From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu Sep 19 2002 - 18:08:21 MDT
Alex writes
> An open letter to Lee, from Alex Ramonsky
>
> Lee;
> I have no political stance or opinions whatsoever. (That
> was a qualifier). I am not writing to criticise you, or
> in your defense. I don't know you.
Alex, the "qualifier" whatsoever *strengthens* the assertion
that you have no political stance. Hmm. I thought you did.
Maybe I did pigeon-hole you. But okay. Anyway it couldn't
*harm* you unless I referred to your views on-line some way,
I guess.
> I sometimes find your method of discussion impossible to
> follow logically. This may be because I'm not smart enough,
> or it might be because you're not coherent enough.
I'm sure that you're smart enough and I'm sure that I
write clearly enough. I don't know what the problem is.
> I have sometimes suspected that you were deliberately winding people up,
> because you thought they had a lower EQ (emotional intelligence
> quotient) than you do. However, I am often accused of doing this myself,
> when I had no such intention at all, so I may be misunderstanding you there.
> You do seem to have good, rational, emotional control, and sometimes
> when you have that skill, other people seem excessively emotional and it
> is very tempting to mock them. Only you know the truth about whether you
> have done this.
(Alex asks that I answer a number of questions, this being the first.)
No. To the degree that winding someone up happens, it is a
by-product of, not the direct result of, my intentions. I
think that you'd have to have a pretty big mean streak in
you to deliberately "wind someone up"---or be very, very
pissed at them.
As for mockery, I am afraid that when I've got mad at Harvey
I did mock some of his statements. And perhaps one or two
others. But it was mockery of what they were *saying*, not
them as individuals, that I can assure you.
> _Any_ use of personal abuse or personal derogatory comments or claims
> without proof (such as 'so-and-so is naive and stupid because they don't
> agree with me') is abhorrent to me and has no place in a rational
> argument. Only you can know if you have stooped to this.
I will pay $1000 to anyone who can find an instance of me
calling anyone else "stupid". I'm trying to imagine how
I could even have called anyone "naive"---it seems possible,
though, if I had a qualifier around it, e.g., ... no, sorry,
I can't even think of how that might happen. But I will pay
only $50 for each instance where I called someone "naive".
Now of course I've probably in a sense *implied* that someone
was naive if I thought that I was correcting them, e.g., "The
flaw in your reasoning is..." which started a fight once
(I have since learned not to say that).
> Pigeonholing or stereotyping an individual because they have an
> opposing point of view (such as 'oh well, so-and-so would feel happier
> if we were all nazis') is also abhorrent to me and has no place in a
> rational argument. Only you can know if you have dome this.
This, too, is publicly available. I sort of did this, at least
once. Someone was defending socialism, and I replied, and in
the same paragraph began talking about the megadeaths that
the Soviets and Nazis were guilty of. It was protested that
I was in effect accusing someone of advocating that. Whereas
I didn't mean to be "in effect" accusing the person that I was
writing to of anything beyond being a follower of socialism;
so I can see how I perhaps did this.
> Deliberately trying to confuse a person by jumping from subject to
> subject or changing the subject completely or making arbitrary
> connections where none actually exist because other people are too
> confused or emotional to notice is mean and has no place in a rational
> argument. Only you can know if you have done this.
Never. I strive for clarity.
> Assuming someone is less intelligent than you because they are less able
> to control their emotions or are particularly sensitive to emotive
> issues is not interaction; it causes action / reaction and its only
> results are mistrust and unhappiness. Only you know if you do this.
Amara once told me offline that I tended to make people
feel stupid, or something. Unfortunately, she was going
away at the time, and I couldn't follow up on this. I'm
not sure what she was trying to say.
Now if I do feel that I am talking to someone who, after
a while, I begin to feel is not very bright, I *believe*
that I try to start going easy on them. And the reason
why I do, I admit, is that often I've been talking to
someone who understood something vastly better than I
did and who was discourteous, rude, and did not suffer
fools lightly. I know many people who *do* suffer fools
lightly, and I think that I am one of them. (I am not
even prescribing such sufferance for everyone.)
> In short, _none of us_ can be inside of your head and know your
> thoughts. We are completely dependent on your goodwill and honesty to
> give us a clear picture of what you are like and what your intentions are.
No, to a large degree the record is quite objective.
But yes, the *medium* introduces so much distortion
that perhaps there does *not* exist online real
evidence of my good intentions, because I could be
either "playing games", or be really malevolent in
some way.
> Only _you_ know the truth about yourself. I think
> it is completely wrong for anyone to judge your
> intentions without the information inside your
> mind.
Well, Alex, thanks for the "not guilty" through insufficient
evidence ;-) , but I must disagree. Conjectures about almost
*anything* are welcome to me, provided that they're in good
taste, conducted politely, and seem to be pointing at
something interesting about our universe (including, of
course, those of us in it).
I don't mind being judged now. (But I am *not* saying that
it was proper in the way it began to be done, necessarily.)
But it could be hurtful to someone else to be so judged.
> Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is
> to convince people where you're at and what your
> intentions are, using only text and the occasional
> emoticon.
Well, I'm afraid you already can see what a colossal
failure I've been, at least to about half the people
here. *Text* SIMPLY DOES NOT convey tone-of-voice,
timing cues, and so on. I'm afraid that I must
decline the mission as truly impossible 8^D
> Last comment: how about, everybody you seem to have
> annoyed, explaining _in very simple terms_ what
> exactly they are annoyed about (actual examples,
> please, as in they must quote you, then say 'I find this
> unacceptable because...'
Hey, that would be great! But you know, it's quite
difficult for most of us, including me, to find
exactly where something we recall took place.
And I don't know if others have had this shocking
experience, but often it's *not* the way I
remembered it!
> At least then you would have a basis to work
> from in explaining yourself.
> Good luck everybody
> Ramonsky
Thanks, Alex, I know that everyone wishes you the
best also.
Lee
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