Re: --off topic Re: Rant! (was) Development process in the Ada community

[Georg Bauhaus <sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de>]

Chad R. Meiners <crmeiners@hotmail.com>
wrote about tony's comments:
: Note that rhetoric does not deal with truth, but it does deal in impressing
: ideas upon people.

That's a relatively recent (and narrowed) meaning of the word, afaik.
Until few centuries ago, rhetoric counted as number two of the arts,
close to logic, grammar, dialegein (not to be confused with the
simple concept of yes/no/together again), and, in roman days, courts.
Thus of course in those days it had to do with truth, in several ways.


: As
: to your supposed 'criticism', in order for criticism to be valid it must be
: a well formed argument

O.K.

: and be logically consistent.

That again is a modern axiom held by many scientists. By a
mechanism known as group pressure it has become a dominant
view in several scientific discussions, despite it's known
difficulties. I'm not opposing that view entirely, but there
are other views and they were described by scientists that
were/are not actually nuts. (I'll try to find some interesting
references next week, I hope.)

: As to your red herring about Somalia, you still cite no evidence; you only
: state your confidence in a book author's words.

What will count as evidence?

: "tony" <tonygair@btinternet.com> wrote in message

:> Critiscism is not irrational hatred.

(a claim, with an implicit all quantifier)

:> Bombing, strafing and the murder of unarmed civilian crowds in Somalia
:> (The author of blackhawk down describes this in his book) is Irrational
:> hatred and more.

Read as, "as described in the book", and given a truth universally
aknowledged that there is hardly any war not somehow involving
hatred as a motive of acts before/in wars, tony's sentence (this
one) can, I think, indeed be read as a logically valid sentence,
namely an impicit conclusion. (This doesn't say something about
the validity of the premise (the book). However, if I say, "I'm
confident that P /= NP, and based on that ..." this might be no
evidence about P vs NP, but it certainly leeds to sound reasoning
in current cirumstances, doesn't it.  (P vs NP is not something
I know a great deal about but if you allow me to use it for the
sake of the argument...)

:> Opposing the design and production of satanic devices
:> that make this possible is NOT irrational hatred, it is a logical valid
:> method to oppose people who betray Humanity.

I see your point (I think), having read the article about a
clever new weapon in IEEE Software, near Ada pride. However, within
a scenario that involves satan, I can also see that these days
people are not likely to agree that logic starts here.

After all, famous betrayals with murderous consequence have 
been carried out with weapons not originally designed for
murder, but for defence (...) and decoration, viz. daggers.

As a final logical play,
- measured by the number of guns etc. sold, shooting weapons are much
  more popular in the USA than in Europe.
- timelessly popular devices reliably go with efforts to improve them,
  sell more
- a programming language seen in connection with popular things
  will, by the principle of association (like in behaviourism),
  profit from the popularity of the things.
-------------------
  conclusion: ... :-)

regards,
  Georg Bauhaus