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From: anderson@uwmacc.UUCP (Jess Anderson)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: "Abuses" of the net
Message-ID: <678@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 13-Dec-86 20:39:46 EST
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.678
Posted: Sat Dec 13 20:39:46 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 16-Dec-86 00:14:26 EST
References: <21062@styx.UUCP>
Organization: UWisconsin-Madison Academic Comp Center
Lines: 51
Summary: The question is vital...

In article <21062@styx.UUCP>, mcb@styx.UUCP (Michael C. Berch) writes:

> I'd appreciate it if Mr. Mozes, Mr. G. W. Smith, Mr. Harnad, and Mr.
> Ellis could conduct their pissing match by private correspondence
> or even in talk.philosophy.misc rather than this newsgroup.

> Michael C. Berch
> News/mail administrator, styx

Mr. Berch is entitled to his own opinion, but since his signature tells
us he is a news/mail administrator, maybe his vote counts for more than
one. It could also be that my vote counts for less than one.
   Be that as it may, it has not seemed to me that the persons referred
to were carrying on a "pissing match" at all. Still less does it seem
to me appropriate to move the discussion they and others have been
having to another group. Indeed what I find least comprehensible in
Berch's request is its timing; it's been very quiet on this topic for
some time now. I was despairing of ever hearing another word about it.
   Notice that I have placed quote marks around "abuses" in the subject
header. The issue, to a far greater degree than people yet recognize,
I think, is central to the free exchange of ideas in a society of
unlike-minded people. It is not a talk.* topic for that reason. It is
about usenet itself, and therefore belongs here and not elsewhere.
The net that has room for 18,000 jokes surely has room for 115 posts
or even 1500 posts to this group. How could anyone disagree that
every single one of the posts characterized above as a pissing
match (presumably therefore of no interest except to urophiles)
was inherently more valuable to the purposes of usenet (in all its
splendid diversity) than even the funniest of the jokes. 
   The issue is censorship, the shutting off of available means
of communication because particular persons or groups using it do 
not meet an arbitrary test of respectability (as though *that*
were an intellectually valid category!). It is surprising --
I'll go further, it is shocking, and to me disgustingly so --
that this question is not *flooding* this newsgroup with concern
for the issue at hand. It is my thesis here that one of the
major goals of a significant fraction of our society -- a fraction
much in evidence in this discussion heretofore -- is the intentional
reduction of options for the exchange of ideas, simply because one
set of options does not accord well enough with the preconceived
values (in my view, entirely frivolous and neurotic ones too) of
holders of another set of options. This is, therefore, another
instance of the triumph of darkness over light, reduction over
synthesis, and the sort of orthodoxy that imposes its will on
others without regard for anything other than its own continuance.
It is anti-science. It is anti-human. It is not acceptable. 
-- 
==ARPA:==============anderson@unix.macc.wisc.edu===Jess Anderson======
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