real world; just that you change
those things in your fantasy world you retreat to, the same one where
no matter what happens to you in the real world you remain happy.
Oh, you poor deprived soul.
[snip rest, which is based off a complete misinterpretation of what I
said]
That's a damn lie (your insinuation that my accuracy is questionable).
I said that in my previous experience, serious enough ones *have*
caused harm 100% of the time. Which implies, statistically, that they
"usually" cause harm.
Lucky for me, then, that your claim isn't true.
Calling me a liar is not very nice, as well as being inaccurate.
The fact that you failed to take it into consideration might have had
something to do with it.
That is the kind of situation where you laugh rather than vehemently
protest it. But it's also entirely beside the point. I was talking
about accusations that somebody somewhere might actually believe.
[accuses me of error]
Be careful; your hostility is showing again. If you're going to be
nasty, just come out and say it instead of trying to sugar-coat it or
whatever the **** that was. Smiling while you stab someone and twist
the knife is a sure sign you're a psychopath you know. A fact probably
not lost on anyone lurking here.
Impossible. My use of English is close to perfect, and they mean
roughly the same thing here as anywhere else, save some special cases
all related to Java. ("Ant" is more likely in this ng to refer to the
build tool, for example.)
It's a self-selecting sample. Nobody notices the green lights, only the
red ones. People tend to speak up to complain when something is wrong
(or they simply think it is, or don't like something), but not nearly
as often do they speak up to praise something that's working normally.
For one thing, you don't notice when something's working fine; you
notice when it's broken (red lights). For another, when something's
working you have no motive to do anything that might rock the boat, so
to speak. When something isn't, though, then you have a motive to do or
say something that might provoke a change.
It follows that there is a huge statistical bias where nearly all the
posters are hostile and vice versa, and nearly all the lurkers are
neutral or better and vice versa.
Never make the mistake of ever thinking that a loudly vocal minority
have views anywhere near representative of whatever larger group.
There's a reason for the use of the term "extremist".
There's also another argument. You appear to be suggesting that I have
two choices when attacked.
1. I believe them, and therefore let anyone who wants to cause me to
begin to believe that I'm no good and awful, and end up depressed and
suicidal.
2. I assume that I am as good as I can be, and that that will have to
be good enough, and that anyone who thinks I'm no good and awful is
mistaken.
Obviously, #1 is not a sensible choice. Yet it seems to be implied by
what you are advocating.
It isn't.
There's no point. The "experiment" has basically already been done a
few times, some of them to me, with fairly consistent results that are
not anything like your wishful thinking in the paragraph above.
Besides, I wouldn't wish the consequences (the consequences I've
personally observed, on multiple occasions) on anybody, except maybe
Hitler, and he's dead.
That's a dangerous delusion. My life is affected by a lot of factors I
can to varying extents sometimes influence but not perfectly control.
The weather. Other people. Things like that.
Disregarding that fact would lead eventually to disastrous
consequences.
Your life, to the extent that it's lived in some fantasy version of the
world inside your head, is of course entirely under your control; to
the extent that it is not, it is subject to the same externalities as
mine is.
It may be because I don't do much of anything that would have an impact
either way, save to set the record straight or tell my side of the
story when necessary, which is only a balancing effect rather than a
proactive push. I'd have to do some sort of self-marketing to have a
greater positive effect, or go kill a bunch of kittens and get caught
or something for the reverse. But I somehow doubt that going around
bragging about stuff and disseminating my resume would have a lot of
influence compared to a nasty enough rumour, based on my observations.
Unlike the scale of damage caused by the others here. Attardi alone is
like a whole damn cold front full of frosty shit, and then there's the
five minute hailstorm of foobarbazqux and the minus-20 chill of several
others and...
[snips stuff altered in order to insult me, as well as again calling me
lazy]
Stop that. Quoting the wrong message (and altering it!) is not kosher.
Besides, "obvious lack of effort" is a synonym of "lazy". The exact
word occurred in the next exchange after that one.
In any case, do not ever contradict me in public again.
No; I did *mention* that no-one had done so, but my reasons for not
learning it were that I didn't see any logical reason to, and that it
would take non-zero time and effort. Until I had reason to believe that
that effort would be rewarded it would not be rational to undertake it.
[snip more nonsense and misquoted crap]
I told you to stop doing that. Do not attack me in such a manner ever
again!
Note that I said "unlikely to", not that it was "certain not to". Based
on the information I had at the time, "unlikely to" was perfectly
correct. Likewise, if you roll some dice it is perfectly correct to say
that double-sixes is "unlikely" before the roll, even if that's what
ends up turning up. (And that's a 1 in 36 chance. The chances of a
given word with both a rare and a common usage having the rare one be
the top Google hit are surely much lower.)
[Snip more excessive junk. And what have I told people about dragging
in past postings in order to try to frame me for shit?! It is
UNWELCOME. Don't do it.]
Of course I did! They were trying to "prove" that I was some kind of a
fool! Obviously I can't just sit and watch it -- that would be like
sitting behind the wheel of a car and watching a semi barrel toward you
without taking any action to avoid a collision.
