Re: Theodore Adorno, a prophet of data systems design

From: Edward G. Nilges (spinoza1111_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 01/06/04 

Date: 6 Jan 2004 12:23:05 -0800

Richard Heathfield <invalid@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message news:<3ffa98a2@news2.power.net.uk>...
> Edward G. Nilges wrote:
>
> > Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> > news:<bt8lh0$foo$3@sparta.btinternet.com>...
> >> dbtid wrote:
> >>
> >> >> ... and because you have been shown wrong before, you are a troll.
> >> >
> >> > Then, since you have been shown wrong before, this means you're a
> >> > troll, too, right?
> >>
> >> He's not good at "because".
> >>
> >> I didn't reply to that bit because I didn't even see it. It was in a
> >> large block of off-topic text that I snipped after the merest glance. But
> >> had I done so, I would have pointed out that whatever vestiges of
> >> deductive ability he might have once had are fading fast.
> >
> > "They hit out at speculation and in it kill common sense."
>
> There's no common sense involved in your "logic". To make it plain, here is
> your attempted logic, rewritten to make the "logical" structure clearer:
>
> "You have been shown wrong before, and THEREFORE you are a troll."
>
> dbtid's point is that, if this reasoning is correct, then /you/ (who have
> indeed been shown wrong before) must be a troll too. In fact, there isn't a
> contributor to this newsgroup, or possibly a human being alive anywhere in
> the world, to whom it doesn't apply, because we /all/ make mistakes. So
> either everyone in the world is a troll (in which case the word loses its
> force), or your reasoning is wrong. Since it is evident from people's usage
> of the term on Usenet that they do not intend "you are a troll" to mean the
> same thing as "you have been shown wrong before", we may safely conclude
> that your reasoning is screwed.

Of course, you have snipped the context. The context is that you have
been repeatedly shown wrong on one issue and this is the reading of
the newsgroup charter, and therefore you are a troll.

You make a common mistake of the autodidact and that's content free
logic.

>
>
> > This is pretty obvious if Adorno included logic in common sense.
> > Because
>
> Please look this word up in your dictionary. Thank you.
>
>
> > you actually say, Richard, that you snipped the "off topic"
> > "after the merest glance", and you have said before that you have done
> > this, before.
>
> Experience is indeed a wonderful teacher. I've found that it's generally
> possible to skim through your stuff quite quickly in a search for topical
> material. Sometimes I might overlook a topical point or two amongst the
> hundreds of lines of verbiage; we're only human, after all. But on the
> whole, I think my snips are sensible and reasonable.
>
You have said repeatedly that you don't skim or read, and now you are
backing down because you know that you've done something very
seriously wrong. And you haven't followed up on the Princeton issue
because I have clarified the situation completely, and your behavior
in that subthread exposes you as a character assassin.
 
> > But what this means, literally, is that you are making pronouncements,
> > that have strongly influence lunatics like Randy Howard, which you
> > have no right whatsoever to make.
>
> I have every right to offer my opinion on what is topical on this newsgroup.

Under international legal standards which control this right isn't
absolute and it does not cover "replying" to posts you skim or skip
without understanding. You have fully failed to exhibit comprehension
of several themes in that which you've snipped notably the fact that
speed and understandability and memory efficiency and time efficiency
are inversely correlated.

You have NO right to repeatedly call me a liar nor throw into question
the facts I've volunteered about my background.

> Randy Howard is not a lunatic. To describe him as such is incorrect. But
> have no fear - he's not one of these immature fools who would start, or
> even threaten to start, a lawsuit over such a silly thing.
>
> > Let me spell it out for you, mate.
>
> Factual error: you are not my mate.
>
> > You snip without reading passages which you then irresponsibly
> > describe to third parties AS IF YOU HAD READ THEM.
>
> Don't be silly. If someone posted the contents of the New York phone
> directory here, I could skim it (VERY briefly), snip it, and opine that
> it's off-topic here. I don't have to read every single digit and every
> single name to determine whether, in my opinion, the information is
> relevant to this newsgroup. In fact, many of your articles share several
> characteristics with the New York phone directory. For example, they are
> long, turgid, and off-topic. I can only hope that the NY phone directory is
> rather more accurate, though.

This analogy is ridiculous. You are a narrow autodidact and as such
you would have no right to make this meta-judgement even if you'd read
and not "skimmed" (which is a change to your initial story that you
did not read at all.)

You are not qualified outside the C language nor are you qualified to
define the subject matter of this ng as "algorithms": the latter is
not only true because of your lack of qualifications it is also true
because you cannot seriously discuss the correctness or time or space
complexity of algorithms without having completed, at a minimum, an
undergraduate class in Algorithms approved by the ACM or the
equivalent professional body in your ridiculous little country.

You are not qualified to address the relationship of programming to
society because of your lack of general culture added to your lack of
computing culture.

