[PD] Carpet sweeping (was Re: Any relation between pidip and Gem??)

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Mon, 9 Jul 2007, Chris McCormick wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 09, 2007 at 06:02:10PM -0400, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
>> Ignoring each other also comes from the impression of talking past each
>> other. Compared to hostility, it's more mature, polite, civilised and
>> insidious.
> Even better than ignoring,

It sounds like I mean that ignoring is better than arguing, but that's not 
what i mean. (what does "insidious" mean to you?)

> it is possible to use non-provocatory language and to purposely disarm 
> your own writing by eliminating emotionally charged content, and still 
> communicate your point clearly.

OTOH the content is then still about controversial ideas and it's still 
about promoting some people's ideas at the expense of some other people's 
other ideas. This happens regardless of the amount of spin-doctoring 
performed to dull it.

> Then again, maybe it's fun for some people to be argumentative, and 
> their motives are something other than making better software and 
> helping others.

No matter how fun it can be, I don't think anyone here is mostly arguing 
for the fun of arguing. E.g. for me, there has to be opportunity for some 
kind of learning that feeds back into thought processes that are 
eventually productive. Ok, I also write dumb mails sometimes; but we might 
not agree on which ones are. Sometimes, valid questions look essentially 
like trolling; but some mindframe's trollish questions is some other 
mindframe's theoretical underpinnings.

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| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801, Montréal QC Canada