Google's behavior was, indeed, illogical and unpredictable there.
Why are you suddenly on the same evil quest to try to prove me wrong
and incompetent and a moron? Not only is it doomed to failure, since
you can't prove something that's false, but it's also nasty, rude,
hostile, and may still convince some less-than-brilliant folks. I don't
want that to happen and I don't want to hear any more of this crap from
you or from anyone else!
See above: BECAUSE IT WAS AN ATTACK!
If I was seen to be agreeing with them after they accused me of error,
it would mean looking like a fucking idiot -- i.e. handing them victory
on a silver goddam platter! You ask ridiculous acts of self-sacrifice
of me, and for what? Fame? Fortune? A posthumous Medal of Honor? No,
apparently for no reason at all except that you seem to want me to
self-destruct!
I will admit that they crafted a trap almost worthy of the term
"clever", but that's exactly what it was -- a trap, intended to
discredit someone; a dirty, foul, underhanded tactic unworthy of any
memorializing like you seem to be attempting (if, in fact, you're not
doing something worse and trying to prove the same BS evil falsehoods
about me that they were).
Why are you giving their attempts to ruin me any more airtime? I can
only think of one reason: because you're just as bad as they are and a
whole lot sneakier. Which would be unfortunate, not to mention weird.
Unfortunate because the last thing I need is for someone seriously
dedicated to destroying me to turn out to be nearly as smart as I am,
and weird because smart people normally figure out that doing this sort
of shit is stupid and there are much better (and less damaging to
others) ways to advance yourself or just to make yourself feel good
about yourself. Besides, you have appeared to have an IQ somewhere
between "stone" and "potted plant" much of this thread and you
supposedly have some way to biofeedback yourself and bliss out no
matter how shitty your circumstances.
I argued about what it *should* return, not *would*. Stop
mischaracterizing me!
I've already told you that while some people may ignore them, most
don't seem to. It may take some repetitions to begin to affect the more
resistant people, but eventually, my experience has been that everyone
succumbs to being influenced. This means that a few insults going by
uncorrected may only affect some really credulous dweeb, but a large
enough number going uncorrected will turn *anyone* against you.
Of course, I can't stop anyone who wants to posting one, so I have to
concern myself with minimizing the number that go uncorrected, rather
than minimize the number period, which would require somehow stopping
some from being posted to begin with, which seems unlikely in an
unmoderated newsgroup.
You missed the point again. Sigh.
YES YOU DO.
Remember that the insult game is where someone insults you and someone
else, who you might want to be friendly later on in time or who you
already know, may now become hostile as a consequence.
If, as you claim, nothing you do can even mitigate this, then as soon
as someone insults you it is already too late to prevent that other
person from having a greater probability of becoming hostile.
So you've lost the game without having been consulted about whether or
not to play it.
You seem to believe that if you ignore the insult, somehow this means
the other person automatically also ignores it, even though this makes
no sense. You were disclaiming any kind of mind control powers earlier
after all! Besides, what would be the mechanism?
My guess is that your condition (which you've mentioned a few times and
don't seem too shy about) renders your self-model not merely the
default approximation and starting point you use for modeling other
minds but the exact model used, without any ability to consider the
differences in their circumstances or to use an experience-altered copy
of that model in place of the original. In a way a form of solipsism,
in which all minds seem to you to be exact copies of your own. In that
case it is quite natural that you would think that your ignoring
something means that everyone else will ignore it as well, because the
same model that predicts your ignoring it is being used to model
"everyone else" without any of the usual considering it to be
approximate.
This would also explain your complete inability to grasp some of my
points, or the truth of anything I claim from my experience, because
your own model of minds seems to refute it; and why you seem to live in
some weird alternate reality.
Of course, it also means this discussion is probably at a hopeless
impasse. Your model's incapability to encompass differences in others'
experience, viewpoints, and such must cause a lot of trouble for you --
including peoples' behavior being extremely unpredictable to you, not
just initially but even after some observation of a person. Is this the
case? (If not, the anomalies with your modeling of minds may be of some
subtler, but still serious nature.)
For example, someone saying something insulting that you don't believe
would shock you, even coming from someone who someone else might expect
to act hostilely given the circumstances, because you wouldn't insult
you under any circumstances. At the same time, though, you don't think
anyone else will believe it because you wouldn't believe it (as
evidenced because in actual fact you don't, which would inform your
self-model).
Debt? What, on my budget? You need *money* to get a line of credit so
that you can go into debt! I'm simply broke! ;P
I'd prefer the ones that actually had food, but YMMV. Anyway, not
knowing what's in this strange thing or that strange thing or being
able to actually perform the transaction would still pose a problem.
Certainly being able to get some sort of work or other source of income
without speaking the local language would seem to be nontrivial.
The problem is not unique to me. It can happen to anybody, in theory.
There are several key differences; here are some:
* Having someone do it to me, without my being consulted first.
