>Judging from your response on Gary Boyd's Cosmology post, perhaps it was
>just an oversight that caused you to forget about the dreadful
>implications of imposing some arbitrary set of values on the entire
>world.
When in the world have I ever spoken about *imposing* any *arbitrary*
values? I spoke about values that *everybody* could agree with, *emerging*
from a world-wide conversation that involves all of humanity, not just some
elite group of scientists politicians. Perhaps such values will never
emerge, but if they do I would not say that they would be arbitrary.
>But in your original Humanity post, you seem to say that some person or
>institution should use cybernetics, AI, self-organizing, complexity
>theory, systems sciences and a few other buzz word notions to arrive at
>a new scientific universal value system.
Another example of Norman's perverse misreadings of my original post. I
have never said, nor seemed to say, that someone *should* use any of these
ideas. I have just noted, as a response to the question "What are the
current trajectory of these factors (in this case, the emergence of a world
view)?" that cybernetics and related approaches seem to point to the
emergence of a world view, but that nothing definitive has come out of it
yet.
> I think you ought to consider
>the fact that you completely failed to articulate the substance of such
>a value system.
Of course, I failed to articulate these values, first because you can
hardly do so in two paragraphs, second, because I precisely wanted to make
clear that no such value system exists as yet. I have some ideas of which
values might be part of such as system, which I may detail later, but the
Humanity 3000 participant form was not the place to go into any complicated
and subtle expositions about philosophy.
> That omission leaves room for a sterile arbitrary set
>of values that could devalue and demean individual human dignity,
>rights, freedom and our capacity for self governance.
No, I'd rather say that my omission left room for a sterile debate about
what I *might* have said if I there would have been more space on the form.
>I thought carefully and long about the 'closet nazi' phrase before I
>used it. I considered the fact that it would be very hurtful and a
>nasty way to characterize your views of the future.
That only makes it worse. If you would have done it in a pique of anger, I
might still have understood. Now, I can only conclude that there is
something very wrong in the way you discuss ideas, by projecting your own
nightmares onto others's well meant scraps of text. As I hope to make clear
in my reply, if people would analyse a text the you way you analyse mine
they would be able to demonstrate without any problem that Nelson Mandela,
Mother Theresa, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, etc. are all nazis
(basically anybody who has ever spoken about the importance of values, or
political institutions, or having a world view) .
>I would also strongly suggest that
>you admit to any mistakes or errors of omission you may have made.
....
>Yet I really do want to see you redeem yourself.
OK, I admit to all my errors of omission! Please forgive me for not having
spelled out a complete system of values, world view, political system and
picture of the evolution of humanity up to the year 3000 in a two page
form. Am I forgiven now, o Father?
> If
>you simply try to blame it all on others by saying you were
>misunderstood, your motives and intentions will still remain highly
>questionable.
Yes, I suppose I'd better blame myself for having been stupid enough to
think that a single warning that this statement is by necessity short and
incomplete would have been enough. I should have repeated it at least 3
times, in the beginning, middle and end of the post.
I expected that this would be controversial, not because of what *I* wrote
there, but because *anybody* who tries to propose a picture of anything
that is important for our survival is bound to be criticized by everyone
around for all those critical aspects that were left out. I'd suggest you
to do the same exercise, and answer the same questions in the same allotted
space of two pages, questions included, as Tom Abel did. Then you'll see
how easy it is for others to criticize, misinterpret and make fun of your
ideas.
>I strongly suspect that when you wrote down these ideas, you were
>totally unaware of their potentially ominous implications.
I have been thinking about plenty of possible implications, good and bad,
of these ideas. Of course, I cannot see in my crystal ball what the future
will be, but my preliminary conclusion from years of reflection, reading
and discussion with various people is that the most likely implications are
totally different from what you read into them.
>Why do you think that there is one "world view" that will suffice for
>everyone on earth? More important, you seem to ignore the sovereignty
>of each individual to make up his or her mind on the "meaning of life".
>You clearly infer that there is some "right" world view that all human
>beings must conform to. What makes you so sure there is one true and
>right world view?
As I have explained in earlier comments on the many reactions which my
initial statement got, I see such a "world view" as a "metatheory", a
theory of all the possible ways of looking at the world with their
relations. I am not going to expand again on this idea: check my previous
post. Let me just quote from Principia Cybernetica Web
(http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ETERQUES.html), which proposes an extensive
sketch of the kind of world view I am trying to elaborate: "There are no
absolute truths. The truth of a theory is merely its power to produce
predictions that are confirmed by observations. However, different theories
can produce similar predictions without one of them being right and the
other wrong."
