Subject: Re: looking for a language with any of the following 4 charachteristics  (all 4 would be nice).
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 08:09:35 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3223354178835416@naggum.net>

* Erann Gat
| The phrase "I expect people to assume I am correct" is open to
| interpretation.  It could mean, "I expect people to give me the benefit
| of the doubt and (tentatively) assume I'm correct unless (and until) they
| have a good reason to believe otherwise."  Or it could mean, "I expect
| people to assume I am correct no matter what the circumstances."  The
| former position is reasonable (I hold that expectation myself), the
| latter is not IMO.

  What does "assume" mean to you, Erann?  What _you_ assume may indeed be
  indistinguishable from fact and belief because _you_ never bother to
  check the assumption, but other people are more intelligent and do not
  act on assumption alone.

| The situation in this case was the following:  Erik made a claim.
| Someone responded and said Erik was not correct, and suppoerted their
| dissent with a citation from the CLHS.  So when Erik said, "assume I am
| correct" it was in a context where someone had a good reason for thinking
| he might not be.  It's not unreasonable to suppose then that Erik's
| intention was the latter interpretation, which I find unreasonable.

  We can trust you to find unreasonable interpretations of anything I say,
  Erann.  It is your chosen role in this forum, now.  Nothing I say must be
  allowed to pass without your helpful "interpretation" and I am certainly
  not allowed to be jocular, not to use irony or sarcasm, or pull your leg
  or anyone else's.  This must be a dead serious forum, suitable for the
  highly shizophrenic reader like yourself who fail to grasp the tone of
  _any_ message I write and who need to have everything served in very
  clear-cut form with no room for confusion.  Do you want an example, now?
  Let me quote an entire paragraph from you, quite recent, I do not need
  google to dig up dirt on you, you see:

    What I did not realize at the time was that I had actually been
    accepted as a junior member of Erik's little band.  I know this because
    shortly after the conference was over, Erik invited me to do a little
    of his dirty work for him, as he sometimes relies on his liutenants to
    do.  The record of that invitation is preserved here:
    http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3150545409149313%40naggum.no&output=gplain

  I assume he means the last paragraph:

    Erann Gat, are you still there?  can _you_ get this insufferable moron
    to take a hint?  feel free to use a fairly heavy and blunt instrument.

  Do _anyone_ else not see this as a stab at Erann's incessant willingness
  to be a royal pain in the ass in this forum?  Is it more reasonable to
  "interpret" this as a request to some "liutenant" or to consider it an
  joke at the expense of the overzealous moralist named Erann Gat who has
  been known to run after me with heavy and blunt instruments in this
  forum?  Now, being a joke, could it be _ridiculing_ that role, when Erann
  and I got along.

  How _is_ it possible to think in terms like "Erik's little band"?  Is
  that how Erann himself felt after the fact?  And where else do we find
  this notion of "Erik's little band", if not in the minds of the truly
  nutty who feel that I somehow commandeer the newsgroup against someone
  who is clearly in the wrong quite independently of what I do or say?
  There are people with some really interesting paranoid delusions out
  there, and one of the most interesting ones must be that of me conducting
  some kind of clandestine, behind-the-scenes operation against nutty
  people.  Of course, if you are nutty, it is just _great_ to find a way to
  blame a particular individual for your "hardship" instead of trying to
  figure out why a lot of people are "against" you or what you do.  When I
  observed wave after wave of attackers against me at a time, it sure
  _looked_ like they were all trained by Marcus Daniels, using the exact
  same rhetoric and the same amazing willingness to "interpret" that we
  find in Erann Gat's postings, but they are all gone, and they never
  contributed to this forum in any technical capacity, either.

///
-- 
  In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
  In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.