From: jamesd@netcom.com (James A. Donald) ---------------------- 1. Plain talk. you wrote:
This is not an argument. This is a premise.
I see: So you start off with the assumption that what I was arguing was false, and because that is a premise not an argument, you do not have to defend it or support it. You claimed that what you were saying was my argument. I pointed out that it wasn't an argument at all, that it was merely a premise for an argument. Pardon me, though, for assuming that you know the difference between a deduction and an assertion. What you summarized was merely an assertion. A deduction has some sense of the word "therefore" in it. What you summarized did not. Perhaps you thought you were summarizing the conclusion of my argument, which would have the form of an assertion. But if you were doing that, then you really did confuse an argument with its conclusion. Now, let me be perfectly clear here. I quote your summary just to make sure:
The short of your argument is that Netscape will fragment the net by running out there and dumping something in the market place without consensing with all the big boys.
This was a premise of my argument. Since you managed to restate one of my premises, I now know that you are able of taking letters of text and forming them into coherent sentences. What you have not yet demonstrated is the capacity for taking _all_ the letters of text and attempting an understanding of a complete position. ---------------------- 2. Typographically Challenged. Eric Hughes replies:
Perhaps you don't know the meaning of whitespace and paragraph breaks.
And then he contradicts himself:
I did claim you were arguing from libertarian correctness. Now that's just an insult, which I do not retract.
Aren't we dense today? Paragraph 1: Insult Paragraph 2: Argument Whitespace and line breaks are used as thematic separators. Let me use very small words now: The first paragraph was about one thing, and the second paragraph was about something else. There was a blank line between the two which means that these two things are not like each other. ---------------------- 3. Semper Fidelis. I accused you of flaming before reading. Now you claim that you did read it, but the laws of logic exempt you from having to make rational criticism of what I wrote. I asked you to summarize what you thought I meant. I no longer believe that you're making a good faith effort to talk about the same thing, so I wanted at least to try to make explicit the lack of agreement about each other's positions. Personally, I think it's a waste of time to discuss a topic where there's not basic agreement on the other's position. Were it not for the fact that you continue to address the actual issue after insults of your own, I would have already ignored this thread. ---------------------- 4. Striving to think. I argue that good standards are created by victory in the market place, and bad standards are made by committees and consensus. Without altering the denotation of the sentence I can interpret this as "all good standards" and "all bad standards". Well, that sounds like an example of Libertarian Correctness to me. The flies in the market place _uber alles_! You argue game theory that would be valid given your premise that cooperation works in this case. You are seriously misrepresenting my position in this restatement. First, you will not distinguish between a simple indicative and a modal form. What I was pointing out is that it's not clear that cooperation doesn't work, i.e. it may work. "May" here is the modal form. Second, you will not distinguish an implication from its converse. I argued that, given plausible game-theoretic assumptions, that the best outcome is cooperation. Game theory is the premise; cooperation is the conclusion. Mind you, I'm talking to the _rest_ of the list here. ---------------------- 5. In the boat with Chomsky. And now The Amazing James, reader of minds, will tell me what I really meant to say: Your so called "game theory" is just code for the moral assumption that Netscape are wicked not to engage in consensus. De mortuis mentis, nil nisi Latinum. ---------------------- 6. A tip: avoid auctions. You do not reason using game theory, you use it as a code to express moral claims without having to justify them. James Donald asked be asked me what iterated dominance was a couple of weeks ago. James, do you know _anything_ about game theory? Anything at all? Eric