Re: Obligation for personal attack? (was flame wars)

From: Hubert Mania (humania@t-online.de)
Date: Sun Jul 20 2003 - 13:18:37 MDT

  • Next message: Lee Corbin: "RE: flame wars"

    > Hubert Mania wrote,
    > > Frankly, I am surprised how many
    > > puritans and preacher's daughters are present on this list
    > > and who are ready to faint if someone uses more substantial
    > > and hearty words without making an affected fuss about it.

    Harvey Newstrom answered

    > Frankly, I am surprised how many liars and hypocrites are present on this
    > list who pretended to agree to follow the list rules when they joined and
    > then later make it clear they have no intention of keeping their promise.

    Obligation, yes, of course. Sometimes things change in the course of time,
    sometimes thinking in extropian heads bends towards the event horizon of a
    psychic black hole, suggesting to commit a genocide. At this event in space
    time all rules break down, even the rules of the extropian list. At these
    points I feel souvereign enough to attack somebody personally with words.
    Anything else would be the behaviour of a hypocrite. I know that I violate
    the rules but I tell you, if any executive board should exclude me from the
    list because of that I would happily go and not bother you anymore.

    Hey, R.B. talked about killing 10^8 people!

    If no one else stops this inhumane thinking, if most of the answers (except
    Damien's)
    even take it serious, overread Robert Bradbury's outrageous statement or
    dismiss it, not because they find it annoying but because of "the
    ineffectiveness of nuking" which must be either a childish thoughtlessness,
    again cold-bloodedly neglecting 10^8 dead people, or seems to suggest that
    under different circumstances these posters would approve of nuking
    countries like Afghanistan. Iraq and North Korea. (Watch the border line to
    the south though. . . ooops, sorry, well a few hundred thousand South
    Koreans are not really worth worrying about, are they? Any way you
    look at it: a horrible example of depravity in seeking allegedly transhuman
    answers for the fetish technological progress.

    By the way, I *did not* send an appropriate ad hominem attack at all. Since
    Friday I wrote four versions of a *real* AH attack, but was smart enough not
    to send them, to spare you, R.B and me a desaster. So it ended up in my
    friendly letter from which you quoted.

    Yes, sometimes it is wiser to spit fire, poison, venom and yell aloud than
    to remain polite.



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