From: Hermit (hidden@extropy.org)
Date: Sun Apr 21 2002 - 20:49:36 MDT
To avoid flooding your mailboxes, with a mark-up style which obviously has some Extropians seething in what appears to me to be an irrational fury, I have not posted the full response to "eugen@leitl.org" here. What I have done is post it on the Virian BBS as Re: virus: Eugene Leitl disses Hermitish markup Reply #6 2002-04-21 at 09:53:38. It can be accessed at the following URL. http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51&action=display&threadid=25392&start=0empted to avoid his ad hominem, have avoided any hint of "Hermitish mark-up" and have simply posted excerpts which relate to his (and other Extropians) obvious difficulties with the Church of Virus.
What "eugen@leitl.org" omitted to mention was that this saga originated when he signed onto the Church of Virus and, in an unrelated thread, barged in with complaints about our posting methods as his first post to our mail-list (Refer "Re:virus: politics test/mix, Reply #5 on: 2002-04-16 21:52:03" at http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=25358, without mentioning that he was a part of the Extropians. When he received a polite response, (Refer reply 9 op cit.) he became rude and attempted insult (reply 10 op cit.). When this was returned (reply 11 op cit.), he departed (and will not be missed). However, this was followed up by his snide commentary here (where he presumably imagined that he could get away with it without reply). In addition others Extropians have responded on the CoV and here. Some of these responses have apparently consisted of little more than attemps to take snipe side swipes at the Church of Virus.
When an organization is by implication referred to as a "cult," a label that undoubtedly carries negative connotations, then it behooves its members, to respond to the slur as and when they become aware of it. As I have put more than a little effort into the CoV, when I discovered that certain Extropians had decided to attack the CoV, I decided to respond appropriately. Asserting that the response designed to address the slurs made in this forum, is a "plug" and "irrelevant," says more to "eugen@leitl.org"'s apparently undeserved arrogance, and the degree of irrationality of his adherents, than it does about the CoV.
"eugen@leitl.org" and fellow-travelers should take note that Virians will not ignore their attempted attacks upon our reputation, and assure you that illogical flailing and unfounded assertions will be addressed as completely as circumstances require. Starting - or exacerbating - an unnecessary war with others who probably would have agreed with the Extropian goals (if appropriately expressed and articulated), is I submit, foolish and self-defeating, albeit not particularly unique (as could be discovered in "FAQ: UTism what is it" at http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=31;action=display;threadid=11539. While "eugen@leitl.org" may not have been representing the Extropians on the CoV, his (and others) continued attacks on the CoV in this forum indicate to members of the CoV that what we are seeing here is a classic but unthinking defense of memespace.
"eugen@leitl.org" asserted that, "Hermit's markup [Hermit: and as a correction of fact, this is no more "Hermit's mark-up" than it is the mark-up of everyone who contributed to its development] is there for a purpose: it claims to facilitate communcation, drawing great minds which then produce content. I would like to see some of that fabulous content those great minds have produced which eclipses content produced e.g. in this meek legacy medium of extropians@mailing list -- by an order of magnitude. I somehow kept missing those in http://forum.javien.com/messages.php?topicdata=virus&new=truem so lost. Can you help me by pointing out killer content in there? Thank you.
I would suggest that "eugen@leitl.org"'s trouble with finding content in the archives is a trouble of the "signal-to-noise" ratio which is endemic to almost any public forum - and particularly email - the extropians not excluded. I recommend that he visit the FAQ section at http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=31 and in particular the Best of Virus, Philosophy & Religion, Creative Endeavors and Serious Business sections of our archives. A number of virians are working hard to collect and collate those thoughts and concepts, produced by virians and others, which may be useful to our members in the future. In the best of scientific practice, the current structure is manual, but is helping those of us working on a more general and less labor intense system to define what we need and how it should be implemented. What we have proposed will make the transition to more advanced systems a great deal simpler, yet allow us to maintain at least some continuity with standards based legacy architectures.
Hermit
PS "eugen@leitl.org" made one interesting assertion - "It's obvious why: people's visual systems are rather hardwired, and legibility is measurable in objective benchmarks. Because people are not computers there's most assuredly a strong coupling between data and presentation."
I do not disagree with this. I love "objective benchmarks" - they dispense with so many needless arguments. I simply query eugen@leitl.org's assertion as to what legibility consists of. Perhaps he would care to support his arguments by sharing his "objective benchmarks" and explaining how he used them to draw the conclusions he is asserting here? Or is eugen@leitl.org simply saying that "legibility is measurable in objective benchmarks" but not claiming that he has used them to reach the conclusion that the morass appended to the full response is preferable to "Hermitish quotation"? In which case, why did he bring up "objective benchmarks"? To garner some spurious credibility? Certainly, speaking for myself, I find discussions where a paragraph begins "[eugen 3] Blah-blah-blah" far easier to comprehend than one where each line is prefixed with "> > > > > Blah-blah-blah." But no doubt the "objective benchmarks" are going to persuade me how very wrong I am.
---- This message was posted by Hermit to the Extropians 2002 board on ExI BBS. <http://www.extropy.org/bbs/index.php?board=61;action=display;threadid=51564>
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