james_davis_nicoll | Information is power

Information is power

As a token of appreciation for me doing the legowrk while the exgf recovers, she got me a spiffy new drink container (of a brand recommended here but which I forget just now). It's about 1000 ml and has provided me with an interesting bit of information: every time I pick it up to have a drink, I consume 4 ounces. This would explain why I find most glasses annoyingly puny.

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You may want to try to avoid using phrases like "inhuman" when describing people in the future. For some reason, that appears to go over poorly.

No. I don't use LJ all that often, and wasn't aware I could sign my name to my post.

See, here we have another example of a huge cultural divide: why on Earth would you expect that you wouldn't be able/allowed to sign your name? What forums, online and off, don't allow people to take credit for their work?

1. A nit: 'inhuman' is a word, not a phrase. This is a fair description of something that is as frenetic, and yet detached, as your blog. To wit, even the manner in which you've taken offense is rather cold and detached!

2. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the LJ comment screen presented to non-LJ users. It consists of 3 elements: a "From" element consisting of 3 *radio-buttons*, a subject line, and a message body. There is nowhere to type an author name. The button labels are Anonymous, OpenID, and LiveJournal user. AFAIK I don't have an OpenID, I am certainly not an LJ user, which leaves only Anonymous.

There is no 'cultural divide' except the one invented in your febril imagination.

Why do you assume I took offense?

Regarding names, when I am in blogland (where I do not have an account) and the set-up does not assign me a name and I notice, I sign my replies thusly

[text text text]

James Nicoll

which I find to be universally useful.

Why do you assume I took offense?

Good question. Perhaps you really were just explaining the behavior of others without the implicit reference to your own feelings. Actually, I'd believe that of you more than most.

[text text text]

James Nicoll

Yes. But I've gotten in the habit of NOT doing that in any other e-context. It still strikes me that the LJ interface is so non-intuitive as to be broken.

I may have a snappier and potentially more useful (and interesting) way to phrase my dilemma: it's as if, in the quest to improve the signal to noise ratio of the internet, you've so single-mindedly pursued Signal that you've inadvertantly created Noise. Your ideas and thoughts are so numerous, and in many cases fascinating, but they all share the same quality, that you don't seem *invested* in them. So a stream of fascinating thought becomes an endless trail of intellectual detritus. It is as if you are watching your own mind for thoughts, and then posting these second-order observations as coldly and clinically as a diagnostic MD. (There's probably a good SFnal story that revolves around the inadvertant transmutation of Signal into Noise.)

You mentioned earlier something about "intellectual pursuits being an end unto themselves". Does this describe you? What part then does the community play in those pursuits? What part does morality play in those pursuits? You may believe, at some level, that intellectual pursuits are ends-unto-themselves. But is that really what you believe? Isn't there a larger social and moral context in which any such activity must fit within? Your interest in social and political commentary tell me that you understand this well. Or perhaps I have misunderstood and like one of Iain Banks' Ships playing in "Happy Fun Space" you are merely not forgetting "where your off switch is".

I have many goals but neither explaining them or the thought processes that led me to embrace them seem to be among them. I will note that you seem to use words like "cold" and "clinically" in a negative sense: that says a lot about you. It's not my job to organize or present myself in such a way as to keep you happy, whoever you are. I am afraid that this is something that you will have to come to grips with on your own.

Speaking of existing in a context, you might want to consider the implications of the way people reacted to your comments before engaging in future public analyses of other people.

I had hoped to find others, perhaps even yourself, who had noticed this aspect of your work, and would be happy to discuss it openly. Instead I have recieved personal attacks and dismissal. So be it. I will walk away saddened and disappointed by someone who I thought had enough egolessness and humor to allow for a frank and open discussion of something a reader found distasteful about their blog. I was thinking that maybe you and your community would be self-aware enough to not have a knee-jerk reaction.

I was wrong. Good-bye.

I am desolated that discovering that my various writings do not have as their purpose satisfying some anonymous person's criteria and that the people here are not monkeys to dance for your entertainment has driven you away. May you enjoy more success in future critical endeavours.

You know, it's as if you are under the delusion that prefacing insulting verbiage with "it's as if" prevents it from being insulting.

Or, alternately, it's as if you don't think that "you've created Noise", "you don't seem invested in what you write", "you've produced an endless trail of intellectual detritus", "your write as coldly and clinically as a diagnostic MD", and the like are insults. Which is, indeed, a deeply strage and alien treatment of the language.

It is as if you are watching your own mind for thoughts, and then posting these second-order observations as coldly and clinically as a diagnostic MD.

http://www.bartleby.com/66/64/16064.html

I prefer: http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf

There is no 'cultural divide' except the one invented in your febril imagination.

All right. So you've called James' blog unpleasant, and referred to the man himself, directly and by speculation, as solipsistic (twice), cold, inhuman, unenlightened, thoughtless and egoistic, then questioned the character of anyone who has pointed out that by most reckonings those are fightin' words. I cannot concieve of how someone with such a mastery of that classic internet argument tactic, the personal attack couched in conciliatory language and followed by further attack on anyone who calls out the original attack, manages to be so ignorant of the ways of such a feature of the online landscape as prominent as LiveJournal, but okay, fine, I'll buy it for the sake of argument. This sentence I have quoted here, however, the one in which you imply James is a liar by suggesting that he is delusional, is explicitly an insult. Do we get to find your conduct distasteful now, or are you going to try to squirm out of accountability for this one too?

the ways of such a feature of the online landscape as prominent as LiveJournal

Or something to that general effect, but a little less word-salady.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Information is power

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