Comment by throwanem
3 days ago
I restated them yesterday in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44757634, assuming at the time that if you found any error there you would say so. Here's another chance to explain where I've actually failed to grasp your thesis, rather than that I'm pointing out you have overdressed a triviality with pretentious overcomplication.
But it's less interesting to me that you brought up Alan Watts seven years ago than that you did so again yesterday. What do you need from him? Why bring him up if you don't want to talk about him? Or is it that no one is allowed to have an opinion that contradicts yours, including when that involves looking askance at needless reference to dead prophets?
> you have overdressed a triviality with pretentious overcomplication.
Well, possibly. What is interesting and subtle to some is obvious and clichéd to others. Much like how technology is mysterious and ineffable to some, but obvious and plain to others.
> But it's less interesting to me that you brought up Alan Watts seven years ago than that you did so again yesterday. What do you need from him? Why bring him up if you don't want to talk about him?
Now you’re being delusory. You brough up Alan Watts again, after I quoted him seven years ago. I simply responded to you.
> Or is it that no one is allowed to have an opinion that contradicts yours, including when that involves looking askance at needless reference to dead prophets?
I think that, outside purely literary criticism, criticizing a “needless” reference is useless unless the reference itself is incorrect in a way which invalidates the point which the reference is meant to illuminate.
> You [brought] up Alan Watts again
I just checked again, and it does look like you posted [1] the relevant links. Are you seeing something different? My experience has been that people who use apps or scripts which purport to "improve" on HN's interface do sometimes run into such bugs.
I bring it up because I feel like if we're not working from similar sets of facts, that would be a reasonable explanation for what otherwise is seeming very much like you doing everything you possibly can to avoid acknowledging I called bullshit, on the naked appeal to authority to which you resorted, in order to try to lend your words a weight you lack the ability to give them yourself.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44753964
Three days ago, I did post the link to an seven-year-old post of mine, which in turn contained two links to other old posts of mine (ten and seven years old, respectively), where only the second of those linked posts contained a quote from Alan Watts. I do not count this as “bringing up” Alan Watts again three days ago.
Especially since I certainly did not use the quote of Alan Watts as a “naked appeal to authority”. Alan Watts does not describe anything in my point directly, and I do not, in the seven year old post, use the quote as an authoritative argument. It was merely an analogy. I claimed no knowledge of whether what Alan Watts describes is true or not. I used his description to explain what I thought was a similar phenomena to his description, nothing more.
> you doing everything you possibly can to avoid acknowledging I called bullshit, on the naked appeal to authority to which you resorted, in order to try to lend your words a weight you lack the ability to give them yourself.
I think you’re coming dangerously close, if not past, the forum guidelines, here. Please argue the point, not the person. I have asked you, repeatedly, why the Alan Watts quote is wrong, and why this fact would invalidate the point I was making. I even restated my point without referring to Alan Watts at all, to allow you to criticize it directly. But you have ignored all this, and your entire parent comment is instead about me, not about any point I was making, or even any point you are trying to make. Your entire argument seems to lack any point or counterpoint, and is instead only attacking me, personally.
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