From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net)
Date: Mon Nov 24 1997 - 15:23:50 MST
> 'Extropians' is supposed to be an intelligent 'flame-free' venue...
Since when is that a goal, or for that matter, even possible?
I certainly don't think such a thing is possible. In an open,
unedited, unmoderated forum such as this, a "civilized" thread
of discussion is compeltely useless. If nobody is pissed off,
that's a sure sign that little of importance is being said,
or else the subject is so obscure not enough people understand
it to have an opinion.
Anything everyone agrees on has, by definition, no useful
information content.
Now, since every time I make this point, someone misunderstands,
let me be clear: I'm /not/ saying that pissing someone off
should be the purpose of a statement, only that any statement
that merits thought is likely to piss someone off, so it's a
very bad idea to try to prevent that, because you will wind up
preventing useful thought. It is far more effective to teach
listeners tolerance than to expect it of speakers.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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