(For schedule reasons I was unable to reply earlier) Erik,
It was never my intention to do anyone's thinking for them. At least knowing you interpreted my words that way explains your reaction (I would have reacted the same way). Perhaps that fault lies with me -- I am not a native English speaker. But in my defence, I will say that as far as I can remember, nobody -- native EN speakers or not -- ever interpreted saying something like "by that reasoning" as amounting to doing your respondent's thinking for him or her. > Err ... please accept that you own that. It's your scenario, and your > reasoning. Nothing to do with me, because I had _in_advance_ ruled out > any need for an external viewer from my reasoning: In all honesty I still have trouble understanding this. But perhaps, as Christian suggested in another email, it's time to let code take the place of words. > If we can each just argue our own case, then the list can be spared a > lot of noise. (Compare how quickly Christian won a quite a lot of ground > by doing only that. Hint: By all means ask the question, but then let > the respondent answer for himself, rather than insist on doing his > thinking for him. If his case is weak, and the question relates to it, > the wheels will fall off by themselves.) I agree, and that's what I normally try to do. In any case, thank you for that last email -- it was unexpected, but I found it very helpful. --Óscar On Mon, Sep 09, 2013 at 10:39:09PM +1000, Erik Christiansen wrote: > > On 07.09.13 18:00, Óscar Pereira wrote: > > So now suppose (*my* scenario, not yours) that mutt used an external > > program to view emails, and, we were discussing adding the feature of > > viewing encrypted emails to mutt. By a reasoning *similar* to yours, > > i.e. reasoning in a way coherent to yours, what would the conclusion > > be? > > Err ... please accept that you own that. It's your scenario, and your > reasoning. Nothing to do with me, because I had _in_advance_ ruled out > any need for an external viewer from my reasoning: > > On 07.09.13 19:51, Erik Christiansen wrote: > > On the other hand, we use mutt to read received emails - no editor is > > involved normally. So your postulate is false, due to there being no > > connection between the two processes. > > If you were to put it forward as a use case purely of your creation, > then we could discuss it, but not when you leap over to my side of the > tennis net, and insist on whacking the ball there too. > > Apropos labelling, do please read my prior post carefully - I had only > labelled the action of ascribing your thinking to me. One action does > not fully define a person, and I have been careful not to label any > person. (It's having words rammed down my throat which gets up my nose, > if you'll forgive the imagery, not any interlocutor personally. > The exchange has otherwise been informative and thought provoking.) > > If we can each just argue our own case, then the list can be spared a > lot of noise. (Compare how quickly Christian won a quite a lot of ground > by doing only that. Hint: By all means ask the question, but then let > the respondent answer for himself, rather than insist on doing his > thinking for him. If his case is weak, and the question relates to it, > the wheels will fall off by themselves.) > > Erik > > -- > If you're going through hell, keep going! - Winston Churchill -- Óscar Pereira | https://erroneousthoughts.org Rules of Optimisation: Rule 1: Don't do it. Rule 2 (for experts only): Don't do it yet. -- M.A. Jackson
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