On Jan 21, 2010, at 3:24 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
WARNING: this is a metacommunication, about the communication
process here and elsewhere in voting system advocacy, not about
voting methods, per se.
At 01:48 AM 1/21/2010, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
On Jan 20, 2010, at 11:23 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Variation on previous post. Silly time!
At 02:31 PM 1/16/2010, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
On Jan 16, 2010, at 12:05 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Robert, your slip is showing.
what slip? i don't have nuttin' under me kilt.
We already knew that.
you do? you keep saying that you can see it.
Yes, I said that. "Slip is showing" is a metaphor, stating that
something relatively unmentionable is visible. I can see something.
Others can see something. Do you see or know what we see? Perhaps
you do, but you are defending yourself as if you cannot see it.
Others who do see it might respond differently.
better say what "it" is right now, or you're just blowing smoke (to
make use of another metaphor).
1. I suspect you are less effective than you can be. You get
caught, easily, in irrelevancies, distracting from the central
points to be conveyed.
it wasn't me that amplified the length of text by a factor of 10. i
was trying to keep it focused and my mistake was responding to your
"asides".
As a public activist, to be effective, you must use polemic and all
the skills of advocacy, which is different from discussion. Here,
we discuss, and no collective decisions are actually made here.
However, I inferred from behavior here what might happen in a
public debate. If, in fact, some of this behavior carries over to
public debate, you could get creamed. Unnecessarily. That is, over
your own style and personality, not over the issue you are advocating.
"blather".
(quoting Warren Smith.)
2. Was I effective? In what? I'm engaged only in a diffuse kind of
advocacy here. However, I've also repeated ideas that I've
expressed here many times, and this is part of my own learning and
polishing process. This is of benefit to those who find it useful
to follow my discussions, to explore these topics repeatedly so
that they become familiar, and so that deeper understanding
spreads. It's my method and approach, and it certainly is not for
everyone. Were I to do in a public forum, not a specialized forum
like this, what I do here, I'd almost completely fail.
more blather.
(3.) I have, however, come to the point that I'm sufficiently
familiar with the issues that I'd engage, if invited, in public
debate. I'm an effective speaker, making clear and direct contact
with the audience. We'll see if that happens. I have made blog
posts in public fora on these issues, they are far briefer, in
general. The effort per word and per message is much higher for them.
sometimes "effective public speakers" are "successful" not because of
their efforts to focus the issue, but because of their efforts to
distract. e.g. Sarah Palin.
i won't slap on the "argumentum verbosium" and explode the debate
about a single testable issue (like how many piles one needs if there
are 3 candidates) into pages and pages, that when i responded, my
post was rejected by the list server as too large.
Oh, we are crushed at the loss.... actually, usually it isn't
exactly rejected, it is held for moderator approval, which can take
some time. Depends.
i'm not messing with it further. i just ask that you don't amplify
the quantity of responses by a factor of 10 and bring your post to
40K so that if anyone actually bothers to read through it and respond
to most or all of the points, their effort goes into the trash can.
since your name was in the To: header, you got that response, but no
one else did.
what i have learned from that is to not play your "argumentum
verbosium" game. from now on, i must pick and choose, respond to
only one point, delete all the other blather, and keep the issue
focussed.
thus i am deleting and not bothering to engage in the other text.
care to discuss how many piles one needs (for "precinct summability")
when there are N candidates? or N credible candidates? that's what
the issue was before it was buried in blather.
--
r b-j [email protected]
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
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