From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Thu Aug 15 2002 - 08:05:03 MDT
>From: Harvey Newstrom <mail@HarveyNewstrom.com>
>That is not the complaint. Changing people's minds is one of the
>main reasons we debate on this list. Most people would be
>thrilled if their carefully crafted arguments changed the minds of
>other people.
Agreed.
>The complaint is when someone says, "OK, I fooled you all. I
>never really believed what I claimed. I just wanted to see all
>the responses I could trigger. I'm not really going to debate any
>of your well-researched posts, since I really don't care about the
>position I claimed. You wasted your time researching and
>responding to me. Thanks for playing."
Strawman argument, this is not what I said at all, what I said and
I quote was:
"Okay, I confess, I was being deliberately provocative in my
response."
Not the same thing at all.
>What's worse is when people argue that this is a useful technique
>and they plan to keep fooling us in the future. It makes me
>question whether I should put any effort into responding or not.
It's a standard debating tactic that I learned and delighted
philosopy professors with in college.
Since it is not well understood nor appreciated here I will not use
it again.
Fair?
Brian
Member:
Extropy Institute, www.extropy.org
National Rifle Association, www.nra.org, 1.800.672.3888
SBC/Ameritech Data Center Chicago, IL, Local 134 I.B.E.W
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:16:08 MST