Re: THe OverRelational Manifesto (ORM)

From: Bob Badour <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 14:05:51 GMT
Message-ID: <3zM1g.62911$VV4.1177683@ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca>

Dave Greenwood wrote:

> Marshall Spight wrote:
>

>>Bob Badour wrote:
>>
>>>Marshall Spight wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>This does not mean one cannot strongly refute others' ideas.
>>>>But the above words don't address ideas at all, do they? They
>>>>hypothesize qualities of the opposite speaker.
>>>
>>>When I use them, they are empirical observations. I don't know about
>>>when others use them.
>>
>>They are not empircal observations about the people, because
>>you can't observe the people. You can only observe their usenet
>>posts. This is not sufficient to judge the individuals, but it is
>>sufficient to judge the posts themselves.

>
>
> Whoa, that is something nobody ever realized! Do you really think Bob
> or anyone else here cares about whether a person is an idiot in real
> life? A post in Usenet calling someone an idiot is based on the
> empirical observation: the content of his/her posts. Period.
>
> And Bob does have a good eye in identifying the someone's intellectual
> mediocrity based on his/her very first few posts. I am often surprised
> to see so many here still encourage mediocrity by further engaging
> themselves seriously with such posts.
>
> The problem with such engagement is that a naive reader who cannot
> distinguish usable material from nonsense can be misguided by the
> mediocre discussant's snobbery and articulation.

Dave, I have a quibble. I have no objection to mediocrity. I only object to mediocrity or worse that attempts to forcefully present itself as excellence.

Honest mediocrity, honest ignorance, even honest stupidity and honest laziness won't evoke a harsh word from me. I admire anyone who wants to improve himself or herself and who is willing to put in the work to achieve their goal -- no matter how modest the goal or how difficult the work. Received on Thu Apr 20 2006 - 09:05:51 CDT