Klarinet Archive - Posting 000996.txt from 1998/12

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Opinions and Arguments
Date: Sat, 26 Dec 1998 19:01:28 -0500

On Sat, 26 Dec 1998 12:48:25 -0800, dcorbitt@-----.net said:

[snip]

> You seem to NEVER let things go.....

That's because I think this thing is important in principle, Donna.
It's not really to do with any particular controversy, it's to do with
the way in which discussions begin, develop and end. It happens all
over the internet.

> YOU enjoy listening to yourself..... How could you ever measure up to
> yourself?

Well, I don't particularly enjoy listening to myself. And I expected to
get attacked for posting what I did -- but I was being attacked anyway,
so I thought I might as well say what I thought was important, and be
attacked for something worth defending.

As for measuring up to myself, I'd rather put it that it's impossible to
measure up to not making mistakes; but it is possible to measure up to
being willing to admit that you're wrong when someone demonstrates that
you've made a mistake. While I don't find that easy (like most people,
I would say), I do do my best.

I think the situation with disagreement here is rather too like
hand-to-hand combat, with spectators. We need to be a community of
enquiry more, and have people who see errors of reading and reasoning
prepared to put their 10p in, so that the *argument* gets somewhere. To
complain that the arguments don't get anywhere without engaging with
them in detail isn't good enough, I submit.

Then the admittedly unattractive last resort of mockery might never ever
get to be used.

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE GMN family artist: www.gmn.com
tel/fax 01865 553339

"Believing Truth is staring at the sun
Which but destroys the power that could perceive."

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