Perhaps part of the confusion comes from the fact that I tend to interpret
the concept "world view" the way it is used in Dutch ("wereldbeeld") or
German ("Weltanschauung"), which has more the connotation of an abstract,
universal philosophical system rather than a particular, biased perspective
on the world, as most English speakers tend to interpret the word.
>In your grand scheme of things, who decides what that universal world
>view ought to be Francis? Is it someone other than the individual? Is
>it the know-it-all scientists like yourself? Perhaps it is the
>academics? Perhaps the world's political and military leaders ought to
>decide what your universal world view ought to be.
>How can anyone today presume to have such an absolute authority and
>knowledge that they have a right to dictate to others what the meaning
>of life ought to be?
Nobody "decides" what the world view should be. Different people propose
different ideas. Those that seem to make most sense continue to hang
around, those that few people like tend to disappear. Hopefully something
coherent emerges out of the process. At no stage is there any active
suppression of alternative world views. One of the fundamental tenets of
the cybernetic world view (or "metatheory") is precisely the "law of
requisite variety": the more diversity you have in approaches, the better
you will be able to cope. (if you want to read a good book introducing the
systems and cybernetics world view, including the emphasis on global
modelling, value systems, the relativity of theories, and the need for
diversity, read "The Macroscope" (http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/MACRBOOK.html)
by Joel de Rosnay, a PCP associate, futurologist and thinker about the
global brain concept.)
> Isn't it up to each one of us to decide for
>ourselves what the meaning of our life is? Frankly Francis, I am
>appalled at your total lack of understanding of the crucial importance
>of individual personal sovereignty in deciding any question of values.
>Again, I am astounded that your proposed system of values seems to leave
>no room for any different systems of values or free choices with respect
>which values an individual may wish to select. You infer that no one
>has the right to choose or change his or her values.
Everybody can choose his values or meaning of life for himself. I again
quote from PCP: " Values cannot be derived from facts about nature:
ultimately we are free in choosing our own goals". However, the reason I
would prefer a consensual system of values is first, because many people at
the moment do not have a clear sense of values or meaning of life, and that
leads to great anxiety and confusion, second, that there must be some
coordination between individual values: if your system of values tells you
that all non-Muslims must be converted or killed, and my system of values
tells me that all non-Christians must be converted or killed, then we
obviously cannot live together in this world.
When I speak about a "system of values" I am again reasoning on a higher
level of abstraction, a "metalevel" if you wish, where I don't want to
prescribe specific goals to specific people, but rather find a method to
mediate between different goals and values so that they do not lead to
unsolvable conflicts. If you make the individual sovereign there is no way
to resolve conflict of goals, except by applying the law of the jungle: If
I want A, and you want B, but we cannot have both, then it is the strongest
one who will get what he wants.
> In your system of
>justice, who would decide how to best apply this uniform system of
>values? Who would have the ultimate responsibility to determine what
>does and does not conflict with your uniform universal system of
>values? And who would decide what the punishment for wrong behavior
>ought to be?
These are intrinsically different questions, to which we won't find any
perfect solutions. However, that does not mean that the problem cannot be
addressed. Society is based on the premise that its members subscribe to
certain agreed -upon values. For example, most societies agree that one
individual should not be able to take another individual's life. That
agreement about the value of life in this case has been formalized in law,
and is enforced by a system of justice and police. If you do kill your
neighbour, the police will put you in jail. The punishment is decided by a
court.
The system I suggest is not intrinsically different from the one of any
democratic state. The only difference is that because of globalization and
rapid scientific innovations, a whole range of new issues have appeared,
from human cloning, child pornography on the Internet to the greenhouse
effect, about which there is as yet no consensus among individuals and
nations on how to tackle them. Yet, some of these (e.g. the greenhouse
effect) will urgently need to be tackled if we want to avoid a catastrophe.
The system of values I talk about is meant to make it easier to reach
consensus about such issues.
>These are not trivial questions. I submit that your notion of a
>universal value system is woefully inadequate and fraught with fatal
>flaws. You seem to lack even a rudimentary understanding of political,
>social, cultural and economic fundamentals. In my opinion, your ideal
>scientific value system is a recipe for political, social, cultural and
>economic chaos.
So, according to you the present democratic system as it exists e.g. in the
US or Europe is a recipe for chaos?