>
> > Let me repeat that, laddie.
>
> If you must, you must, but the answer will be the same. I question your use
> of the word "laddie", by the way. It seems to me that it is calculated to
> offend. Well, Mr Nilges, I'm not offended because I'm not stupid enough to
> be offended so easily. But your constant lack of respect for those with
> whom you interact does your reputation no good at all.
>
In sales and corporate situations, where the issues are complex, we
indeed learn to project an abstract, content-free "respect".

However, usenet is no such situation because people (especially the
anonymous as well as the partly anonymous who have now concealed their
email address) initiate actions of striking and unprecedent verbal
violence. This is because Usenet is a rape culture in Susan
Brownmiller's terms in which verbal violence is primarily designed to
exclude women.

I have indeed responded to this with a global lack of respect but I
have been very precise on the targets of this respect. For this reason
I have made friends on the Internet who are able to separate the
strong views, strongly expressed they find when they do a search for
"Nilges" from the man.

Curiously this replicates a contrast in my own father's biography and
also in that of hero computer scientist Dijkstra. My father expressed
himself very strongly and in print on the issue of brain death.

In somewhat the same way one unavoidably gives offense to those who
are dominated by the dollar power here, my father unavoidably gave
offense to the many neurosurgeons who were willing to declare Granny
quite dead at the behest of privatized and money-maddened hospitals.
He did so by expressing himself colorfully and by questioning, in a
way he knew would give offense, the professional qualifications of his
opponents at a basic level.

Yet at his hospital his immediate colleagues always spoke of my Dad as
a good egg who was good to work with and in particular, physicians
from India admired my Dad's teaching skills.

I also read that people who read Dijkstra's acerbic comments on the
computing establishment of the 1970s were struck when they actually
met the monster as to how friendly, indeed collegial Dijsktra was in
person.

I am no brain surgeon nor am I no Dijkstra, only a Spinozist in search
of role models.
>
> > You snip without reading passages which you then irresponsibly
> > describe to third parties AS IF YOU HAD READ THEM.
>
> Don't be silly. If someone posted the contents of the New York phone
> directory here, I could skim it (VERY briefly), snip it, and opine that
> it's off-topic here. I don't have to read every single digit and every
> single name to determine whether, in my opinion, the information is
> relevant to this newsgroup. In fact, many of your articles share several
> characteristics with the New York phone directory. For example, they are
> long, turgid, and off-topic. I can only hope that the NY phone directory is
> rather more accurate, though.

Still wrong
>
> > And don't make the obvious dodge, boyo.
>
> Ah, you seek pre-emptively to prescribe the giving of a correct response.
> "What is three times four? Come on! What is three times four? And don't
> make the obvious dodge, boyo - none of that 'twelve' nonsense." Well, I
> have answered as I saw fit to answer. If you think of it as a dodge, that
> is your problem, not mine.

"Do you know arithmetic? What's one and one and one and one and one
and one?" "I don't know", said Alice. "I lost count". "She can't do
arithmetic".

I am just seeing how you like turnabout, mate.

>
> >
> > Don't tell us that you read one or two and concluded that to do so in
> > future would yield the same result. If you make this conclusion from
> > one or two about any poster,
>
> I have read many thousands of lines of Nilges stuff, more fool me. I have

You've backpedaled, you swine.

> accumulated sufficient experience to be able to extract, with reasonable
> (albeit not perfect) accuracy, those parts of your article which seem to be
> topical, and snip the rest.
>
> > just shut your fucking yap.
>
> You have, on several occasions, compared my behaviour - very offensively, I
> might add - to that of Fascism and even Nazism (a comparison which
> inevitably leads your fellow Usenet subscribers to question the merits of
> your argument). But I have never sought to silence you. I have suggested,

Well, "shut your fucking yap" was a request and no more. So dummy up,
OK. There's a good lad.

> it is true, that you find a more topical forum in which to post your
> claptrap, but I've never told you not to post to Usenet. Yet you seek to

This is a typical dodge. Usenet basically pretends that if we all
isolate, our Hobbesian desires will somehow vanish, and we will
conduct "free and open" discussion and nobody will get hurt.

Instead, the anonymity and the isolation allows the negative feelings
to emerge but because technical males have little self awareness the
lack of a language for feelings means that the bile is never reduced.

> silence me. Indeed, you insist on it with a most forceful and offensive
> imperative. I have no desire to compare /your/ behaviour to any right-wing
> political party, but nevertheless I invite comp.programming subscribers to
> reflect upon the ironic nature of your demand.
>
I have compared your conduct to Fascist conduct AFTER completing
William Shirer's complete history of the Third Reich, Hannah Arendt's
The Origins of Totalitarianism, and hundreds of other sources on my
own time.

Whereas you have based a global attack on my honesty based on a series
of deliberate misintrpretations which you made in May 2002 because I
refused to allow you to misread the charter of this newsgroup.
 