* People not met might still be met at a later date and be friendly.
People made to hate me are probably effectively lost forever.
* I'm hardly in a position to "go out and socialize" anyways, on this
lousy income and given additional difficulties ((lack of) convenient
transportation, fallout from earlier rumour incidents one of which was
local to this town and seems to have therefore had a more concentrated
effect, and other factors, including my disinterest in addling my
brains, er, alcohol consumption or in clubbing/raving/whatever the ****
they do now).
T
Twisted
Oliver said:
Radical? It's only logical.
Things can happen in three ways:
* Without my having any conscious control over them;
* As an intended effect of something I consciously decide to do;
* Or as an unintended effect of something I consciously decide to do.
Of these, the first category can clearly not be reasonably blamed on me
(e.g. a mudslide in Peking or whatever) and the second does not contain
any seriously harmful actions (I am not a criminal; I don't
intentionally do serious harm!)
That leaves the side-effects. Of those, there are two kinds:
* Reasonably foreseeable based on the knowledge I have at the time,
which contains (but is not limited to) a basic Western education, Java
knowledge (relevant specifically in the context of this newsgroup), and
anything self-evident to a person of normal intelligence (or indeed of
substantially above-normal intelligence...)
* The rest.
Call these, respectively, "foreseeable" and "unforeseeable" for
brevity. It is clear that the latter also cannot be blamed on me. For
example, if I flap my arms and it causes a deadly hurricane in Taiwan
six months later, the hurricane is not my fault -- it was just as
likely that my *not* flapping my arms would have that consequence.
Chaos theory effectively means the causal connection is encrypted and
thus unavailable to foresight with the level of modeling technology
currently available (to wit, human brains and
thus-far-fairly-rudimentary artificial computers). Which means these
consequences are just as unmanageable as truly spontaneous natural
disasters or whatever, at least for the foreseeable future (about 20
years, give or take). Blaming someone for the hurricane would make no
sense, because nobody (yet) has the means to affect that sort of long
range chaotic effect in any way that doesn't manifest as pure noise.
The foreseeable but unintended consequences are left. Of course, if
those include a reasonably likely significant harm to someone, then the
action is irresponsible and I won't take it. The rest are harmless.
There's some added complexity regarding lesser-of-evils situations,
including punitive or retaliative action that may cause harm but
prevent other harm, but the above argumentation is the nuts and bolts
of it.
To the extent that a person is capable of reasonable knowledge and
foresight, lacks purely malicious intent, and avoids acting
irresponsibly (basically "is of sound mind and judgement" and "is not
criminal or negligent") they should not be considered guilty of
anything, ever. (Me, or anyone else in the above category.)
Of course, good intentions alone don't guarantee a good outcome; that
is why bad but foreseeable side effects are important to consider, and
why it's necessary to be rational and ground decisions in empiricism.
Killing the planet's whole population to end suffering kind of misses
the point, for example, as do other classical "good intentions, great
evil" scenarios. (Hitler's plans, for one. A case can be made that he
meant well, but obviously he wasn't of anything remotely resembling
sound judgment, and pursued irrational, non-empirically-based ideals
with blood. Of course a case can be made that he was simply a greedy
and murderous bastard, too.) Actually the most common source of evil of
the "good intentions" variety in fact and in fiction seems to be having
some Brilliant Idea(tm) and then imposing it by fiat. I weight any
abrogation of someone's self-determination (including abrogating their
choice not to die just yet, i.e. murder) extremely negatively versus
anything else besides protecting someone *else*'s self-determination.
This leads to a calculation whereby any kind of system that doesn't
maximize freedom for most people is clearly and foreseeably bad.
Ideally, self-determination is limited *solely* to the extent that
someone's determination would stuff up someone else's freedom of
choice. In practise, it's also necessary sometimes to enforce arbitrary
conventions to break symmetry deterministically, e.g. permit travel
only on the left (or only on the right) side of a contiguous road
system, for reasons of safety. (Actually, this isn't really an
exception; the choice to drive on either side is a minor thing to lose
compared to the choice to not be in a serious crash. Preventing a
substantial number of crashes at the cost of some enforced
symmetry-breaking without any other real consequences is clearly
justifiable. In fact, *failing* to use such a simple fix, given that
problem, is unconscionable.)
On the other hand, given how people behave (irrational and downright
nasty) much of the time, it isn't beyond my imagining that a lot of
people do actually hold others responsible routinely for things they
had no chance to influence even with reasonable foresight and good
intentions subject to the overriding goal of preserving widespread
self-determination. It seems that blaming people for accidental
collisions that they took all reasonable measures to avoid is
commonplace, for example, as is blaming people for not knowing things
that they never had any reason to find out -- no-one told them and it
had no obvious importance to them, or perhaps no-one told them and they
never even knew it existed to *be* found. I've also seen numerous cases
of people being faulted for everything from their genetics(!) to
unforeseeable events (an involuntary twitch of their body that damages
something -- it might as well have been a meteor impact for all it was
under their control!) and so on...