Mirror Image Freedom

Gerry Quinn · 16 Dec 2010, 17:33 · from 2010-December.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: gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2010 17:33:02 -0000
Subject: (urth) Mirror Image Freedom
References: <SNT123-W16AEA19E6C8601F59810B8CF140 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <102861AECF4D4B3BA81B2C14ADEA796C@jill>

From: "Lee Berman" <severiansola at hotmail.com>
>
>>Gerry Quinn- That must be the explanation.  This "alpha male snarling" 
>>(i.e. expressions
>>of doubt regarding your theories) couldn't possibly be simply an 
>>indication that some people
>>find your ideas unconvincing, now, could it?
>
> Gerry I don't find your posts the best example of alpha dog snarling 
> around here in the past 6
> years but if the shoe fits..
>
> You have strongly asserted that all ideas must be subjected to rigorous 
> testing and evaluation.

Yes.

> And you have presented yourself as the perfect testor and evaluator, a 
> dispassionate, ethereal
> dispenser of objective, rational, logical evaluation.

When have I ever presented myself as such?  I have indicated that it is 
something we should aspire to; I have never stated or implied that I embody 
it.

> One who is able to correctly assess the
> likelihood, the mathematical probability of correctness of all ideas 
> presented here.

I would like to think that my assessments are good, but I make no special 
claim to success.  In particular, I make no special claim to authority in 
this regard.  My arguments in favour of are against a particular idea or 
theory should stand on their own merits, just like yours or anyone else's.

> I myself, do not believe that ideas and the testing of ideas can be 
> somehow divorced from
> the humanity of the thinker and evaluator. Surely if ideas must be 
> rigorously tested, so must the
> evaluator be tested, yes?

It rather depends on the nature of the evaluation.  If A presents a theory 
and B stamps it 'REJECTED' without explanation, we must certainly take into 
account or views of B if we are paying heed to the rejection.  But if B lays 
out a strong and logical case for rejection, B's character and motives of 
less import.  Indeed, we may suspect that A's protests in this regard may 
reflect more on A than on B.

> You have undergone an examination recently. I am pleased to report you 
> seem fully human to me. Nothing
> to be ashamed of there IMHO. You have been proven to not be a computer 
> program. You are driven by factors
> other than pure dispassionate intellect. But perhaps the time has come to 
> stop woofin'.
>
> or in other words...
>
> You may not always be right but I ain't always wrong ;- ).

I will continue to express my views regarding theories you or others may 
present here, just as I hope others will express their views regarding mine. 
In all cases I would expect such views and theories to be supported or 
challenged by evidence (principally textual) rather than by special pleading 
and innuendo.

- Gerry Quinn

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net