>Do you really think that everyone in your proposed world wide political
>system will agree on this universal system of values? If so, I submit
>that your understanding of human nature is strongly influenced by the
>very
>kinds of "...dogmatic or culture specific traditions..." you are trying
>to expunge from your ideal value system.
I don't expect everybody to agree with everything: that, as you suggest, is
wholly unrealistic. That does not mean that at some stage when a large
enough consensus exists, that consensus could not be formalized as a law.
For example, if on the world level a consensus exists that slavery should
be forbidden, that does not mean that there aren't a few cultures perhaps
in Arabia or Africa where slavery still exists. But would you therefore
conclude that you should leave those groups alone and just let them keep
their slaves if that is part of their culture?
>You seem to be assuming that your own dogmatic or culture specific
>traditions are not dogmatic or culture specific traditions. Why is it
>that your unique system of values escapes being dogmatic or cultural
>specific traditions while none of the others do? You infer that they
>come from some special scientific or philosophical insights that trump
>everyone else's
>I submit that there can be no human value system that is free of
>cultural traditions and dogma. I further suggest that you seem to be
>attempting to impose a "scientific" objectivism into cultural,
>political, social and economic value systems. This is a grave error.
>In these arenas, there is no such thing as an objective true universal
>value system. You seem to be trying to impose the notion of
>scientifically verifiable physical truth on fundamentally non physical
>systems.
Science cannot specify any values: that is an accepted fact since a century
or so, and nobody would disagree with that (I again refer to PCP material
quoted earlier). However, what science can do is give you a better
understanding of what would happen if you would adopt one system of values
rather than another, by predicting what the effects will be of certain
actions or decisions. That, to me, seems a very useful guide when trying to
reach a consensus about those basic values that affect the whole of
humanity.
I don't say I have the perfect recipe to build a value system with the help
of science. However, to give you a taste of what can be done, I can
summarize the results from rsearch on what makes people happy. If you
believe that the greatest happiness for the greatest number is an ideal
worth striving for (which nobody can force you to accept, you might as well
prefer happiness for yourself and unhappiness for all the others), then it
is worthwhile to investigate scientifically which conditions are likely to
foster happiness. Well, the results of such a research (see
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/happines.html) are most informative: happiness in
different countries is strongly correlated with their level of health,
wealth, security, equality, knowledge and, note especially, personal
*freedom*. In other words, as my colleague Jan Bernheim and I have argued,
happiness is best achieved by fulfulling all the basic human rights.
>You are not alone in this. In the first half of this century, many
>people with the best of intentions throughout the world thought they had
>found a new and better scientific way to reduce or eliminate the
>uncertainties of political, economic, cultural and social systems. That
>they all made this same kind of mistake is evidenced by the ashes of the
>disastrous experiments and empires of the Soviet Union, Germany and
>Japan to name the most obvious examples. Can you begin to see why I
>chose to describe you and your ideas by using the pejorative
>reductionistic phrase 'closet nazi'? If not, read on.
Lots of ideologies produced disastrous results: some *called* themselves
"scientific", most of them did not but rather derived their authority from
religions or charismatic leaders. None of them *were* scientific. I define
"scientific" not as "supposed to be objectively true", as many
non-scientists naively would define it, but as "subjected to the scientific
method". As I explained in an earlier reply to you, the scientific method
is a slightly more sophisticated version of the *critical method*, and says
that no idea should be accepted on the basis of authority. Every idea
should be scrutinized, discussed, tested, and if possible replaced by a
better one. No idea or theory can ever be accepted as an absolute truth.
>I would also like to suggest that it may be possible to have a human
>value system that recognizes that there is no such thing as an absolute
>value system. This notion might then allow diverse sovereign individual
>human beings to have a broad range differences of all sorts. Such a
>system then might also attempt to provide some basis or system that
>would help all these diverse and sovereign individuals to work with each
>other.
>So what I am suggesting is that you might want to consider the paradox
>of a model system that lacks a system of human values other than the
>protection of the differences, sovereignty and human rights of all
>individuals
What you call a "system to work with each other" sounds very much like what
I called a "system of values". Perhaps we are just talking about the same
thing with different words. The "human rights", as I said, are a good first
approximation of what a universal values might be like. However, the human
rights do not address any ecological issues, such as the greenhouse effect,
pollution, biodiversity, etc. People have suggested to extend them with
"rights of the planet". I would be as happy with "rights of humanity",
since what is good for the planet is also good for humanity.
