Subject: Re: CLOS is hard. Let's go shopping  (Was Re: Lisp in Python)
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 04 Oct 2002 11:42:17 +0000
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3242720537442941@naggum.no>

* Erann Gat
| Yes, of course it is.  I never said any different.

  Yes, you do.  All the time.  You correct me when I post my observations.
  You override me when I want to show you my point of view.  I have reason
  to believe that you do not understand that you do this.  I wonder what it
  will take to make you understand.

* Erik Naggum
| Your core misunderstanding is that your value judgments are nothing more
| than your personal view, but some absolute truth.

* Erann Gat
| I presume that you meant to say that my core misunderstanding is that *I
| think* that my value judgements are nothing more than my personal views.
| But you are wrong.  I do not think that.  (And frankly, I'm getting a
| little tired of having you tell me what I think, particularly since you
| keep getting it wrong.)

  That was weakly phrased on my part, but I marvel at your ability to get
  confused.  Perhaps you should try to /listen/ to what I say and feel less
  of an urge to correct me all the time?

  You clearly believe that your personal value jugdments are more than your
  personal view, some absolute truth.  You show me this belief in your words
  all the time, but more your choice of words and what you choose to react
  to than the meaning they would have carried if they were trustworthy.
  You seem to confirm that your value judgments are more than your personal
  views in the above paragraph.  When my value jugdments are /invalidated/
  by you and you presume to know what the /correct/ value jugdments should
  be, my response is to tell you that you do not hold The Truth, or throw
  up my hands in exasperation and ridicule you for it, which you amazingly
  do not understand.

| I admitted the possibility that I might be wrong in the very next sentence
| (which you conveniently deleted).

  Your next sentence was "Or maybe I'll be surprised, who knows?" and that,
  with all due respect, is no admission of a possibility that you might be
  wrong.  Quite the contrary.  Your last sentence was "I submit it's worth
  a try" which shows that it was but a feeble-minded way to coach others to
  do your bidding by appearing to be receptive.

| Why do you go out of your way to manufacture disagreements between us?

  I am sorry to see that you perceive my insistence on showing you my view
  after you ignore it, correct it, and override it as if I were manufacturing
  disagreements.  The fact is that we disagree on many important things.
  You would see that if you tried to listen.  In my experience, you are not
  receptive to anything that would falsify or deny your own position.  You
  are more than happy to tell people what you think and how you see things,
  with a thinly guised notion of absolute truth behind it, which is not per
  se bad -- it can even be good -- but do you ever /listen/ to other people
  such that you actually change your mind about something?  (Before you
  come up with the expected retort, people accuse me of two things: Not
  budging if I think I am right, and not saying the same thing is right all
  the time.  The intelligent reader concludes that I listen and change my
  mind when I have good reason to do so.  The unintelligent reader
  concludes that I am unreasonable and cannot be trusted.)

-- 
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder.
Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.