On Jan 6, 2009, at 11:06 PM, Jim Devine wrote:
Julio:
Blah, blah.
I'm sure Michael Perelman will chime in here, but I want to reinforce
his point. This kind of sectarian response ("blah, blah") is
inappropriate to pen-l. If we want to have a serious discussion, we
need to criticize people's logic, consistency with perceived empirical
reality, and method (what considerations they leave out). Mere "yah
yah yah -- yer mother's mustache!" responses don't help at all.
I am not so sure... given that arguments are as much a matter of
appeal to various biases (perception, ideology), personality and
stylistic elements (and so on), as logic, empirical reality etc, a
good (i.e., fair) set of ground rules would impose different standards
on feuding sides based on which one of them enjoys the benefits of the
above [LHS] factors. Given that PEN-L constitutes the purist left
(IMHO), I believe Julio's opinion (and robust defence, often running
to multiple virtual pages, of guarded optimism w.r.t Obama) deserves a
lot of leeway, lest we lose content in pursuit of form. Whether such
leeway applies to responses such as "blah, blah" I will leave for MP
to decide.
--ravi
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