> Note that this is much different than a flexible or
>dynamic type of prescribed system of values that is designed to make
>sure each individual serves the larger good of the whole of humanity.
However, I don't think that "rights of the planet" can be reduced to
"rights of the individual", since for me, as an individual, it is better
that I am not restricted in the amount of fuel I can burn or garbage that i
can produce. It is only that if nobody cares about these things, in the
longer term everybody will suffer. That is the essence of the famous
"tragedy if the commons", another basic systems principle that should be
part of the world view that I'd like to see emerge.
>I submit that what you refer to as "...a practically enforceable
>political system...to manage global society..." regardless of its lofty
>sounding objectives, is a recipe for world wide tyranny. In this day
>and age, it's not often we come across someone with your know-it-all
>attitude and air of intellectual superiority who has the arrogance to
>propose such an all encompassing political system. But then to combine
>that practical political system with the powers needed to "enforce" a
>specific universal value system, harkens back to the 1920s, 30s and 40s
>and the failed ideologies and dictatorships of that era.
I thought you were not advocating anarchy? Every democratic state must
*enforce* its laws, otherwise there are no laws and no sustainable society.
If you don't put murderers in jail, they will go on murdering. What is so
"arrogant" about proposing something that every citizen in the world finds
the most natural thing in the world?
If we agree that genocides are a bad thing (a consensual value), should we
then just watch idly while the Hutus are exterminating a million Tutsis?
"Enforcing" your values means simply that you intervene in such cases. Your
obsession with uncovering dictatorial ideologies in my text is really
bordering on the ridicule sometimes.
>Surely it can't be your objective to argue that we ought to have an all
>powerful world wide system of governance. What would be the purpose of
>such a global state? Would it be to enforce the ideal absolute
>universal value system you suggest? Would such a system then also have
>the power to impose severe limitations on the rights, freedoms and
>sovereignty of individuals? Wouldn't that amount to a global police
>state?
The fact that an institution has certain powers is not the same as saying
that it should have the power to "impose severe limitations on the rights,
freedoms and
sovereignty of individuals". Whether any institution turns into a "police
state" depends on how it is organized, elected, monitored, etc. It has
nothing to do with the fact that it is either "global" or "national".
>On this side of the Atlantic, our forefathers and mothers came to the
>new world to get away from just the kind of central sovereign power you
>seem to be proposing. Are you suggesting that your supranational global
>power might someday try to take away our American individual
>sovereignty, liberty, rights and freedoms? If so, you can expect that
>if you try to do it by force, you will have another world war on your
>hands. Were it not for American help, you would probably be living
>under the strict oppressive despotic rule of some German or Russian
>dictator. How many times do we have to learn this lesson, Francis.
I hope I am wrong but your reasoning here sounds very much like certain
paranoid fantasies that seem to be popular in the USA at the moment and
that see the United Nations as some kind of a would-be totalitarian system,
and Kofi Annan as an incarnation of the Antichrist. I thought these ideas
belonged mostly to gun-toting machos living in cabins in Montana, ready to
defend themselves and their provisions against the others when society has
collapsed because of the Millenium bug. But they seem to have spread much
farther, I see ;-)
Seriously, now. Yes, a global system of governance would have certain
powers, e.g. to stop genocides, or to make sure that some nations would not
unduly pollute the planet, e.g. by producing 30 times as much carbon
dioxide as the others. Of course, I know that Americans would not like to
hear that message, and that may be one of the reasons why Americans seem to
be so allergic to supranational institutions. As a citizen of Belgium, one
of the founding members of the European Union, I have some difficulty
understanding that allergy. I don't have a kneejerk reaction that my own
country knows everything best, and should never surrender any sovereignty
to an institution at a higher level.
But I suppose I will not be able to persuade the citizens of the "greatest
democracy on Earth" that their country might have something to learn from
others;-) We here in Europe are free only because our great American
brothers have saved us, and we should be eternally thankful for that, I
suppose. And let's just ignore the slavery, race segregation and
McCarthyism that still ruled the US long after it had disappeared from
Western Europe. Really, Norman I did not expect you to be capable of such
short-sighted ethnocentrism.
>Perhaps I am mistaken, but you seem to infer that some trend towards
>supranational political integration is essential to solving world wide
>environmental, ecological and economic problems. You also seem to infer
>that this progress is a potentially good thing for all humanity.
Yes, that is what I am inferring. For once, you are not reading things in
my words that aren't there. All is not lost!
