RE: OT - Jonathan thread

[Tim Colson <tc...@cisco.com>]

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.

For fun, I googled around a bit and came up with this link I found
interesting.
http://gncurtis.home.texas.net/

Enjoy! :-)
Tim



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Re: OT - Jonathan thread

[Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com>]

Tim Colson wrote:
> 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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