Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2005 16:42:30 -0400
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>, WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Beyond a Great Con...
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

At 11:13 AM 10/22/2005 -0400, dicconf wrote:

>It is, however, dishonest to quote only part of a message, misinterpret
>it, and then suppress the other part which showed that the
>misinterpretation was groundless.

This logic seems to assume that the misinterpretation was intentional.  In
most cases of misinterpretation it is not.  It is a mistake that the one
doing it is unaware of until informed.  The deletion of the
counter-evidence would therefore not be intentional or dishonest as the one
doing so is likely to have considered it irrelevant...which may even be
what led to the misinterpretation.

Language is an imperfect mechanism for getting a thought from one brain to
another...but it's the best we have.  The written form of it is even more
problematic than the spoken form since there are no additional channels of
information to use for cross-checking (facial expression, tone of voice,
tempo of delivery, volume, hand gestures, employment of weaponry, etc.).
Misinterpretation, especially in this format, is easy to do, and very
common.  Attributing it to malice is often a mistake even greater than the
original misinterpretation, and is to be avoided.  See Keith's recent
message for a good way to handle any suspicion of this.

>Perhaps we should say that arguing metaphysics is boring.

It can be.  It doesn't usually lead anywhere in most cases, since there is
little or no data to base anything on, merely groundless ideas and
arbitrary opinions about their worth.  For some that's enough to be of
interest, for others not so much.  I'm always interested in novel ideas
though, so I sometimes find it worth a bit of time.  Depends what's
competing for attention at the moment.

-- Mike B.
--
"The most amazing thing about the universe is that it exists at all.
That's a mind-blower..." -- Mike Bartman