Glen -
Is this your version of the Serenity Prayer? If so, it is a nicely
novel one!
I feel *measureably* (if only fractionally) smarter when I manage to
(mostly) follow many of the deeply thoughtful discussions here...
your's and Marcus' most most immediately. I could easily list a dozen
others and am tempted to suggest "you know who you are", but in fact
suspect some of the more valuable contributors to have their own
(false?) modesty. Nick, you know who you are.
I do like the stylization of upper case initiated variables similar to
Marcus PROLOG reference, though if I understand him correctly I use it
differently. Initial Upper Caps means to me that the word is in a
special lexicon... using the example of evil vs Evil... "evil" IS in the
standard dictionary(ies) of common discourse, but "Evil" might be one of
many things depending on the reserved lexicon of the speaker... Social
Conservatives would place LGBT and Abortion Rights and Gun Control on
their list of "Evil" while Social Progressives would place restricting
"Personal Choice" and Racial or Gender or Gender Identity discrimination
on their "Evil" list for example. I'm not sure what followers of
Cthuhlu use the term "Evil" for, it seems to be deliberately obscured or
skewed?
- Steve
On 5/5/17 2:05 PM, gepr wrote:
And as always I'm tremendously grateful for all my friends, who are
immeasurably smarter than me, for their tolerance of my nonsensical attempts to
navigate reality.
On May 5, 2017 12:02:15 PM PDT, Marcus Daniels <mar...@snoutfarm.com> wrote:
Glen writes:
< If a listener abstracts their self, they are just as evil as a
speaker abstracting their self. >
Steve writes:
< Firstly, my own throwdown of "rhetoric" was intended to be very
specific. I believe that you both took it to be a bit more broad than
intended. I specifically meant rhetoric as "language intended to
persuade". I hold this specifically distinct from "language intended
to inform" and "language used to think or contemplate". Unfortunately
I discovered that in fact the formal definition of rhetoric includes
"to inform" as well as "to persuade" >
In PROLOG, free variables are upper case, meaning that the reader
should expect some effort in establishing their values. If Glen were
forced to write down his arguments and propositions in PROLOG he'd have
to say "Evil" and not "evil" because the latter would be something
constrained by a dictionary. I tend to use single quotes to highlight
terms where I am encouraging the reader to find a grounding or tolerate
my loose or arbitrary set of constraints in the definition.
Sure, Glen's crypto-obsfucation is a sort of rhetoric. He forces you
to both consume and actively doubt every single one of his words.
Advertisements have a similar effect over time. I can appreciate Flo
and the Gecko, but then I don't purchase Progressive or Geico insurance
either. I become immune to many of their tricks! For many years
I've believed the purpose of this is to make arguments robust to
perturbation. You can reject all the parts of his argument but still
be forced to accept the conclusion. :-)
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