Jonathan writes:
I have already confided more or less that I have perceived you as a mega-clown and have been enjoying laughing at you.
Jonathan often points out in this thread (which by the way seems to have nothing much to do anymore with JavaCC) and others various "fallacies" of logicical reasoning.
Tim,
I think you will find, if you actually examine this topic, that this is not a special characteristic of mine. It's debating "according to Hoyle". In a debate, you specifically point out the flaws in the other guy's arguments.
That this strikes you as a special charactistic of mine, I guess, is because there isn't much genuine debate on these lists, so my behavior seems novel. Also, in terms of logical fallacies, this list is like a gold mine of them.
Anyway, it occurred to me that Henning's whole continued line about there being no perceived end-user demand for FreeMarker (in the Turbine context) reminds me of something.
It reminds me of the kinds of arguments Microsoft (and their army of shills) would make to justify their monopolistic practices. Take the following statement:
"There is no end-user demand for non-Microsoft operating systems."
Well, that's even somewhat true, you know. Somebody who goes to Circuit City and buys a PC, it does not occur to the typical guy to ask for Linux or something.
OTOH, it's at best a half-truth. I mean, the consumer does not actively "choose" Windows. They simply buy the PC and that's what's installed by default. Once you set up a situation where a given thing is the "default", then most people will just use that. It's the path of least resistance.
Henning's argument about end-user demand for FM is, AFAICS, identical structurally and is of course, a tricky half-truth for roughly the same reason. You know, once you've set up a situation where the "default" is to use X and the other options are not even supported really, and certainly not presented on an even footing, then people will of course use X. As with the Windoze situation, the path of least resistance will be to use that default. And that's what people will do.
You know, it's a very deliberately contrived, "half-truth" sort of argument.
That's one reason why you observe me or Daniel Dekany getting increasingly openly annoyed at Henning, because he keeps trotting out what is so *obviously* a dishonest argument.
Also, you'd understand if you were on the FreeMarker lists and familiar with the culture there. There is definitely a culture of "not suffering fools gladly". I wouldn't say it's aggressive, but we debate hard. I mean, we don't just let people get away with saying just anything.
That doesn't seem to be the case here. I mean, you get these same self-serving dishonest arguments trotted out continually and it's allowed to pass -- in the name of political correctness, I infer.
For example, this attempt to use the idea that "Velocity has a very conservative stance wrt new features" to justify a complete lack of any development activity -- even bug fixes or improvements to the docs!
Isn't that a bit much?
For fun, I googled around a bit and came up with this link I found interesting. http://gncurtis.home.texas.net/
Enjoy! :-)
I guess you are providing a public service by offering the link. If people wish to debate with me, I guess they would be well served to read a list of common logical fallacies.
Thanks,
Jonathan Revusky -- lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/ FreeMarker-Velocity comparison page, http://freemarker.org/fmVsVel.html FreeMarker 2.3pre4 is out!
Tim
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