Posted by Rational [trw] on November 03, 1999 at 09:13:06 {eZOTANvCI6YgCUWv3.1cm0FN8UzOHE}:
In Reply to: *******Response to AF: Part One posted by Friend on November 03, 1999 at 07:18:21:
::You can choose to ignore your misconception on this salient point but I believe it represents a microcosm of other faulty reasoning on your
part. The thread that you linked to earlier I believe is a case in point.
As I said, I am quite content to be in the same company as Gedanken and AF, both of whom reasoned the same way I did in that thread. Readers can draw their own conclusions as to who was using "faulty reasoning", the three of us ... or you. Your very emotional emphasis here on my "misunderstanding" of what an "ad hominem" is is so out of proportion to that issue that it appears to be intended as a distraction from your own inability to make logical sense of the Society's "serious mistake" dealt with in the aforementioned thread.
::... you offer the passive milquetoast apology
I would have thought this comment beneath you, but I will adjust my opinion. To me a sincere apology is not "passive milquetoast"; if it is not considered genuine, then it is not an apology at all. Your characterization of my apology as "passive milquetoast" is disturbing. You will not receive another.
::Perhaps I am being too hard on you. It is evident that you harbor misconceptions about some issues (in this case that which constitutes ad hominem). So, I do not believe you intended any ill deceit. You just did not know what you were talking about. For that I forgive with open arms. Believe me, life is too short to bicker over trivialities. Hopefully in the future you will be more careful just as we all should.
I do not need the 'forgiveness with open arms' of someone as arrogant and condescending as you. "Believe you"??? Are you now the "expert" on 'the shortness of life'? (As if living in six decades--and wasting four of them on the Society--hasn't given me sufficient sense of that shortness, that I need your advice on it?) But yes, hopefully in the future I will be more careful with whom I exhaust my time trying to honestly discuss the Society's self-indictments.
Rational