Subject: Re: Newbie - 2 MORE Small problems? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 08:20:32 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3224910041974101@naggum.net> * tb+usenet@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) | However, it's on one which you don't think disagreement is allowed. Could you please stop lying about what I think? | Rather, you insist (loudly, rudely, continuously) that yours is the | only reasonable opinion, and that anyone who disagrees not only should | shut up, but should certainly not dare to broach their disagreement on | your personal stomping ground. Could you please engage your brain long enough to understand that just because I reject _one_ opinion, I make no such idiotic implication for any other opinion? Yours is a classical case of "you can extrapolate in any direction from a single data point". Dishonest, disrespectful, even hateful, this is. Fuck you for being so unable to distinguish your own feelings from what others think. Your personal need to portray me as some kind of monster is a clear indication of a psychotic break when you are under stress. Consult a physician about this problem and get a grip on yourself and start dealing with reality, not your twisted, deluded mental imagery. Just because I loudly, rudely, continuously refute a claim that astrology is just a dialect of astronomy or that behaviorism is "scientific" does not mean that I have allowed only one opinion of what astronomy is or what should be considered scientific. Why do you have a problem with such a fanstastically simple and logical argument? Why do you have to portray others like utter fools because _you_ lack the clear thinking that keeps you out of trouble? I find this extremely provocative and annoying. Nobody can be so mind-numbingly ignorant of the laws of logic as to _believe_ that opposing one opinion means that one does not tolerate "disagreement" or that one has the only answer. It is possible to argue, strongly, that the moon is not made of cheese without any clue as to the specific makeup of the moon. Likewise, the earth is not the center of the universe, regardless of what is the center of the universe. The detection of simple falsehoods does not require omniscience, except in people lacking in education and thinking skills and who want the false to be "allowed" on an equal footing with the true. Once again, you show me that you lack the wherewithal to distinguish between the negation of a negative (it does _not_ yield a positive!) and the negation of a positive. What kind of philosophical background do you _have_, when you have no clue about either negation or the distinction between observation and conclusion? You sound immensely illiterate to me when you make these fantastically stupid mistakes. | The existing newsgroup for comp.lang.lisp is for all dialects of Lisp, | and I have never seen (in print) anyone claim that Scheme is not a | dialect of Lisp. You are the *only* person I've ever heard say such a | thing, actually. Paul Foley said it very recently in this newsgroup, you unobservant mental slob. There have been discussions here about this in the past. I was far from the only one to argue against "Scheme is a Lisp", for the simple reason that Scheme freaks mean something different by it than the more general Lisp community. "Scheme is not a Lisp" is true for a large number of reasonable meanings of "Lisp". Scheme freaks have a real problem with this, and, unsurprisingly, do not tolerate disagreement with their stupid, stupid, stupid notion that Scheme and Lisp overlap in any interesting way. They overlap in origin and history, and that's _it_. I find it downright ridiculous that people who refuse to tolerate that I express my opinion, conclude that I am wired the way they are, and only have room for "One True Dialect" and have no room for disagreement, like they do. I have no room for _falsehood_. People do not "disagree" with something like "George W. Bush is a brilliant mind" -- it is simply false. Now, as logic would have it, there is a lot more falsehood out there than there is truth, and it is also a lot easier to determine that something is false than to determine that something is true. Because every single person wants to know what is true (or as true as possible), we need to excise that which is known to be false, even though many people may want to believe it. The earth is not flat. Microsoft is not a law-abiding company who does more good than harm and is well-intentioned. In more narrow contexts, other obvious falsehoods exist, too: E.g., here, it is _false_ that a single namespace is better than many, it is _false_ that Common Lisp would be better without special variables, etc. There is no point at all in repeating these stupid claims. Disagreement and agreement are completely worthless attributes of a position in any group of thinking people. People have opinions of many kinds, formed on a variety of bases, and some of them are nuts and some of them are brilliant. Some of them turn out to be false when they are examined closely, and when that happens, people are gently asked not to repeat them, because repeating known falsehoods wastes everybody's time and detracts from the purpose of finding whatever may be true. Thus, a rejection of a falsehood means only that it is cannot be true and should not be attempted to be argued to be true, because it is _false_. If this is wrong, at _least_ try a novel and different angle on it. I want people to work at proposing possible truths, and argue for them, which is what "tolerate disagreement" means in a thinking population, but I do not want to rehash proofs that something is false over and over again, which is what "tolerate disagreement" means in an unthinking population of idiots. Astrology is _bunk_. End of discussion. If you have another opinion, the loony bin is in that direction --->. This is not intolerance of disagreement, it is using your head to get rid of the obviously insane and deluded monstrosities in stupid people's dreams. The more time we spend refuting known falsehoods, the less time we have to discover some possible truths. Scheme has made a large number of design tradeoffs that Common Lisp considers to be _wrong_, and which there is no point at all in revisiting. Common Lisp has taken a course that precludes these design tradeoffs from being revisited and changed to accomodate the anal-retentive Scheme freaks. They may change, but not to become those of Scheme, simply because far too many people think Scheme should be Scheme and Lisp should be Lisp, and never the twain shall meet (again). Improve your thinking skills, Thomas! The lack of coherence in your extremely flawed "arguments" should be humiliating and embarrassing to you, but that is not my fault, and it does not become less hurtful if you keep making worse mistakes. Sometimes, I am simply right, and it does not help to accuse me of being intolerant or anything else stupid people tend to do. People must be allowed to say that Scheme sucks in vacuum in this newsgroup without some hypersensitive Scheme freak going postal. We must tolerate disagreement in the value system of people who agree that Common Lisp is a great language and _therefore_ congregate here, but who are likely to have all sorts of other, non-overlapping values and interests. Just as those who all think Scheme is a great language congregate in comp.lang.scheme. And just like they would have a right ot throw someone out for saying "Scheme sucks" in their community, I demand a right to tell people who spend their time talking about how much Common Lisp sucks in this forum to go to hell. If people want others to be very _friendly_ towards something as backward as Scheme, and do not want to listen to other people's contrary opinions, comp.lang.scheme is the place. Here, we tolerate disagreement, and therefore do not tolerate those who want only _their_ One Truth about Scheme to be portrayed. Grow a clue, Thomas Bushnell. You react to monsters of your own creation and have long since stopped thinking or reading what I write. Take a break, cuddle a cat (highly recommended), get laid, take an ocean-side walk, whatever, just get back on track and start _thinking_ again! And _please_ stop playing the moronic and childish game of "I'm not the bad guy, the other guy is". Just accept responsibility for your _own_ actions and stop blaming me for them. /// -- 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.