Steve said to Horse:
... I'm not sure promoting the SOL B.S. ought to be banned indefinitely. We
(you) have to be careful to be open enough to contrarians so that we can
benefit from them where possible (and it is not always immediately obvious) but
also not allow them to ruin the discussion. I know you are interested in
finding the proper balance between these concerns. What would you think about
imposing a temporary rather than permanent moratorium on promoting SOL so that
other issues may be more thoughtfully discussed for a time?
dmb says:
I think that's the right way to frame the issue. It's not about free speech.
This has been going on for nearly twenty years and Bo has already articulated
his thoughts several thousands times. It's about clutter. It's about spoiling
the party. It's about sucking all the oxygen out of the room so that
discussions about Pirsig's MOQ are suffocated. It's about not wanting to play a
game with a guy because he simply won't or can't play by the rules. Usually, I
just delete that stuff without reading it but recently came back from a little
trip to find the posts were about nothing but Bo's theory. As I see it, that
means there is zero discussion going on at the moment. Zip, zero, nada.
How would you feel if you were trying to run a chess club and every day there
was this one player who, every time you check-mated him he denied it and
insisted that only he knew the "real" rules of chess. That's what it smells
like to me. The has been check-mated many, many times but he doesn't know the
game well enough to understand that. It was over a long time ago, but he just
won't give up.
Everybody agrees, I think, that the MOQ is out there now and it's open to
evolution and modification. That's how it should be. Natural selection works on
that level too, you know. But that doesn't mean we can't make judgements about
what's plausible and what's not. That doesn't mean every idea deserves our
respect or even our attention. Natural selection is supposed to weed out the
mistakes, the dead ends, the less than viable. That's what discussion can help
to do, sort out the plausible readings from the implausible ones. But what if
the weeding process is not respected? Is that good for the MOQ or for anyone's
intellectual development? I really think the whole enterprise is served badly
if there are no standards, no rules.
Paul Turner and I had a little chat on the topic in that old pub in Chester. He
said, quite generously, that we understood the MOQ better than he did. When I
objected that he was the author and so that was very unlikely, he said that he
never had to defend the MOQ against so many different arguments and positions.
I'm still not sure if I'm convinced but he does have a point. Debate is good.
Contrarians are good. The resistance of conflicting views can serve to sharpen
both perspectives. This is an essential part of the evolution and development
of any idea or vision. But nobody's philosophical muscles are going to be
strengthened by a weak opponent. A crackpot neo-nazi, ufologist being held in a
secret world government prison does not deserve anyone's attention. We can all
agree on that and so the range of tolerable opinion does have a limit. The
question is where to draw the line.
Is 17 years of nonsense not enough? Shall we continue to entertain a theory
that exists nowhere but here, which makes no sense to Horse or Ant or Dan and
which has been explicitly rejected by Pirsig in Dan's book? I don't think so.
They're not authority figures whose wishes are backed up by philosophy cops, of
course, but they have worked very hard for a long time and they've earned a
certain expertise. Pirsig's books, Ant's Ph.D., Dan's book, Horse's forum; each
of these represents a tremendous amount of time and effort. That alone is
worthy of respect. I think the fact that none of these guys agrees with Bo
should really count for something. If all we can do is make our best judgements
based on the present state of knowledge, what these guys think should matter.
I'm sorry but there is just no way to make Bo's equation any less plausible.
Check-mate, check-mate, check-mate. It's not as useless as, say, satanic
astrology, but it sure isn't helping anything or anyone. It's just clutter.
It's just noise. I wish people would just ignore it and talk about something
more interesting, something more worthy of debate. I don't know what the best
solution is but it is a serious problem. Nonsense is always a problem in any
philosophical discussion. Obviously. And personally, I'm really bored by that
particular piece of nonsense. It's stale and it's tired. Even Bo should be sick
of it by now.
It's nice that people are trying to be big-hearted and kind to Bo but that
kindness and tolerance implies that Horse is being unkind and intolerant.
That's really not fair. He's been far more generous than anyone has a right to
expect. He let's people go on and on even when it's hard to believe they have
any understanding of the books we're supposed to talking about. Think about the
way Pirsig fought AGAINST the lowering of standards at the college in Bozeman,
the way he fought against passing every student regardless of their actual
accomplishments. Is it cruel to flunk the bad students or is it more cruel to
lower the standards to the point where even the laziest, most incorrigible
student gets a pass? I think Horse has concerns the bigger picture that
outweigh whatever hurt feelings might result. He likes Bo but there is
something to be said about the needs of the forum itself. I often wonder who
has been scared away from this forum. Maybe there was some relatively serious
thinker who lurked but left after a while because she found too much
weirdness and nonsense here. Maybe there were 100 such potential members who
concluded that we are not serious people. Maybe it's a bigger problem than
we'll ever know.
My two cents,
dmb
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