From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu Mar 13 2003 - 22:40:46 MST
Michael writes
> Lee Corbin writes:
> > (And I can think of only two people I know of, for sure, who
> > even appreciate it, or recognize its value at all.)
>
> Feh.
What means this "Feh." ? ;-)
> I think the problem is, you and some other people take everything
> so literally.
I'm not sure what you are getting at. I think that we see
implications in what is being written as well as you do; I
guess you haven't described well what you mean here. (That's
okay! If you've the time, keep trying!)
> Personally, I read pro-war stuff all the time, maybe not
> quite as much as anti-war stuff but still quite a bit.
> The impression I get is that most pro-war types -- at
> least those on TV -- just don't even attempt to understand
> the anti-war p.o.v.
Oh, so are you saying that the anti-war "types" do a better
job of understanding *their* adversaries? If so, to what
psychological difference do you attribute this capability??
> Steve Davies's post seemed to me a well-written summation,
> but it didn't tell me anything I didn't know.
I think that you totally missed my point. My point is that
it's very valuable and extremely healthy to be able to
describe the point of view of one's adversaries in a way
that they'd agree with. This principle is even used in
psychology, as I understand it: in the Rogerian method,
the analyst must be able to state the situation from the
patient's point of view to the utter satisfaction of the
latter.
> I'd wager many extropians (except me, I can't write) could
> have assembled something similar and at least halfway decent.
No, they literally could not. As hard as they would try,
the basic unreasonableness of their adversaries point of
view---or at least what they see as so unreasonable---would
always leak through.
Not only that, but my second point is even more important:
they never would even want to try. Firstly, all too many
of them DO NOT BELIEVE that their adversaries point of view
*can* be expressed completely reasonably. Secondly, even
if they could, they would see utterly no value in doing so.
> I can't write that well, and if I tried, I'd make it into a fantasy
> scenario where Iraq becomes a big airstrip for pre-bombing the rest of
> the middle east.
Ha! Totally typical. You are presenting a left-wing propaganda
scenario whose only point is to make the right-wingers look mad.
You have proven that you have no concept of what the words "unbiased"
or "objective" mean, nor how the concepts could be applied to writing.
Here, for your edification, is the principle. A piece of writing
is *unbiased* when you cannot determine the political orientation
of the writer.
> I'd talk about pre-bombing (SAM sites, radars, stuff
> like that) even friendly countries and explain it as just preparatory
> bombing in case they can't stop their internal terrorist factories
> forcing us to do some bombing for real. I'd talk about how I think daily
> bombing should be part of any sanctions package. And I'd conclude with
> saying that I don't think we've given daily bombing enough time to work.
Doubtless a fine piece of satire or parody, and there is
nothing wrong with that! ;-)
But it completely misses the idea of this thread.
Lee
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