Monkey business

aaron · 09 Jul 2010, 23:34 · 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: aaronsingleton at gmail.com (aaron)
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2010 19:34:06 -0400
Subject: (urth) Monkey business
In-Reply-To: <4C37900C.30707 at gmail.com>
References: <SNT123-W1577B77D5F704FE215BA4BCFB50 at phx.gbl>
	<32E5717B-54D0-4BD7-980C-0EB0E5729CAB at liftingfaces.com>
	<4C375DFE.5020805 at gmail.com> <4C37639D.40302 at gmail.com>
	<4C3769E5.7060007 at gmail.com> <4C377827.9040507 at gmail.com>
	<4C3779EB.1070903 at gmail.com> <4C3780A4.90501 at gmail.com>
	<4C37900C.30707 at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <AANLkTikWKDDVPaat50PicZFjfQjn1uCrZ24voG8ll68j at mail.gmail.com>

This mutually masturbatory argument is fun and all, but I think perhaps
private emails would be even more fun for those of us scrolling through this
nonsense..

On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 5:09 PM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>  On 7/9/2010 12:12 PM, Ryan Dunn wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Could the elderly person in Casdoe's house be an aquastor?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> James Wynn wrote (09-07-2010 18:35):
>>>>>>> Sure. But anyone...probably any living thing...could be an
>>>>>>> aquastor. Why
>>>>>>> would being an aquastor help things along?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 7/9/2010 12:59 PM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote:
>>>>>> Hey!
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> James Wynn wrote (09-07-2010 19:26):
>>>>> Bait the hook, then reel them in. You still haven't delineated the
>>>>> relevant differences between "Inire is Rudesind" and "Dorcas is
>>>>> Severian's grandmother".
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 7/9/2010 2:27 PM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote:
>>>> It's not my fault if you can't read.
>>>>
>>>
>>> James Wynn wrote (09-07-2010 20:35):
>>> Read what? Still no citation? Tsk tsk.
>>> Five dodges now.
>>>
>>
>> On 7/9/2010 3:03 PM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote:
>> Citation of what, James? I've said which two things are wrong with your
>> question and given a further explanation. Since your attention span seems
>> not be be having the best of days, I'll repeat them, which is something I
>> abhor.
>>
>> 1. Why your first question made no sense at all:
>> 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?
>>
>
> No. This does not explain why the first question made no sense or was
> beside the point. It only shows that you preferred another term. You could
> have opted to answer the question in those terms instead. You chose not to.
> Which is why I followed up your response by rephrasing the same question.
> Only a fool would think what you wrote here explains how the following is
> true:
>
> -----"Is Dorcas Severian's grandmother" = useful question
> ------(i.e. advantageous speculation)
>
> -----"Is Rudesind Inire in disguise?" = pointless question
> ------(i.e. unadvantageous speculation)
>
> If you are saying "Well, one is true and we don't know if the other is
> true" then your logic is entirely circular. The purpose of speculation in
> this instance to attempt to ascertain whether something is true. I hate to
> use the word "obvious" but....
>
>
>  On 7/9/2010 3:03 PM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote:
>> 2. Once you had corrected it, the information you ask for is in the
>> archives and I have better things to do than reenact the whole discussion:
>> On 7/7/2010 6:05 PM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote: That has been
>> discussed to death.
>>
>
> Note that less than 1.5 hours had passed between your last post and this
> one. Do you really think that merely declaring your preference for
> 'speculative advantage' over 'narrative advantage' has Drained the Well on
> this question? Really? Really???? I laughed when you posted this, but my
> sense of humor is wearing thin.
>
> Secondly, all  I've done here is rephrase the question in terms you say you
> prefer. In this instance, I gave you another chance at showing how the
> question of Sev's lineage is superior to questions of the identity of other
> characters. But you didn't take it. For some reason, you though you had
> *proven* something at this point. I don't understand why.
>
>
>  On 7/9/2010 3:03 PM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote:
>> 3. If you're really interested to know what's different instead of simply
>> trying to sound clever, you can start with this:
>> On 7/9/2010 5:56 AM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote: 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.
>>
>
> So today, you attempt to prove you case. Sort of.
>
> First of all, you say "one key difference" which implies you have more to
> say. If true that would have justified the weakness of your argument here.
> That is, I *would* have called it "weak" initially. Since this is the extent
> of the "speculative advantage" that you see, it is absolutely laughable. The
> understanding (if determined to be true) that a maintenance man that
> Severian repeatedly encounters is actually an important character in the
> history of Urth whose actions take place mostly off-stage...you say all that
> does is "decreases the amount of data by dropping one character". Am I
> supposed to take this seriously??
>
>
>  On 7/9/2010 3:03 PM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote:
>> 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'.
>>
>
> Oh! So your logic IS circular. Here's another way of saying "All but
> spelled out": "NOT spelled out".
> It's not as though you only need to read the end of Citadel to understand
> Severian's paternal lineage. It's more subtle than that. The simian
> references are at least as spelled out, but their weight inexplicably passes
> right over your head.
>
>
>  On 7/9/2010 3:03 PM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote:
>> It would be quite nice if you'd keep track of what people say and didn't
>> mangle the quotation system. It's not hard, you know. On the top of every
>> quotation, there is a line saying who said what when. Then the text is
>> indented by a greater-then sign. This can be nested. If people don't mess
>> with it, as you do by trimming, then it's easy to follow the conversation.
>> Plus, if you actually take the time to read what the other person says, you
>> won't have to keep asking when did they say what.
>>
>
> If you have an instance in which I have misrepresented what you have said,
> say so. Otherwise, kiss off.
>
>  On 7/9/2010 3:03 PM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote:
>> You want me to replay the discussions from the archives? How stupid would
>> I have to be to do your bidding? You don't get any rhetorical edge by making
>> preposterous challenges.
>>
>>  James Wynn wrote (09-07-2010 19:26):
>>>>> So this gives me a chance to show the value of
>>>>> wild speculation.
>>>>> There's no reason to get Talmudic on the difference between your
>>>>> proposed standard and my question. I am only asking "How does viewing
>>>>> the old man as an aquastor resolve the apparent connection between him
>>>>> and Rudesind?" Also, "How does the old man being an aquastor resolve
>>>>> the
>>>>> issue posed by Mr Berman that the old man might be female?"
>>>>> What I am not asking is "What difference would it make if the old man
>>>>> and Rudesind were connected?" or "If the old man is an aquastor, then
>>>>> what?" Because in these instances the question is the answer: "The old
>>>>> man and Rudesind might be connected" and "The old man might be an
>>>>> aquastor".
>>>>>
>>>> On 7/9/2010 2:27 PM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote:
>>>> If X then X?
>>>>
>>>
>>> James Wynn wrote (09-07-2010 20:35):
>>> Irrelevant question in this case. No speculated advantage. See what I
>>> did above? I used specific instances and showed how they were different.
>>> Try that.
>>>
>>
>> On 7/9/2010 3:03 PM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques wrote:
>> You showed no such thing.
>>
>
> Now I understand. You're an idiot.
>
>
> u+16b9
>
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>



-- 
Aaron Singleton
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20100709/7e2bd1bc/attachment-0001.htm>
An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net