[Gnu-arch-users] Re: [OT] flame-fest

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

What a gracious response to a post in which you were classed with
Mandela, Gandhi, and Thoreau!

And what a remarkable concatenation of unsupported assertions about
"patterns" and plausibly deniable slanders!

>>>>> "Tom" == Tom Lord <address@hidden> writes:

    Tom> Given the opportunity to display careful critical reasoning,
    Tom> he chose a different path.

To support this, you give _one_ highly stylized example, completely
couched in your own terms and using heavily loaded language.  You make
no attempt to describe context that might account for my allegedly
unresponsive behavior, let alone show that it cannot be considered a
mitigating factor.  In 37 lines, almost entirely consisting of
assertions about my patterns of argument, you do not quote even one
word of my arguments in support!  Is that your idea of how to conduct
"careful critical reasoning"?

But this failure to support your propositions with documentation is a
frequent frustration in "discussions" with you.  You leave central
terms like "social responsibility" undefined, despite requests for
clarification.  You inject emotive terms like "fascism" in a very
imprecise way into the midst of allegedly logical argument.  You
deliberately use words like "outrage" to elicit discussion, then admit
that it was a troll, as you weren't being emotional at all.  You
simply ignore responses to your arguments.  With this as background, I
say it is no wonder that one who starts out less than 99% in agreement
with you quickly becomes confused and resorts to constructing
inaccurate representations of "what Tom must be thinking."

    Tom> In a _discussion_, what each participant says is in some way
    Tom> meaningfully _responsive_ to what has been said before.  I
    Tom> don't think that Stephen's replies have been responsive.

I don't feel yours have been responsive, either.

    Tom> For example, when I begin to explain a particular set of
    Tom> arguments about how software freedoms relate to copyright and
    Tom> contracts, he unilaterally declares the topic of copyright
    Tom> and contracts irrelevent

But that _was_ responsive to the fact that you were failing to address
my arguments.  You asserted that enforcement of licenses requires
"fascism".  OK, yes, invasion of privacy is a problem if one insists
on an _absolute_ right to _enforceable_ contract.  We fenced about the
definition of contract, and I stopped contesting your definition (ie,
including state enforcement) after a bit.  Then I pointed out that
licenses like the AFPL require the same degree of enforcement as the
GNU GPL, and you ignored that.  I suggested that if there were a right
to contract enforcement, it might be limited by the right to privacy,
and thus not lead to "fascism".  You ignored that, too.

I saw no way forward.  So I returned to my primary interest, which was
a positive argument for software freedom, other than the "open source
movement" style.  Perhaps that was a strategic mistake, closing more
doors to communication than it could possibly open, but I'm as
frustrated by your failure to engage in careful critical reasoning as
you are by mine.

    Tom> [Abandoning an argument which has reached impasse and setting
    Tom> up straw men is] not the totality of his underhanded
    Tom> rhetorical tactics, but it's a good example.

It's a pretty weak example of "underhanded" rhetorical tactics.
Everything I wrote was public, and explicit enough to be directly
refuted.

Granted, identifying my straw men is a burden I shouldn't impose on
you, but they're not hard to expose, and if I'm seen to be using them
deliberately I lose all credibility.  There's a much greater risk to
me in that strategy than is justified by any advantage I can gain.  If
that's one of the worst practices you can accuse me of, well, I have
little to be ashamed of.

On the other hand, _here's_ something that, if intentional, is very
underhanded:

    S> But what does that have to do with my workplace?  If one is
    S> aware of one's ignorance about the working of society, and of
    S> ethical policy, and wishes to learn, what happier place to work
    S> than one devoted (at least in name) to the study of policy and
    S> social planning?

    Tom> I have not seen evidence that Stephen "wishes to learn".

Since I had just clearly implied that I wish to learn, you are
asserting that I lied.  After all, if my _deliberate_ implication
(and it was clear to you, because you chose to respond to it) is not
evidence that I wish to learn, it must be a lie.

But of course your plausible deniability is preserved, because the
syntactic form of your statement is not an assertion that I lied.

    Tom> I have seen evidence that, intentionally or not,

And there you go again.  The word "intentionally" clearly implies
ill-intent on my part, but by grammatically making it an arm of a
disjunction, you can deny that you asserted it.

I think it is rather unlikely that you are doing this accidently.  The
syntax "I have seen evidence" is unnatural, especially since you fail
to present _any_ evidence.  And somebody who was seeking "careful
critical reasoning" at this point would challenge me by asserting
(perceived) ill-will on my part, and say "if you don't stop doing X,
I'll have to conclude you're doing it on purpose."  Like this:

Tom, please stop making assertions about my ill-will in implicit,
"plausibly deniable" form.  If you continue to do so, I will have to
conclude it is intentional slander.

    Tom> his contributions to these threads are more aptly described
    Tom> as "shouting down an opposed viewpoint before it can be
    Tom> expressed by appealing to popular prejudices, mythology, and
    Tom> crude caricatures."

A curious charge.  First, it implicitly asserts a pattern, yet (as
usual) you don't give even _one_ example.  And it's hard to "shout" at
people equipped with killfiles and other filtering mechanisms.

More interesting, (leaving out the "shouting") this is actually much
more characteristic of your form of argument than mine, in context.
After all, surely the icons of economics do not constitute "popular
prejudices" or appealing mythology on gnu-arch-users.  If I were
appealing only to the sort of prejudices that support my views, I find
it hard to believe that I could find any audience here whatsoever.
This audience just doesn't share them, at least not the vocal posters.

But your claim of "justified outrage" at the use of BitKeeper in Linux
kernel development, if not a prejudice, is surely a "popular
sentiment" in this forum.  Surely the use of the term "fascism" rather
than something more clinical like "systematic invasion of privacy"
evokes the mythology of jack-booted brownshirts ripping drives out of
workstation cases.  And you resort explicitly to "crude caricatures"
such as the "poster child for engineers unconcerned with the social
implications of their work," not to mention the ones concerning me
that pepper your post.  For example, the claim that my contributions
are generally "appeals to popular prejudice ...