Re: Why result to insults instead of reasoned arguements? Was: The wisdom of the object mentors

From: Marshall <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com>
Date: 4 Jun 2006 12:44:33 -0700
Message-ID: <1149450273.321066.210720_at_y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>


Laurent Bossavit wrote:
> Marshall,
>
> > > When you insult people, you actively discourage them from listening to
> > > you. Worse, you discourage anyone else who's listening in - and who may
> > > have started out inclined to listen to you.
> >
> > These are interesting hypotheses. Are they true, I wonder?
> > How could we find out if they are true or not?
>
> You could try starting your next few IRL conversations with "Hey
> fucktard, there's something I'd like to tell you..." and recording the
> results. Let us know how it went when you come out of the hospital. ;)

Ha ha. Note that we are not in meatspace now, but on usenet. Assuming I agree with your hypothesis about how meatspace works, there's no reason to believe a priori that the same rules of behavior will have same effects on usenet.

(And also note the conversation doesn't *start* with "hey fucktard." It starts with someone saying something asinine, like "the dbms is a bucket of bits that one ought to be able to swap out for a flatfile," and then someone else saying "whoever said that is an idiot who doesn't understand data management.")

> There's a matter of context - over Usenet people currently behave very
> differently than they would IRL. I don't necessarily agree with Phlip on
> that...

Agreed. And in addition to context, there's also the fact that our interactions on usenet are for a completely different purpose that the interactions we typically have IRL. So again, I see no reason to necessarily believe the same rules apply.

I note we are no closer to having an idea of how to test the hypothesis in the first, quoted paragraph of this post.

Realistically, it is probably fairly expensive to come up with a real test, and I don't particularly expect anyone to foot the bill, or expend the effort. But this does mean that whatever conclusion on reaches on the question is a matter of opinion.

Marshall Received on Sun Jun 04 2006 - 21:44:33 CEST

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