Fw: virus: Being a slave to <reason> leads inevitably to delusion

Tim Rhodes (proftim@speakeasy.org)
Sat, 20 Feb 1999 13:11:13 -0800

I'm, not sure if this ever made it to the list. (I didn't get it back yet, at least.) If it did already, please exuse the double-posting. -Tim


Jake wrote:

>By putting a mere link, instead of pasting in huge rehashings of these
things,
>it makes it far easier for people who have already seen them to skip to the
>next thing. I don't care if it is old to most people. It's obviously very
>foreign to at least a few, that seem to post in oblivion to these things
which
>you claim are "very, very old territory". Reed, to be precise, seems to
not
>understand these distinctions that I am making, and his frustrations
concern
>me, professor.

I guess Reeds wonderful little story of learning to communicate better with his wife was completely lost on you wasn't it? Reed was one of the most rational (if not rabid :-) voices on this list when I joined it some ??? (2 or 3, I think) years ago.

Your posts seem to take the attitude that "if only we had the same information as you" then we would necessarily reach the same conclusions. So, I assumed it might be informative to let you know that, yes, we do have the same information as you, but that it does not always lead to the same conclusions. And if your purpose was to tell us what you think and why, trying another method might yield you better results.

Sorry if this appeared to be excessive editorializing on my part, but I wonder...

You wrote:

>(I) am deeply sorry that the mere sight of the link or URL inspires
feelings of
>intellectual insult. Unfortunately not all people are as enlightened as
you,

and:

>Please feel free to ignore my messages that seem to dwell on these tiresome
>remedial matters. It will not hurt my feelings.

Have you found that overreaction is a successful communication strategy on mailing lists? (We never did have that discussion, did we?) Somehow I doubt you would do the same thing in RL, so I assume you must have found this approach to work well for you under circumstances such as these. What led you to that conclusion? (Tell me a story.)

-Prof. Tim

PS: Have you considered adding those PCR links to your .sig line?