>Further, you seem to be saying that this supranational authority ought
>to be based on the new universal scientific world value system. The
>only thing missing from your argument for a new global power structure
>is the notion of the primacy and sovereignty of the individual.
>
>In fact, the creation of such a global political super structure could
>have the unintended consequence of subverting individual well being,
>freedom and sovereignty. And this would take place just when the notion
>of the rights and freedom of all peoples is beginning to take hold all
>over the world.
As I said, individual freedom (within the limits that it should not
restrict the freedom of others) is one of the basic values that should be
part of such a consensual value system. I did not mention it explicitly as
a "critical factor", because the present trend is towards increasing
freedom and democracy on the world level, and I see no reason why that
should suddenly be reversed. "Critical" factors are those I am not sure
about whether they will develop sufficiently.
I am not convinced that freedom is the same as "sovereignty of the
individual". If individuals were perfectly sovereign then you could never
deprive a criminal of his freedom. And you could never execute a murderer.
(by the way, that is another domain in which Western Europe is more
advanced with respect to human rights than the US: we have rejected capital
punishment as being barbaric decades ago, while it remains ever so popular
in the US).
>Our free will is a part of our human heritage.
Again, this one of the basic tenets of the PCP philosophy, that I can only
fully agree with.
> I maintain that we also have a
>deep appreciation and respect for the environment and ecosystems of
>which we are an integral part.
I am not so sure about that. The world would be a nicer place if everybody
had this inherited respect for the ecosystem. I'd rather believe that
respect for the environment is a learned value. That is why it needs to be
discussed, expanded, and promoted, rather than taken for granted.
>> 3. Supranational integration and global management meet with huge
>> resistance, because of the intrinsic selfishness of nations and groups,
>>> who
>> are unwilling to give up their privileges for the common good.
>
>Who decides what is for the common good? And why do you deem it so
>essential that existing states, groups and individuals give up their
>privileges? When I read this Francis, I see someone who wants to impose
>a new set of world wide constraints and regulations for the common
>good.
By definition the common good is defined by humanity as a whole. Of course
you will never get a complete consensus on anything, but democracy was
invented specifically for the purpose to be able to make decisions that
reflect *as much as possible* the desires of society as a whole. If in a
certain country you have a group, like the Soviet nomenclatura, or Saddam
Hussein's family and helpers, that profits from the efforts of all others,
while restricting their possibilities, yes, then they should give up their
privileges for the common good. If a certain country monopolizes or abuses
a common good (like Iraq putting fire to Kuwait's oil pits during the Gulf
War) or seriously transgresses the agreed-upon human rights, yes, then it
should be constrained in that.
>Are you now beginning to understand why I was so aghast at your post?
>Are you beginning to have any inkling of why I might consider using such
>a dreadful reductionistic way of "pigeonholing" you? Please defend
>yourself
>Francis. I don't want to think that you have such an awful world view.
>I don't want to think you are an evil person. I don't want to be
>correct about these interpretations. So tell me why I am mistaken.
Are you now starting to understand why *I* was so aghast of being compared
to the Nazis? The whole idea of you seeing nothing but "evil" in all these
well-intended, neutrally formulated observations simply flabbergasted me.
>Surely you are not inferring that communism was a "...credible political
>system...." Tell me it isn't so Francis. On the other hand, you also
>seem to be inferring that your new universal scientific world view can
>come up with a new "... credible political system to counter the obvious
>shortcomings of capitalism...." Would you like to spell out your ideas
>of what this new credible political system might be?
I guess you can guess the answer by now: no, I am not inferring that
communism is a credible system. I merely meant that while it lasted,
communism was seen by some as an example of an alternative system. At
present, there is no alternative to be seen for capitalism. In my view,
that means a lack of requisite variety, and I would prefer to see a larger
diversity of political and economic systems being considered. I don't have
a clear view of what the ideal political system would be. My own preference
goes in the direction of the kind of social democracy we have in W. Europe,
although it is clear to me that it still has many shortcomings.
>Do you really think that this "global brain" technology is the most
>important aspect of our future? Can't tyrannical governments and
>corporations abuse this technology and cause untold misery and
>deprivation amongst larger and larger groups of people. To me it is the
>quality of the ideas that may emerge from improved communications that
>is the most important. If the ideas are wrong headed, it will be a case
>of garbage in, garbage out. So as in all things, it is how we use these
>expanding capabilities that counts.
