[extropy-chat] Famous author self destructs in public!Filmateleven.

[Brett Paatsch]

Mike Lorrey wrote:

>> I had enjoyed discussing abortion with you but when I asked
>> you if you'd checked out the Virtual Human Embryo site you
>> didn't tell me.
>
> I've been offline since yesterday, so I hadn't seen that message. I've
> been trying to get some more human reality lately....

Yesterday?, What short concentrations spans this young internet
generation has. I was refering to this post of the 21th May.
http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2005-May/016263.html

    See "Please tell me that you took a look at the link and whether you
    found it persuasive.  I will then feel more confident that I am not 
wasting
    the time I am investing in you."


>> Conversation with you can be like all rough foreplay and no
>> orgasm, in that one never gets to know if you have moved your
>> opinion one iota.
>
> The only way someone can move my opinions on something is to try to
> convince me how their policy opinion adheres to my principles closer
> than my own policy opinion.

Thats a pretty tall order for you place on anyone. They'd have to
understand *your* principles and *your* policy first in order to get
you to change your opinion. Presumably you would not change your
statements if you had not changed your opinion, so your most exteme
statements would just go out looking like flame bait and you'd never
retract them, or am I wrong in this chain of reasoning?

> IMHO too much of the pro-abortion types, even those that claim
> to be libertarians, tend to be of the same limited vision as bunkertarian
> or nationalist libertarian types who too easily draw lines in the sand
> beyond which they will not lift a finger to defend the liberty of
> others.

>From what you say above it seems to follow that no one would be
able to change your opinion if they saw you merely as a type and
not specifically as Mike Lorrey, because you would just shrug it off
and say, and think, 'hey I'm not just a type', I'm Mike Lorrey (and
you'd be right). BUT then you throw types around so liberally
yourself. You don't seem to cut others the same degree of personal
slack that you demand they show you in order to change your view.

You have known Samantha and me and others that post to this list
to some extent at least for years. When do the statements of people
you know get to be treated as statements by people that are not
just types? I'm not trying to be a smart aleck, I'm just genuinely
wondering.

> They lack the vision to see that those who blithely decide that
> some people shouldn't live, given enough time to consolidate
> and grow their power, will eventually turn their attention to the
> line drawers who think their own position secure.

If you look at the above link and the ones around it you'll see
that I went quite a distance with you (in terms of time spent
and lines of your text I had to read to check out what you
had to say, and I was happy to do that, but I didn't get much
by way of concrete feedback when I asked for it, and in terms
of you developing your ideas I don't know if much came of it
for you).

This meant that I didn't know if I had wasted my time trying to
talk to you or not. If I can never effect you enough for you
to treat me as more than a type then why should I continue
to try and treat you as more than a type?  You and I are mortals.
We want to think our time spent and invested in others is not
wasted, or at least I do. Aren't you the same?

Brett Paatsch