Subject: Re: MD5 in LISP and abstraction inversions From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 23:31:15 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3214942272929982@naggum.net> * Janis Dzerins | Now a simple scenario: Imagine a person walking on the street, spitting | all around, eating something and dropping leftovors on the street, | bumping into people and not excusing (not to mention the person is dirty | and stinks). Now I tell you this person has no respect for society. You | feel very astonished and ask: how many members of the society did you | poll for their opinions before drawing this conclusion in their name? However, it _would_ be a likely question shot back from the derelict you had just described, because the question itself shows disrespect for the community, not to mention each offended individual. The question is only an attempt to control critics of anti-social behavior by intimidation, which is really the only way our perpetrator thought he could "win", but you never really win by intimidation, you just get rid of the critics who can be intimidated, which are those without substance to their criticism. Suppose for a second it was an honest question: How many people need to be "polled" to satisfy him? However many you ask, you would always find a substantial number of other anti-social individuals if you took a poll (just look at what happens when one anti-social bastard has been shot down on USENET -- they come crawling out of the woodwork) such that the anti-social can always claim that any critic never had the full force of the community come down on them? In other words, it is a pretty stupid way to intimidate people -- better use an intimidation technique without inherent contradictions, so it at least looks legit. Even the stupid "prove things" stunt rests on people taking things for granted that should not be -- and watch how he ran out of arguments immediately when that line of intimidation was challenged, and tried stupidly to argue that someone had challenged all of science. I only wish such people were a lot smarter about what they do, but stupid intimidation and anti-social go hand in hand, however, so this is no surprise. Advanced and complex social structures depend on really clever intimidation, such as having a whole bunch of smart people sit down and define a standard that other people feel obliged to accept as an authority. Smart people figure out that this kind of authority makes a great deal of sense. Anti-social people people reject any and all authority not of their own making, but if they are really dumb, think that since it is based on intimidation in a sense, they, too, can play the intimidation game. It really is quite pathetic to watch, but most of the "fights" on USENET can probably be summed up as "who died and elected _you_ the authority", just like our perpetrator rambles about a Pope of Common Lisp. Watch out for people who cannot accept any authority but themselves, they _will_ be trouble. /// -- Norway is now run by a priest from the fundamentalist Christian People's Party, the fifth largest party representing one eighth of the electorate. -- Carrying a Swiss Army pocket knife in Oslo, Norway, is a criminal offense.