Tyrannical governments and corporations can abuse any technology. However,
insofar as we have experience with the Internet, the precursor of the
"global brain", it seems to foster openness, discussion and the free
expression of ideas that otherwise would never stand a chance in the mass
media, rather than control. A good example is the use of email that helped
stop the communist coup against Gorbatchov. In that sense, the net is
likely to also contribute to the *quality* of the ideas, especially if is
is extended with a number of "global brain" technologies, such as web
learning and support for model-building, which my colleagues and I are
working on.
>> I see humanity undergoing a "metasystem transition" to a higher level of
>> evolution.
>
>Based on the above, in my opinion, this is just your thinly disguised
>technical jargon for a global state with tyrannical power to subjugate,
>manage and control the freedom and rights of individuals world wide.
Instead of jumping to conclusions you'd better check the meaning of the
terms in that "technical jargon", for example in PCP web. A metasystem
transition increases the freedom, intelligence and creativity of the
system. The evolution from ape to human being is a fundamental metasystem
transition, comparable to the one I envisage with the global brain. I
suppose you'll agree with me that it increased our "free will".
>Again the subjugation of individuals to the good of some "super
>organism"
>is nothing more than a thinly veiled call for constraints on individual
>liberty, differences, autonomy and sovereignty. That might be the kind
>of world you envision Francis, but I want no part of it. I can't
>imagine anything more contrary to the rapid growth and awareness of
>human rights and freedom we are now witnessing. From what I can tell,
>your agenda would set humanity back by more than two hundred years. I
>find it hard to imagine anything worse.
Only two hundred years?
The superorganism is a metaphor for a well-balanced, co-ordinated, mostly
conflict-free society. A first requirement for any superorganism is to care
for the well-being of all the organisms that are part of it, basically by
freeing them from all the constraints and threats that they would be
unable to counter on their own. We are free from hunger and cold, and free
to move anywhere we want, because society (aka the superorganism) provides
us with supermarkets, highways and an electricity network. If you think the
concomitant constraints, such as the highway code or the fact that you have
to pay at the counter, reduce your individual sovereignty too much, you are
still free to go and live in a cabin in Montana.
>If your super organism adopts the universal scientific value system you
>seem to be proposing, I submit that it will be doomed to commit suicide
>in the form of a new world war. How many times do we have to learn this
>lesson, Francis?
On the contrary, one of the first effects of the value system that I would
like to see is that war would forever become unnecessary.
>I'm not usually in the habit of picking out nasty names for people or
>trying to pigeonhole them with some reductionistic prejudicial phrase.
[...]
>But
>when Tom Abel came forth with his silly notions about our limited
>resources and abilities to adapt and change, I just couldn't resist
>taking a single shot at the two of you. Incidentally, I agree with most
>of your comments refuting his zero sum approach.
So, calling Tom Abel's well-intentioned and clearly argumented remarks
(with which I happen to disagree, but that is no reason to a priori reject
them) "silly" and him a "zero-sum fatalist" is not "picking out nasty names
for people or trying to pigeonhole them with some reductionist phrase"? The
fact that you treat him in the same way as you treat me just confirms my
impression that you have to learn some basic rules of civility in
discussion. One of the rules of the "scientific method", which you seem to
have so much trouble with, is that you should attack ideas, not people, and
that your criticisms should be based on what your opponent precisely said,
not on what you think he might be intending.
>> As a "bad guy" I don't think I
>> could ever convince him of anything, so I will no longer try.
>>
>
>Suit yourself. But note that I don't want you to be a bad guy. Nothing
>would please me more than to find that I am completely mistaken. I'd
>even settle for partly mistaken. If I have made a big mistake, I will
>even be very glad to offer up my humble apologies. On the other hand,
>if the interpretations I've set forth above are close to the mark and
>you don't change, I truly think you potentially might turn out to be a
>"bad guy". So I hope you take what I've said seriously and I hope you
>will understand that my intention is to offer these thoughts and
>criticisms constructively.
As you see, I have responded in detail to your criticisms, even though I
first said I wouldn't. I apologize if my remarks sound quite harsh and
cynical towards you, but that was mainly to give you a taste of how it
feels when your every word is scrutinized in order to show how much "evil"
is hidden behind it.
I just wish to conclude that I really don't have the time to continue with
such extensive, "ad hominem" arguments, and therefore you should not be
surprised if I do not respond to further discussions about this.
Francis
________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Francis Heylighen, Systems Researcher fheyligh@vub.ac.be
CLEA, Free University of Brussels, Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium
Tel +32-2-6442677; Fax +32-2-6440744; http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html