torturing BTQ

James Wynn · 23 Jul 2009, 15:31 · from 2009-July.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 10:31:33 -0500
Subject: (urth) torturing BTQ
In-Reply-To: <F4B9627F-FADC-4ECB-88B9-7B0B79FC9E8B at io.com>
References: <c04.6495caeb.3796536e at aol.com><2C6039EAF3814649A6DB724C936B9E18@eMachinePC><4A67B477.6020406 at io.com><05345EED82A744A8A4386A16532A453D@eMachinePC>
	<F4B9627F-FADC-4ECB-88B9-7B0B79FC9E8B at io.com>
Message-ID: <BE5ED397072D49E5B9862D9133749F89@eMachinePC>

>>Granted, the modified form is not "easier", but I  think reflexive outrage 
>>at the mere use of the term "begs the  question" is oversensitivity on the 
>>part of some logicians...which  is reason enough to use it.
>
> Outraging logicians has never been a particularly good motivator for  me. 
> I must be doing it wrong.

You must be, Adam.

Logicians are not Vulcans, they only enjoy pretending to be ones. They have 
petty pet peeves just like the rest of humanity. In some cases, those who 
assume the title "logician" are not at all removed from those taking part in 
the annual "Klingon Beauty Contest" in Atlanta. When meeting a person who is 
showing off his invulnerable armor, how can one resist poking an uncovered 
sore?

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