weemba@brahms (Matthew P Wiener) (11/20/86)
Summary: Expires: Sender: Distribution: Keywords: I am directing followups to news.misc only. news.admin, Stevan, is for discussion of day to day running the software sort of stuff, not flames about the net itself. And posting your article twice, instead of cross posting, makes it hard to track down and respond to. In article <225@mind.UUCP> harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad) writes: >>[a dozen or so rude comments deleted] >I find it astonishing that such an obviously disturbed individual has >access to an account at brahms.berkeley.EDU, Really? Ohmygosh, how did that happen? I guess that modem in People's Park wasn't such a good idea after all. > let alone the news net. You are a complete net.neophyte. I recommend you try e-mail first to the person involved. I have absolutely no idea what was going through Michael's mind at the time, and his "shit-for-brains" seemed entirely uncalled for, but the rest of his comments seemed fairly routine fare. Considering that Michael made reference to net.debate from THREE YEARS back, it's clear that something is going on that you don't know about. For all you know the person involved called Michael incredibly rude things back then, and he's just returning the favor. I wouldn't know. Read a little more carefully before calling someone "obviously disturbed." At least if you plan to have your complaint considered seriously. Actually, if I had my druthers, I'd ban people like you for crossposting to 10 groups without putting in a followup. Instead I sent you e-mail asking you not to do so. I never got a response, but then I've never seen you do it again. Posting to inappropriate groups in the first place, like news.admin, isn't too net.friendly an idea either. >If the net is to evolve into the respectable forum many of us hope it >will become, Hahahaha. This isn't talk.bizarre. > A copy of this >will be sent to the system administrator at berkeley.EDU. I think such e-mail, especially from neophytes, is considered boring. > I hope >other net news users will also bring some collective pressure to bear >on this sort of behavior. Well, this net news user is going to call Michael a bad boy the next time he sees him. (While we are still in sci.lang, does anyone care to tell me how to phrase such third person sentences smoothly and correctly? Be sure to fix the followup.) ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720 Without NNTP, the brahms gang itself would be impossible. --Erik E Fair
harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad) (12/06/86)
I would like to point out, to those who are genuinely concerned about
it, that freedom of speech is not at issue in the current discussion
about ad hominem abuse on the Net. The issue is much simpler. It
concerns the difference between saying (1) "You're a liar" (which is
ritually intoned frequently by certain posters) and "I believe you are
mistaken," and that between "that's a pile of [suitably abusive
epithet]" and "I'm afraid I disagree" or "I believe there is evidence
that that is incorrect." The issue is whether the tail ends of the
gaussian are to be allowed to turn the Net into a Global graffiti
board, or whether the Net's extraordinary intellectual communicative
potential will be better realized with some humane, commonsense
constraints. The same judgments would have had to be made in
Guttenberg's time, mutatis mutandis.
All this righteous indignation on behalf of the "freedom" to be
personally abusive!
--
Stevan Harnad (609) - 921 7771
{allegra, bellcore, seismo, rutgers, packard} !princeton!mind!harnad
harnad%mind@princeton.csnet gsmith@brahms (Gene Ward Smith) (12/07/86)
In article <408@mind.UUCP> harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad) writes: >I would like to point out, to those who are genuinely concerned about >it, that freedom of speech is not at issue in the current discussion >about ad hominem abuse on the Net. >The issue is whether the tail ends of the >gaussian are to be allowed to turn the Net into a Global graffiti >board... There is a contradiction inherent in saying both "freedom of speech is not an issue" and "are to be allowed". Not allowing something is by defin- ition coercive and by definition not freedom. Sometimes we want to limit freedom for reasons which may be good. But be honest and admit that too much freedom of speech is precisely what you wish to limit. Incidently, ad hominem arguments are arguments which attempt to show a position wrong by stating or implying that the one arguing for it is not to be trusted. This is often a fallacy; and a rather mild example of ad hominem is your implication that some of the persons arguing for free speech really do not care about it, and so (one might infer) their argu- ments should be discounted. An insult is not strictly speaking an ad hominem in the same sense; as a person with an interest in language you would do well to chose your own words more carefully. >The same judgments would have had to be made in Guttenberg's time, mutatis >mutandis. One of the first results of Gutenberg's invention was the proliferation of extremely rude printed abuse. >All this righteous indignation on behalf of the "freedom" to be >personally abusive! I was at a loss as to how to reply, but Matthew recalled an apposite comment of Sartre's concerning freedom and abuse: Now we can see the meaning of the sadist's demand: grace reveals freedom as a property of the Other-as-object and refers obscurely--just as do the contradictions in the sensible world in the case of Platonic recollections--to a transcendent Beyond of which we preserve only a confused memory and which we can reach only by a radical modification of our being; that is, by resolutely assuming our being-for-others. Jean-Paul Sartre: "Being and Nothingness" ucbvax!brahms!gsmith Gene Ward Smith/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720 "What is algebra exactly? Is it those three-cornered things?"J.M. Barrie