Subject: Re: how does recursion work? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: 2000/10/17 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3180766532949865@naggum.net> * Kenny Tilton <tilt@liii.com> | where do you get off calling someone a liar because you disagree on the | expansion of a function? and you pretend to be keeping this NG free of | undesirables? not. Since you know about this, where do _you_ get off deciding that it was simple _disagreement_ that caused me (conditionally, which you also ignored in your typical zest to blame me for something I don't do) to "call him a liar"? And has it occurred to you that someone is not a _liar_ simply because one has told a lie? I don't describe people, Kenny, I describe actions. You describe people, not actions. There's a word for your behavior: Undesirable. If you are intent upon continuing regardless of feedback and suggestions and hints, _you_ may become undesirable, too, but it will probably take a long time before you figure out the crucial difference between the adjective and the noun "undesirable" the way you're heading, and I very much doubt that I can say anything that will cause you to think about anything at all, anymore, because you prioritize people before truth, and for people who do that, there's only one chance: they have to rearrange their priorities before there is any hope at all. By the way, what _is_ all this to you? Why is it so important to make an asshole of yourself by constantly proving that you judge and comment on people when you should judge and comment on their actions? What's the point to all this, Kenny? Do you think it's _right_ to judge people and not actions, perhaps? That's so under-evolved and so disturbingly brutal an attitude to justice that I wonder if you would survive if anyone treated you like that. Quit while you're alive and don't promulgate the idea that people aren't in control of their behavior, but must be branded and punished simply for being. It took mankind billions of unfairly lost lives to pay for the wisdom of the modern justice systems, yet we still have serious problems actually getting the message through to the population, especially with false group accusations like racism and the like, but if there is any hope for those living today, it is at least in the knowledge that the legal system isn't ruled by brutal mobs who lynch and kill people they don't like, regardless of what they did. The mark of your evolution into a human being will be that you can listen to the experience of and the truth explained by someone you don't happen to like personally. You are not fully a human being if you disregard the truth if you believe that those who tell it are somehow incapable of truth and the same experiences that apply to you: That way lies the idea of sub-humans and group discrimination. Just exercise the intelligence you have and work hard at it if it doesn't come quickly to you, and you will grasp the idea that truth is independent of people, but has to be discovered by, propagated by, and held by people to work. Otherwise, untruth wins by default. If I can keep your intellectually under-nourished attitudes at bay, Kenny, I can indeed pretend to keep this NG free of the undesirable that you (and some others) bring with them here. But it's not why I'm here, just like I'm interested in this aspect of society because I have to live in one with people who similarly destructive as you, not because I want to spend any time on it. Ideally, people would have parents and teachers who told them about justice and dispelled the notions that people _are_ bad because they _do_ bad. Some people _do_ bad because they _are_ bad, but some good people do bad, too, and the unfairness of treating them as bad people is the best way to turn good people into bad people. In fact, that's how the vast majority of bad people were created. It is in all our personal interests to see to it that we create as few bad people as possible and that we identify the few really bad people that are out there. #:Erik -- I agree with everything you say, but I would attack to death your right to say it. -- Tom Stoppard