Re: an true information theory

From: Lester Zick (lesterDELzick_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 03/02/05 

Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2005 16:03:55 GMT

On 1 Mar 2005 18:43:21 -0800, examachine@gmail.com in
comp.ai.philosophy wrote:

>Lester Zick wrote:
>> On 1 Mar 2005 08:21:10 -0800, stevendaryl3016@yahoo.com (Daryl
>> McCullough) in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
>>
>> >Stephen Harris says...
>> >
>> >>>> You, Eray, are too stupid to examine the merits of any topic.
>> >>>> You, Eray, are the epitome of low-information discussion.
>> >>>> You are stupid. You are uneducated. You are arrogant and can't
>read.
>> >>>
>> >>> Was this really necessary?
>> >>>
>> >>> [snip rest]
>> >>
>> >>Yes, it is a public service announcement.
>> >
>> >No, it's not. Explain how it is a service to anyone. Either
>> >people already agree with you (in which case, your announcement
>> >was redundant) or else they don't (in which case, your announcement
>> >makes people more angry at you than at Eray).
>> >
>> >It amazes me how people can rationalize rudeness, how people
>> >can convince themselves that they are performing a service
>> >when they are actually making the world a little worse, a
>> >little nastier.
>>
>> Oh, I imagine ad hominem retorts help to clear the air occasionally,
>> witness Bob's and my rejoinders. Mine are witty and his are not. The
>> trick is not to take it all too seriously. Unfortunately you and
>> Stephen both seem to consider you're making serious public service
>> announcements. I've had decent conversations with all of you and
>don't
>> find the disagreements all that detrimental to what I have to say.
>
>Well, Lester, I have never "attacked" people on this list except David
>Longley and his rats, and I think that was for a good reason. I really
>thought I could discourage Longley from posting all the abusive stuff
>he did, but unfortunately that was a bad idea, a very bad idea to try
>on a public forum.
>
>The interesting thing to note is when David Longley comes out of the
>woods. He would appear with his high throughput abuse whenever the
>"nasty cognitivists" start writing on c.a.p. Combined with trolls like
>George, that situation was so unbearable that most worthy people simply
>stopped contributing to the group. He clearly had a vendetta against
>cognitive science, he thought it costs his job or whatever, we
>shouldn't care anymore.
>
>In my case, almost every thread I managed to get started was instantly
>sabotaged by Longley and his pet Sizemore. That is why I started
>ai-philosophy which is pretty much what c.a.p used to be before David
>Longley and the flood of trolls.
>
>I also suggested to moderate c.a.p. which wasn't generally agreed upon.
>What could I do? We didn't destroy c.a.p., the kooks, crackpots and
>trolls did. And we still see other groups in sci.* complain, they've
>seen nothing like the abuse that c.a.p. has seen, and we still claim
>unmoderated newsgroups work. No, they don't work, at least for these
>scientific/intellectual/whatever discussions. If people don't have to
>take responsibility for what they write, they don't.
>
>It should be by now apparent that I do not view any of the discussions
>on USENET as personal. I hardly even notice who I am replying to. I
>tend to concentrate on the text. So, I know I had previous
>disagreements with Stephen, and I did criticise him at one point
>because I think he was presenting wildly misinformed views, especially
>when he said that "A Turing Machine can calculate Pi, but a real
>computer cannot" to try to draw some kind of a distinction between what
>abstraction machines "do" and real machines "do". I did see that as a
>very irrelevant argument and I told why I thought so, but I never
>abused him, killfiled him or anything like that, and I do not remember
>what bad things he may have said of me. When he posts, I consider only
>what he writes. And I expect any serious contributor to the USENET to
>be impersonal in what he writes.

Well, Eray, it's like I went off on a month's vacation and came back
to find everyone dead or dying. I know you've had problems with David
and Glen. But then who hasn't. I just have never known either you or
Stephen to behave this way. I can't even imagine what the issue of
contention could be to engender this level of hysterical personal
attack. This is the kind of dispute where I'd be inclined to lock the
two of you in a room with boxing gloves instead of absurd words. It
sounds like you're both going back to the days of christrian martyrs
and infidels. Jesus, get over it already.

Regards - Lester

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