From: Eugen Leitl (eugen@leitl.org)
Date: Fri Jan 03 2003 - 11:17:40 MST
On Fri, 3 Jan 2003, Lee Corbin wrote:
> The ultimate insult; by the way, why tell people if
> you don't read their stuff? What possible use is it
> except as a put down?
Yes. It's a way to provide social feedback in a medium completely lacking
nonverbal cues.
> But it was not about the *content* that you commented
> upon. It was upon his *suitability* to be on such an
> elite list [giggle]. You have no idea how this kind
Yeah, we rock so hard I have gravel in my pockets.
> of attitude strikes me, but then maybe that's just
> because I was raised in the western U.S., am quite
> the provincial, and react badly to elitism or
> arrogance.
Elitism has its uses, but this is not one of them. I think this list has a
cloud of common values loosely termed 'extropy'. The members occupy
several clusters distributed about these multiple axis. I must admit I
don't like the (very small) cluster at the edge yonder which Ron is
belonging to.
> I think that he cleared that up for you. But, as
I have to go read his folder.
> you know, it takes all kinds. If I have learned
> anything, it's that there is no accounting for taste.
Yes.
> > He might be not with Sauron, but he's certainly
> > with Isengard.
>
> Oh, right.
I might have misclassified him, it's easy enough to tell. I'll just go
through his folder. If I did, I owe him an apology for being such a
jackass.
> > He isn't naive. He's just with the enemy.
>
> Yes, and now finally I know for sure why you were
> on my case last summer---I hadn't yet pegged you
> ideologically. I too am with the enemy, a sort
Do you think I was on your case (was I?) because of ideology?
> of person who holds a world view not politically
> correct by your lights. You have no idea how
> narrow and polarized that attitude strikes me.
I have to admit I'm not all-inclusive. There are some 6 billions humans on
this planet. Not only do I not share every one's of these gigapeople's
values, it's in fact probably less than 10%. It could be as low as 1%,
though I haven't seen any statistics about shared values integrated over
the planet's population.
You can call it elitist, narrow, or polarized, but I'm not agreeing that
intelligent design is better than darwinism as far as kid education is
concerned, that women must be veiled in presence of strangers, that
locking up, mutilating or killing people for minor offences is okay, that
you must yield upon caesar what caesar's is, that some things are just not
meant for humanity to know, and about ten pages more of similiar. In fact
your list of disagreements would be at least as long, and even have most
of the same items on it as mine.
> Ah, there you've got it. We all wear selective blinders
> in alignment with our ideological filters. To me, who
> especially during the last year and a half has been
> considering the U.S. more or less (less actually) at
> war, these reports struck me as mostly whining from
I must admit I've missed the nuking and the megadeaths. Apart from such
nice formalities as a declaration of war, what is the threshold for
classifying a conflict a 'war'? Isn't terrorism driven by cultural
conflict the far more appropriate moniker here? I refuse to discuss this
at the local politics level. We here need to take the global view, and the
long term view. The very longest, in fact. Let newspapers and advocacy
forums handle the daily politics.
> my usual ideological adversaries (I do not refer to
> them as "the enemy"). A conservative American administration
The label doesn't matter. Adversaries, enemy, blue, 0x9345f. Their agenda
is not yours, and it can't be resolved by 'let's just agree to disagree',
that's all what it matters. We couple on the physical layer, so we can't
just go into orthogonal realities and live happily ever after perfectly
noninteracting.
> was cracking down on foreign terrorists and not observing
> the usual niceties. As I say, I profited greatly from
If this was all just about cracking down on foreign terrorists we wouldn't
be having this conversation.
> Harvey's and Ron's exchange, because it helped explain to
> me more aspects of the fine line, and provoked thought
> about what really is appropriate in these times.
>
> I have further theories involving polarization (that, at
> least to me are pretty obvious) and the way that leftists
> will tend to focus on threats from the right and vice-versa,
It's a multidimensional distribution. The bipolar classification axis was
always so simplistic. My position is e.g. completely unrepresented in the
political krautscape.
> each believing, with some justification, that their opposite
> numbers are watching the other front. But perhaps more
> about that at some other time. Most people on this list
> don't even admit that they have their own biases, but,
> (I guess) believe that they possess by accident of nature
> the acme of objective and rational thought process.
Of course I have my biases, and I stand by them. I don't want my mind so
open my brain splatters at my feet, thankyouverymuch.
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