On Mon, Nov 19, 2001 at 02:52:35PM +0000, Stevan Harnad wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Nov 2001, Chris Armstrong wrote:
>
> > the reason I do not usually enter into these discussions
> > with you is that you never reply except as a put-down...
> > You rarely add to a Socratic discourse, or so it seems to
> > me; only to a long list of didactic statements.
>
> Dear Chris,
>
> I apologize.
>
> Although it is obviously no excuse for hurting anyone's feelings, I
> think if my polemics have become increasingly impatient it is a
> cumulative consequence of the fact that I find myself still responding
> over and over to the very same prima facie worries (which I eventually
> compiled into the list of "Zeno's FAQs"). It seems that for every
> worrier I respond to, two more worriers pop up in their place! And this
> is still going on after 10 years and countless talks and papers and
> discussion lists.
welcome to the club ...
this symptom is unfortunately quite frequent on the web, and I have
seen it on several other lists, about other topics.
Those people more often on the list become experts ... and they tend
to lose contact with less present members or beginners, or grow
impatient after repeating things too often.
This is a phenomenon that seems a direct consequence of the type of
interactions and communities we have on the internet, and would be
worth investigating.
FAQs were invented to alleviate the problem, but they are obviously
not a complete answer.
Also, on a topic like this one, where opinion matters nearly as much
as objective facts, FAQs necessarily reflect the writer's opinions,
which may not be shared by all, and are thus not fully stisfactory
(may-be with sevral authors, and constrasting points of view ...)
This last comment is no reflexion on Stevan's FAQ, which I think I
have not read :-)
[ though I did read several of Stevan's papers ... ]
Bernard Lang
--
Non aux Brevets Logiciels - No to Software Patents
SIGNEZ http://petition.eurolinux.org/ SIGN
Bernard.Lang_at_inria.fr ,_ /\o \o/ Tel +33 1 3963 5644
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INRIA / B.P. 105 / 78153 Le Chesnay CEDEX / France
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Received on Mon Nov 19 2001 - 15:31:52 GMT