Re: OT: Wildepad

Wildepad wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Feb 2008 08:41:01 GMT, Bryan Derksen
> <bryan.derksen@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> You hand out lollipops with your root canals. The scenarios you present

>> are often interesting to discuss and experiment with. Just not with
you, 
>> once the thread's progressed to variations you hadn't initially 
>> considered. Presents something of a dilemma.
> 
> That happens to quite a few threads -- some aspect of it intrigues
> people who continue the discussion along lines that I either am not
> qualified to pursue or simply are not that interested in.

Thread drift is a fact of life on Usenet, and I would even go so far as 
to call it a positive feature; one topic of discussion fertilizes the 
appearance of other related topics that otherwise wouldn't have arisen.

The old warning about not trying to teach a pig to sing applies here. If 
you try to do it you'll only waste your time and annoy the pig.

>> BTW, the same solution you suggest could be used by you - you could
just 
>> ignore the responses that question assumptions you don't want 
>> questioned. Why don't you?
> 
> This falls out two ways: I think that something I wrote wasn't clear
> enough, leading to a misunderstanding, or someone presents a 'fact' or
> theory that is obviously wrong. 

The problem comes in when what you consider to be 'obviously wrong' 
doesn't match with the views on obvious wrongness held by lots of other 
people. When you say that something is obviously wrong and lots of 
people respond that no, it's not obvious, then the very fact that lots 
of people are saying it isn't obvious establishes that it really isn't 
obvious. Obviousness is in the eye of the beholder.

A lot of what you've claimed in various threads seems "obviously wrong" 
to me, for example. But it isn't to you or you wouldn't have claimed it.

> It's a trap I should be able to recognize, but alas, subtlety is not
> my long suit, and I don't realize what's happening until I'm in it.

The other thing you really need to keep in mind to avoid falling into 
this trap is the possibility that _you_ are wrong about something. When 
almost everyone in a thread is saying that it's implausible that the 
serial numbers of small-denomination paper money would be checked and 
correlated with every individual that spent it at a convenience store, 
for example, you should consider that perhaps it's your own 'fact' that 
isn't really so.

It is of course possible for almost everyone in the thread to turn out 
to be wrong. But it certainly warrants some double-checking on your 
part, especially if you want to convince everyone else of it.