(urth) Who's Right?

[James Wynn]

On 12/1/2010 9:43 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
>
> -From: "Lee Berman" <severiansola at hotmail.com>
>>
>> In recent posts as diverse as Gerry Quinn's, Mark Millman's and 
>> Thomas Bitterman's, as well as
>> many times in the past, I've noticed the implication that this 
>> message board might not serve simply
>> as a place for sharing ideas.
>>
>> I am wondering how many here at least partially consider their role 
>> here to be serving as a jury member,
>> with a duty to render judgement or cast a vote on whether a presented 
>> idea is too outlandish or
>> over-interpreted or perhaps actually worthy of entry in the Accepted 
>> Lupine Gospel (or whatever it was
>> that Roy C. Lackey called it).
>
> Gerry Quinn-
> I wasn't implying anything of that kind.  I *do* think that 
> criticising ideas is as important as sharing them.  Ideas per se are 
> almost worthless; anybody can come up with a million of them.  We need 
> ideas that have explanatory power, and some degree of consistency with 
> the text as a whole. (This was what I was hinting at when I suggested 
> Vine might come from Viron - that's a deliberate example of a *bad* 
> idea, and if I had gone on to talk about how it could have been 
> arranged by time travelling hierodules for some obscure purpose, it 
> would just have made it worse.)

As someone who has a long list of explanations that are not shared by a 
large constituency, I must say that in my experience they are almost 
always engaged directly or not at all. However, it does at times occur 
(extremely rarely in my case and not recently)  that someone will merely 
wave their hands and attack, ad hominem, some theory as "as step too 
far" without addressing the details of it. Whenever I see that, I am 
offended for the other person's sake, because 1) it can be difficult 
coming up with a broad theory in even a Wolfe short story (see Dave 
Tallman's explanation of 7ANs), much more so in his novels, and it feels 
risky to offer them 2) its unlikely that even a correct theory will be 
_entirely_ correct on the first pass, and 3) it is so EASY for someone 
to sit on his behind and drawl "I don't see it".  Personally, it offends 
my sense of fair play.

I don't mind (much) if someone takes on an explanation of mine with even 
strong sarcasm as long has he or she is engaging specifically with what 
I said. I mean, if an idea sounds ludicrous to me, I suppose it would be 
difficult to _not_ have a sarcastic tone when discussing it.

I should also say, Gerry, that I don't follow every thread really 
closely so I'm not exactly clear what you said to which Lee took 
offense--so I don't know if it is fair to categorize you with this post 
of mine.

> But I certainly don't believe in giving ideas I consider excessively 
> fanciful a free pass. 

I _think_ I have a sense of what Lee was talking about and I don't think 
this was it.

> [snip] All I can suggest is that they take them in the spirit of 
> Nietzche's maxim: "What does not kill me makes me stronger".  Ideas 
> that can stand up to objections are the sort of ideas that can 
> progress rather than derail understanding.

That's the whole point of offering ideas, right? But IMO ideas should be 
engaged directly or not at all (not that anyone should police ad hominem 
attacks).

u+169b