pvp@ihuxl.UUCP (Philip Polli) (02/23/84)
>If you don't think that we are being forced to pay taxes, then >you must believe that a person's wages (fruits of labor) are not >the property of that person, but are completely controlled by >the state. The USA has a free market economy in which >taxes are collected forcibly. If you don't think that people >should be free to own property without being taxed for it, then >you deny a basic component of freedom. I thank God that you weren't >around to help write the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, >and Bill of Rights. This response causes me to think about a problem we've been having in net.politics discussions on various topics lately. Namely, how do you respond to an article which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever? If you read the above statements, you are forced to realize that the author does not understand how the society he lives in operates, the reasons why it operates that way, and is completely ignorant of its history. One type of response is to write a fairly lengthy article pointing out all the errors in the article, and giving references and quotations to refute it. This requires a fairly heavy investment of time and energy on the part of the responder. Most people who work for a living have better things to do than to explain what the Constitution says to somebody who has obviously never read it. (Don't they require an American Constitution test in high school anymore?) Even when someone takes the time and effort to prepare a good response, it appears to have no effect at all. The nonsense spewer simply goes on to another topic, spreading misinformation and ignorance liberally around. Since it's much easier to make up information at a terminal than to go out and learn the facts, the nonsense spewer is usually two topics and five articles ahead of the responses. A second type of response is to point out that the author is an ignorant idiot. This saves the responder the time and effort required to educate the idiot, which is supposed to be the function of the school system, anyway. Unfortunately, the idiot then assumes that he's right, and the responders are simply calling him names because they can't come up with any counter arguments. Also, your mailbox gets filled up with letters from people who consider it terribly impolite to call somebody an idiot. A third alternative is to simply ignore the article. This seems to be tantamount to simply abandoning netnews to the idiots, though. Now that all these articles get sent to other countries, do we want to let these wild assertions pass unchallenged? What image are we presenting to the rest of the world? That our citizens are all as stupid as our president? So I guess I have a couple of questions for the net: 1) I've noticed that a significant fraction of the idiot articles seem to come through uiucdcs. Is this just a reflection on that school (?the University of Illinois?) or is the problem more widespread? Does it have anything to do with the funding level of Illinois universities? Are these real people or is there just a computer program down there generating these articles? (A failed AI experiment perhaps?) 2) How should the rest of us respond to these articles? Is there an alternative to the ones I outlined above? Should we just write filters to discard articles from authors who are clearly off their rockers? Responses any way you like to: Phil Polli {ihnp4!}ihuxl!pvp
bitmap@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA (03/09/84)
From the pen of Phil Polli: >This response causes me to think about a problem we've been having >in net.politics discussions on various topics lately. Namely, how >do you respond to an article which makes absolutely no sense >whatsover? In my opinion, the article to which you were referring has more validity than many of the articles of yours. While some of the phrases of that article were (in my opinion) exaggerations, the meaning seemed clear enough to me (exaggerations are not new to net.politics). If you really felt that the article was a non sequiter (sp?), you should reexamine it and try to see what the author was trying to say. If, on the other hand, you disagree with the article, please say so without being so wordy. >Should we just write filters to discard articles from authors who >are clearly off their rockers? Does this mean that you are interested only in authors who agree with you/ with whom you can agree? >Are these [uiucdcs] real people or is there just a computer >program down there generating these articles? (A failed AI >experiment perhaps?) Statements such as these give the impression of close-mindedness. They serve little purpose except to generate reciprocal insults and (perhaps) to give the author the feeling that he's being "witty". Do you really feel that taxes are not at all coercive? Will you consider the question, or will you just file it under "filtrate"? Sam Hall, UCB ucbvax!bitmap@ucbtopaz