Subject: Re: Nagging Naggum From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Sat, 05 Jan 2002 03:07:45 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3219188859931741@naggum.net> * Rajappa Iyer <rsi@panix.com> | Well, one could reasonably argue that Erik's rants are harassment too and | he has stated that his diatribes are aimed at improving the quality of | exchange in the group. Logically, there is little if any difference | between the two approaches. Not to you, but you are part of the problem, not the solution, by your own admission. Why does it surprise you that you do not get the point? About 1 in 20 people go _mental_ when criticized in an unexpected way. (I have the empirical data to support this number. Trust me.) They are probably psychologically _unable_ to deal with unexpected disagreement, since they usually come up with "you attack everyone you disagree with" (which is what they do, and nobody else). Some people react hysterically to any experience of cognitive dissonance, and would rather die than have to change their mind on something they are not specifically prepared to. This is _very_ easy to detect when you know what to look for and it tells me that most of what else they believe is utter hogwash, as they have a real _effort_ to reject everything that could contradict their beliefs. That impression has to date _not_ been refuted by a single specimen of the non-thinking subhumans. To think (specifically, to concentrate) or not is perhaps the only choice about which we have free will, but some people never actually make that choice -- they somehow manage not to die at a young age even while being wastes of space, parasites on society like a non-hunting member of predator flock. The basic thinking skill that involves the ability to recognize _intellectually_ that some of one's tacit assumptions has been challenged, instead of reacting with the primitive emotion of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, is a _requirement_ for public discourse. If you feel under attack because something you hold to be true is challenged or even potentially challenged, you should go hide in some dark basement and certainly not be out in public, where, unless you surround yourself with nincompoops who all agree with you and exhibit no shred of a new idea or a controversial opinion, you _will_ experience such challenges. USENET in particular is a place where every single assumption you hold _will_ become challenged at one time or another. The other 19 will at the very least not react irrationally hostile to a challenge. Admittedly, only 1 out of 4 react intellectually and will always be curious at first, while at least half the normal population will _disregard_ any contradictory information to their existing beliefs until they have heard it often enough, at which point they unthinkingly just adopt it as the new thing they do not recognize is being challenged. The remaining 1 out of 5 become _irritated_ by what they think is false information but only occasionally act on it. The consequence of this is that a large number of people are only comfortable when people around them keep echoing what they all already believe, usually at several levels. This is a waste of bandwidth on the Net (the stupid "me too" response is thankfully mostly gone, but it was so common from AOL users a few years ago that many people still write "AOL" when they mean "me too" in an electronic forum), but several people still hang around on the Net mostly to have their assumptions unchallenged because their idea of stability and safety and even _identity_ is that things do not change. These are polite, friendly people who communicate _nothing_: no new ideas, so no wrong ideas, no controversial opinions, so no mistakes, nothing worth saying, so nothing worth disagreeing with, either. These are the small-town people who cannot handle the big city where people bump into eachother with controversial opinions and attitudes all the time. If they have to have people around them agree with them, stay the hell off the Net -- they will get seriously bruised, not by other people, but by their own lack of ability to cope with unexpected disagreements with what they think is the only right answer. Pathologically provincial people who are unable to come to terms with other people's opinions, but think they must enforce a single, right answer for everyone, do _not_ belong in public fora. When that "single, right answer" is either simply wrong or at least not the _only_ right answer, other people need to be able to know this. This is when the nutballs crack open and all hell breaks loose. You should be able to figure out how it happens and then to see if it actually does happen that way, now. If you take the time to be fair, and I suspect that you will never learn what this even _means_, you will see that the party that _first_ goes personal is _not_ me. But because of shit-for-brains like yourself and that French parasite you have taken sides with, it is somehow OK to attack me. I do not appreciate that. This also happens because these 1 in 20 are so _bad_ persons that they are so afraid of any criticism of their person that they immediately defend themselves when their _actions_ or opinions are criticized -- since bad people recognize a threat, they think that everything I do is threaten bad people. I do not, bad people find their way to attack me _all_ on their own. These bad people do not even _understand_ that only their actions and opinions can be criticized -- and indeed they never make the discintion in what they criticize -- so they believe that just because they feel hurt, it must have been personal and since they are being criticized for not exercising their thinking skills, they react all emotionally, like those people who have so little blood supply to their brain they cannot think and feel at the same time. That pile of French dung, as well as several before him, accuse me of being so "predictable", but I think I create cognitive dissonance in pathologically provincial, utterly simple people -- people whose lives depend on a bunch of misguided assumptions _will_ defend themselves when they are faced with someone who considers no assumption worth protecting. Now, I do not speak unless I have something I think is worth saying, which _excludes_ platitudes and whatever people agree on. If people already agree, there is absolutely no need to keep repeating it. And in all likelihood, it is _false_ if everybody keep saying it, so as to convince themselves. Therefore, what I say is usually controversial. To some people, that makes me interesting. To other people, a lethal threat to their personal identities. But neither of these opinions are anybody else's business. You choose to read what you choose to read. Why so many of you fucking losers have to read what I post and work yourself up like cats in heat, and then ask _me_ not to post as opposed to they not reading what they do not like, I have not figured out. I think it is because their sense of ethics is always concerned with what _other_ people should do. You know the kind -- so hypocritical two of them would give off enough hot air to balloon around the globe. I repeat, for the benefit your limited mental capacity: This is not a forum for venting your personal feelings about anyone. Grow a clue, now, and _mature_. If you have to see me as a symbol of cognitive dissonance, your learning to deal with me is what will make you a man, little runt. Now, if you keep being a stupid little turd with aspirations of becoming as big and stinky as that French sewer you admire so much, keep it to yourself. Stink up your own place, do _not_ shit any more in public. That French septic tank is beyond hope and he will not recover, but you appear to have some remnants of a brain that could be recovered if you do not let yourself sink to his level. /// --