From: Douglas Brooker (dbrooker@clara.co.uk)
Date: Tue 17 Jun 2003 - 05:37:03 GMT
The regular contributors to the list are mainly Americans and the list
serves a useful function for people interested in learning about how
Americans interact with each other.
Some one might write a nice concise paper on the frequency with which
the term "ad hominem" arises in American scholarly discourse. This is
something that could be quantified and compared to other countries,
where my experience suggests it is quite rare. This might say something
about Americans, and about other countries.
The dispute is also interesting because of the proximity in a single
source of data of subjective discussion about a topic, and a
manifestation (perhaps largely unconscious) of what is being talked
about.
Jkr438@aol.com wrote:
> I really don't know how this topic has anything worthwhile to add to
> the subject of memetics. I again suggest either ending this and
> related threads or stopping both Joe Dees and Ted Dace from posting to
> the memetics list. From reading responses on here, I am obviously not
> alone in this point of view. Yes, someone has mentioned to me that I
> can simply delete posts from them and not read, but reality simply
> doesn't work this way. You let people like Joe Dees and Ted Dace act
> like mindless propaganda spewing jerks and then others join in, or
> eventually others take it as their cue to mindlessly spew their own
> mindless propaganda. Eventually you don't have a worthwhile forum
> anymore. Already many people in the real world as well as academia,
> think that memetics is some sort of fantasy or science fiction joke.
> This kind of crap only confirms it. They can now sign up to memetics
> mailing list and have to delete dozens many political propaganda rants
> dripping with ad hominem that they could have probably found by any
> group amateur flamers anywhere on the Internet of similar subject and
> definitely of similar caliber. It doesn't take long for a person to
> assign this stupidity to the forum in general and simply walk
> away/cancel their subscription/ or otherwise never read it again.
> This forum used to be worth reading. I am beginning to have my doubts
> anymore.
>
> Love,
>
> -Jake
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