Subject: Re: type safety in LISP From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 11 Dec 2002 01:43:15 +0000 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3248559795760983@naggum.no> * Pascal Costanza | Interesting elaboration - except that these are not my ideas... Amazing. Accepting responsibility for anything is so foreign to you that you even have to make such pathetic evasive actions. | What conclusions should one draw from your behavior? You /could/ conclude that you have done something wrong and that someone cares enough about you to try to communicate to you not only what you have done wrong, but some of the underlying reasons /why/ it is wrong. I am beginning to arrive at the conclusion that you are unable to accept input from the external world, however. | You're one of the most ridiculous people I have met in my entire | life. What we know for certain about you is that you construct your own little world in which you are the omnipotent, omniscient ruler who never makes mistakes and can never learn anything from anyone. What consequence could a statement from a deranged lunatic like you possibly have /outside/ that little world of yours? Of /course/ you have to make that kind of statement in pure self-preservation. I have never had the opportunity to watch a human being who has not grasped the concept of context /at all/ before. It has been quite fascinating to try to make you realize that just because you think something is true does not make it The Truth and that just because you think something is important does not mean that /everybody/ else must agree with you. Even seriously mentally sick people have /some/ notion of their own contribution to their grasp of the world around them, Most people, regardless of intelligence, are able to understand that they can look at the same things from a different point of view and see something new and different. Even people who experience ravaging psychotic episodes are aware at /some/ level that what they see is not the /same as/ the external world; they do not live entirely in a world of their own construction. You do. I must admit that I have for too long refused to believe that it is possible to maintain such a state of mind for an extended period of time. I have therefore tried to reach you in many different ways, but you are actually impervious to any signal that tells you that /perhaps/ Pascal Costanza is not God, after all. Of /course/ you must find me ridiculous. What else could you do? If you had but a glimpse of your own mental state, you would need therapy for years. If, by a miracle you should wake up one morning and think "Mein Gott, I can /think/ about something unpleasant without my entire central nervous system shutting down in self-defense", what would we see here in comp.lang.lisp? I would like to believe that the first thing you would do would be to accept responsibility for your own emotional well-being (and therefore stop demanding that others take care of it) and for the things you want others to believe to be true (so that you could learn something from discussing them). But I fear that it /will/ take a miracle for any of this to happen. -- 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.