The mystery of the image of an astronaut cleaned byRudesind

António Pedro Marques · 09 Jul 2010, 10:56 · from 2010-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: entonio at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?QW50w7NuaW8gUGVkcm8gTWFycXVlcw==?=)
Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2010 11:56:03 +0100
Subject: (urth) The mystery of the image of an astronaut cleaned
	byRudesind
In-Reply-To: <4C35C501.6040502 at gmail.com>
References: <SNT123-W256DB5C8585628C8109423CFB30 at phx.gbl>	<520E36C4-BC0B-4DFE-8F64-BC9EB1D9BF4C at liftingfaces.com>	<4C34A1F4.6030501 at gmail.com>	<F7C7A8D7-66C9-4746-9662-C742E53311FE at liftingfaces.com>	<AANLkTilkfznBstbta55hgfGmNqnPuJiBaxTBg1nk4CNf at mail.gmail.com>	<4C34C6AF.9060709 at gmail.com>	<4C34C8AF.70507 at gmail.com>	<152f839bbd02f83fc03a5318462443d7.squirrel at brunians.org>	<4C34D82D.5070500 at gmail.com>	<4C34DA51.8040901 at gmail.com>	<4C34ED71.2020108 at gmail.com>	<4C34EDED.3070502 at gmail.com>	<4C34EF25.7030109 at gmail.com>	<4C34F4E3.9020109 at gmail.com>	<CE561AAB-21F2-499F-B49A-4F53EA6F441B at liftingfaces.com>	<AANLkTilycxXW-LhpDPTxDpHDWeoeJ2KcSN_epXSqmVsj at mail.gmail.com>	<011001cb1e42$e4e6d900$08cf4a0c@rclackey>	<AANLkTikxcMYPDtgTAAP8s5wzWrIQNf-hJmQvvvYEPNXS at mail.gmail.com>	<4C35580E.2060900 at gmail.com>	<4C35BCCD.5030006 at gmail.com>
	<4C35C501.6040502 at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4C370043.2020408 at gmail.com>

James Wynn wrote (08-07-2010 13:30):
>
>>> James Wynn said: I've made a request of you: Replaced "Rudesind is
>>> Inire" with "Doras is Severian's grandmother" and answer the same
>>> question. The answer is the same in both instances. You've dodged
>>> this challenge repeatedly.
>>
>> On 7/8/2010 6:55 AM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote: ?? You've asked it
>> ONCE, I've reported you to the endless discussions on that at the time
>> it was put forward, and I've explained how it isn't a good analogy.
>
> ??? Here are the following threads you've responded to on this:
>
>>> Me: What's the narrative advantage of Dorcas being Severian's
>>> grandmother?
>>
>> On 7/7/2010 4:18 PM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote: I'm not talking about
>> narrative advantage. I'm talking about speculative advantage. And as a
>> side note I'm against the idea of narrative advantage. I don't see that
>> real life employs it, why should fiction?
>

This is 'I've explained how it isn't a good analogy'.

>>> Me again: Okay. What's the speculative advantage to Dorcas being
>>> Severian's grandmother?
>>
>> On 7/7/2010 6:05 PM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote: That has been
>> discussed to death.
>

This is 'I've reported you to the endless discussions on that at the time it
was put forward'. (This is the ONCE, since your previous question was about 
'narrative advantage'.)

> Additionally, I've continued to pose the question on this thread. You
> didn't take the opportunity to explain how this bit of information is
> different from what Ryan has been toying with.

One key difference is that Dorcas being Severian's grandmother tells us
something about a character we knew nothing about (Dorcas as Severian's
grandmother) and Severian's family tree, i.e. the level of data increases.
Whereas Rudesind being Inire actually decreases the amount of data by
dropping one character.
And again, the identity of Dorcas is all but spelled out. When discussing 
whether or not she was Severian's grandmother, it's more of a debate between 
'she obviously is' and 'it's so obvious maybe it's wrong'.

> But by my count, this is the third time you have directly dodged
> providing a straightforward answer to this question.

I simply don't understand how anything I can say will add to what is in the
archives.

>>> Me: Actually, I have answered you. I've explained that the question
>>> cannot be answered.
>>
>> On 7/8/2010 6:55 AM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote: Well, in the brand of
>> english I studied, 'I'm not getting an answer' in my sentence means 'no
>> one has provided that information'. If you said the information doesn't
>> exist, you still haven't provided it.
>
> I don't know what kind you studied but in the conventional kind I assure
>  you that these statements are not equivalent.

Of course the statements are not generally equivalent. But here they are. 
'Nobody knows', 'nobody can know' aren't answers, they're justifications for 
not answering. They're short for 'I can't answer that because...'.

>>>> "It couldn't work because..." is all but impossible - especially
>>>> when all contrary evidence can be just ignored, as in this
>>>> Rudesind/Inire case - and "Here's something else that fits that
>>>> pattern...." is essentially gratis.
>>>
>>> It's not ignored.
>>
>> Of course it's ignored. 'Ignored' here means 'brushed aside', not
>> 'victim of oversight'.
>
> Perhaps you should provide a glossary.

I don't go out of my way to write for people who don't read for context.
That you can call laziness.

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