> Anyway, tough cookies. If you post nonsense on Usenet, people will call you
> on it. That's the nature of Usenet. If you don't like it, that's your
> problem, not mine.
>
> > This is because the text of ANY poster has to be answered, or
> > "plonked" on its specific merits alone.
>
> Please don't be stupid. If you establish a pattern of posting nonsense, you
> should not be surprised if people read your articles /expecting/ to see
> nonsense. If you had shown even the slightest trend towards cluefulness,
> many people here would have been very pleased to help you along that path.
> But you seem determined to spew off-topic rants and technical incompetence
> all over this newsgroup, so don't be surprised when people /expect/ to see
> off-topic rants and technical incompetence from you.
>
> <off-topic stuff snipped>
>
> > Your behavior may be perfectly acceptable within dysfunctional
> > corporations. However, in responsible learned circles, I'd have long
> > since have your fucking ass up on serious legal charges for this
> > behavior alone.
>
> Please moderate your language. I don't possess any horses of any kind, so
> you might have trouble carrying out the action you describe.
>
>
> > I don't because, as I have said, my attorney has
> > advised me that posts on these networks are not taken seriously when
> > they are obviously garbage.
>
> Well, many of yours are indeed obviously garbage. Not all, mark you. I'll
> give you that much. Not quite all.
>
> Now, back to logic. If you think that all Usenet articles are obviously
> garbage, why do you bother with Usenet at all? (It's a rhetorical question,
> but don't let that stop you answering it if you wish.)

Because I need to contact genuinely honest people and talk not only
about programming independent of platforms but also its place in a
social context.

I am in fact in the process of driving you creeps out of this ng, or
hopefully getting you to shape up and if I succeed I shall publish a
book about how to clean up a ng.

>
>
> > By anyone of any decency or merit, which
> > is the only sort of person I care to be associated with in a true
> > personal or business relationship.
>
> I can't make sense of this sentence except by s/\. B/b/ so I'll assume you
> meant that. Well, okay, if you don't care to be associated with those who
> value Usenet, again, why do you bother with it?
>
Because you've mischaracterised my credibility and background in a way
that MIGHT be damaging. What you say here comes close, mate, to an
admission that you are a damaged soul and wish to be left alone in a
damaged community. But the solution for child molesters is not to try
to dominate a public group it is to form a list serv.

Usenet is not your personal property, nor is it mine. Instead the
intention was that truth would drive out falsehood because eventually
people would admit they were wrong, usually if the community persuaded
him. But what its designers missed in the 1970s was the possibility
that the entire community could be deviant and the in "duh" vidual
could be right.
 
> > In Adorno's words, you have hit out at my speculation
>
> On the contrary, I merely snipped some off-topic stuff.
>
> > and you have not
> > only killed common sense you have also killed common decency.
>
> Common sense seems to be alive and well in comp.programming, or at least in
> most parts thereof. As for common decency: your constant name abuse, your
> barrack-room language, your desperate attempts to belittle those with whom

I am not certain that my language would be acceptable at Horse Guards.

What you are missing is the idea of adequacy, for you have engaged in
seriously wrong conduct. To snip without reading and replying in
detail is fucked because you cannot get the sense of a complex points
by skimming.

Furthermore, you have mastered the managerial technique of delegating
the rough stuff to other posters who take your apparent authority as a
license to take out their worse instincts on the outlier case.

> you conduct discussions, your invective, your insistence on posting OT
> stuff, and your general refusal to meet a certain basic modicum of civility

"Civility?" What civility have you shown?

> in the articles you post to this newsgroup, have rendered any observation
> you might have had on the matter of common decency to be utterly
> uninteresting to anyone who actually has any.
>
> ObProgramming [this is intended to be a sort of treat for any unNilgesesque
> subscriber who has actually read all the way down to the bottom of this
> article ;-) ]:
>
> I found this little gem, just by chance, in Wirth, in the middle of a
> discussion on trees and lists:
>
> "...the following story which appeared in a Zurich newspaper in July 1922 is
> a proof that irregularity may even occur in cases which usually serve as
> examples of regular structures, such as (family) trees. The story tells of
> a man who describes the misery of his life in the following words:
>
> I married a widow who had a grown-up daughter. My father,
> who visited us quite often, fell in love with my step-
> daughter and married her. Hence, my father became my son-
> in-law, and my step-daughter became my mother. Some months
> later, my wife gave birth to a son, who became the brother-
> in-law of my father as well as my uncle. The wife of my
> father, that is my step-daughter, also had a son. Thereby,
> I got a brother and at the same time a grandson. My wife
> is my grandmother, since she is my mother's mother. Hence,
> I am my wife's husband at at the same time her step-grandson.
> In other words, I am my own grandfather."
>
> I wonder if these popular genealogy-tracing programs could cope with this
> chap's family? :-)