What has PEP 285 done to us?

Alex Martelli aleax at aleax.it
Thu Apr 11 04:35:24 EDT 2002


Gerhard Häring wrote:
        ...
> IMO using your real name is polite and whatever you say is not worth
> being said if you can't put your name under it.

Yet "Primary Colors" was lots of fun to read -- which to me means it
WAS worth writing, even though the author couldn't safely sign it.

The "ad hominem" fallacy is to judge some argument on the basis of
who said what, rather than on what is being said.  We're all prone
to it, of course -- it's part of human biology that the same words,
spoken from a Leader, a Loser, or a Contrarian, receive different
consideration.  But to assert that it MUST be made possible for you
to apply the "Pecking Order" criterion to an argument, or else the
argument was "not worth saying", is to elevate "ad hominem", from a
fallacy excusable on biological grounds, to a guiding principle of
discourse.  Try considering arguments on their merit, instead.

[Of course, I _can_ turn around and argue the other side, a little:
cfr. the solutions to iterated Prisoner's Dilemma problems that
are only enabled by the ability to identify your counterpart, for
example - that can be subsumed in there being sound pro-survival
reasons behind our biological leanings, as should be obvious...
if those leanings weren't adaptive in long-prevailing circumstances,
they'd long have been bred out of the collective genome.  But how
does our current environment compare with those circumstances?-)]

Me, I sign because I'm an egotist and like seeing my name written.

Of course, should I be flaming, I might well pounce on some
interlocutor's pseudonimity as an excuse to insult him or her,
if I couldn't sink my teeth into something more substantial.


Alex




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