On 2009-03-08, Tim Roberts <t...@probo.com> wrote: > Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>Summary: I was posting relevant but controversial opinions in a rude >>manner to “comp.lang.*” newsgroups. > > And that one (completely accurate) sentence is really the core of virtually > all of your troubles, isn't it? > > Usually, as people mature, they learn by experience that their > communications are accepted more easily if they are presented > with calm and courtesy. This is neither good nor bad, nor is > it a conspiracy. It is simple human nature.
IANAP, but I suspect that parts of his brain don't work the same way most of ours do and he has a very limited ability to perceive things from another person's point of view. This results in an inability to communicate effectively and a crippling lack of understanding of the social conventions that most of us figured out and adapted to by the time we were 8 years old. He probably is honestly unable to understand why other people react the way they do to his postings. If I were going to have to pick a label, I'd say he's got Asperger's syndrome or a similar autism spectrum disorder. >From the AS Wikipedia article: Unlike those with autism, people with AS are not usually withdrawn around others; they approach others, even if awkwardly, for example by engaging in a one-sided, long-winded speech about a favorite topic while misunderstanding or not recognizing the listener's feelings or reactions, such as need for privacy or haste to leave.[5] This social awkwardness has been called "active but odd".[1] This failure to react appropriately to social interaction may appear as disregard for other people's feelings, and may come across as insensitive.[5] ... Although individuals with Asperger syndrome acquire language skills without significant general delay and their speech typically lacks significant abnormalities, language acquisition and use is often atypical.[5] Abnormalities include verbosity, abrupt transitions, literal interpretations and miscomprehension of nuance, use of metaphor meaningful only to the speaker, auditory perception deficits, unusually pedantic, formal or idiosyncratic speech, and oddities in loudness, pitch, intonation, prosody, and rhythm.[1] What particularly struck me was the "use of metaphor meaningful only to the speaker" and "unusully pedantic" aspects of Xah Lee's posts. If somebody with AS can't recognize a listener's reactions when they're face-to-face, you can imagine the difficulty they'd have on Usenet. There you go: a 30-second psychological diagnosis by an electrical engineer based entirely on Usenet postings. It doesn't get much more worthless than that... -- Grant -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
