From: mpd@netcom.com (Mike Duvos)
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 07:28:52 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: The Big Lie
In-Reply-To: <9601282214.AA13074@sulphur.osf.org>
Message-ID: <199601282309.PAA28023@netcom13.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Rich Salz <rsalz@osf.org> writes:

 > That's an interesting point, but it does not apply to the
 > majority of humanity.  "The Holocaust" is not an O.D. of
 > something, it is a shorthand term for things like Final
 > Solution and the camps.

Regardless of what one wishes to call such a term, there are
obvious dangers to using shorthand, abbreviations, OD's,
acronyms, and other such things as if they possessed predictive
power, or some magical ability to explain the things they
reference by virtue of their construction.  It is of course even
sillier to question their existence.

If I define "Salz Syndrome" as a tendency by people named "Rich"
to post messages suggesting that discussions of Holocaust
semantics are off-topic for the Cypherpunks list, then I have to
a certain extent stacked the deck when rhetorically asking
questions like...

     Why does Rich post such messages?

Or when I answer a question about the legitimacy of Saltz
Syndrome as a real disease by feigning surprise and saying
indignantly - "Surely you are not suggesting Saltz Syndrome
doesn't exist!?"

By the same token, I don't feel "Did the Holocaust happen?" is a
particularly well-formed or useful question. The answer, by
almost any criteria, is most certainly "Yes", and answering the
question tells me nothing I didn't know before I asked it.

All of this is of course orthogonal to the point I was trying to
make, which is that while such flaws of logic and debate go
largely unnoticed in the unconnected world, and often result in
the winning of debates, they generally get flamed royally on the
Net, where a different set of rules apply.

--
     Mike Duvos         $    PGP 2.6 Public Key available     $
     mpd@netcom.com     $    via Finger.                      $