Subject: Re: With friends like Erik, c.l.l doesn't need enemies From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1999/09/23 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3147036890336451@naggum.no> * Erann Gat | What does this have to do with Erik? If you're going to try to change | people's minds about a self-perpetuating myth the first thing you have to | do is convince them to pay attention to what you are saying. If people | tune out then you've lost no matter how right you may be. And if people | think you are a raving lunatic, or even just an unpleasant person, then | they tune out. let's assume for a second that Erann Gat is not the raving lunatic. let's consider a few facts that may shed some light on how his mortal fear of losing the battle he has fruitlessly been fighting for ten years and now needs to blame me for failing to win, bears out in practice. let's therefore consider the fairly obvious fact that Erann Gats are everywhere, also in Norway, and the fact that we have Norwegian newsgroups for both Lisp and Linux, on which I'm obviously active. for some time, I have answered people's requests for information about which programming language to use under Linux with "I can send you a CD so you can try out Allegro CL under Linux". some people could not stop themselves from pulling an Erann Gat and posted a lot of drivel which they had no possible way of knowing -- and they were certainly utterly disdainful of first-hand knowledge, and much preferred to perpetuate slander and present their prejudiced idiocy as fact and universal fact at that. now, I don't suffer Norwegian fools any easier than any other nationality, so obviously, a debate ensued with one local Erann Gat. the consequence? an enormous interest in Lisp! I have mailed out almost 150 CD's by now. people have been saying "I have to try this!" and have come back to me for help and with gratitude and suggestions and wish lists. I set up an IRC channel to help people, but it's become more than that -- new people to Lisp have tried things I have not even looked at because it would require too much work in the first couple weeks, some people have needed to know a lot about fundamentals and have happily been able to optimize their code well beyond C++, which sort of proved to some that Lisp was a viable alternative. in Erann Gat's view, and in the views of our local version of the same screwed-up mentality where fantasy is a lot easier to deal with than reality, I am of course nothing but harm, but the crucial question is: harm to _whom_? if I harm prejudiced fools, who cares? if I cause a lot of interest and positive feedback among smart people, who not only go away with the best myth-killer they could get, but some real hard evidence to back up their opinions, who see ideas that shape their thinking and which they will use to recognize other people who have been "exposed" to good thinking, why are the few prejudiced fools who have suffered such a big deal? they can just stop being prejudiced fools, can't they? seriously, what's holding them back? they don't think it's _better_ to be prejudiced fools than to know that of which they speak, do they? #:Erik