From: jamesd@netcom.com (James A. Donald)
You claimed I was arguing from libertarian correctness.
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.
[...]
Oh, please. Go back and read what I originally wrote. Perhaps I overestimate your ability to ascertain relevance, though.
You do not demonstrate much ability to think rationally in this posting. A self contradiction in three lines, above, and some interesting logic to follow: I wrote:
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.
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. Nice piece of logic there. 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 think your defense denigrates you more than my original accusation did. Now back to some slight crypto relevance: Each posting I made was about the standards making process. I argue that good standards are created by victory in the market place, and bad standards are made by committees and consensus. You argue game theory that would be valid given your premise that cooperation works in this case. Since the whole point of each of my letters on this thread is that cooperation with lagging competitors does not work in setting standards, game theory is irrelevant to this issue. Your so called "game theory" is just code for the moral assumption that Netscape are wicked not to engage in consensus. I do what you pretend to do. I deduce moral truths from game theory. You instead start off with an unjustified moral assumption, and express that assumption in inappropriate game theoretic language, so that you can cloak your arbitrary prejudices in pretended moral neutrality. You do not reason using game theory, you use it as a code to express moral claims without having to justify them. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we James A. Donald are. True law derives from this right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. jamesd@netcom.com