Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!uwvax!uwmacc!anderson 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====== | UUCP: {harvard,seismo,topaz, (avoid ihnp4!) 1210 W. Dayton | | akgua,allegra,usbvax}!uwvax!uwmacc!anderson Madison, WI 53706 | ==BITNET:======================anderson@wiscmacc===608/263-6988=======