Glen writes: < If a listener abstracts their self, they are just as evil as a speaker abstracting their self. >
Steve writes: < Firstly, my own throwdown of "rhetoric" was intended to be very specific. I believe that you both took it to be a bit more broad than intended. I specifically meant rhetoric as "language intended to persuade". I hold this specifically distinct from "language intended to inform" and "language used to think or contemplate". Unfortunately I discovered that in fact the formal definition of rhetoric includes "to inform" as well as "to persuade" > In PROLOG, free variables are upper case, meaning that the reader should expect some effort in establishing their values. If Glen were forced to write down his arguments and propositions in PROLOG he'd have to say "Evil" and not "evil" because the latter would be something constrained by a dictionary. I tend to use single quotes to highlight terms where I am encouraging the reader to find a grounding or tolerate my loose or arbitrary set of constraints in the definition. Sure, Glen's crypto-obsfucation is a sort of rhetoric. He forces you to both consume and actively doubt every single one of his words. Advertisements have a similar effect over time. I can appreciate Flo and the Gecko, but then I don't purchase Progressive or Geico insurance either. I become immune to many of their tricks! For many years I've believed the purpose of this is to make arguments robust to perturbation. You can reject all the parts of his argument but still be forced to accept the conclusion. :-) Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
