From: nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos)
Subject: Back to you, Larry
Keywords: shown, proven, connotations
Organization: USC  Department of Computer Science
Date: 27 Jan 93 17:47:01 GMT

A few days ago I started a thread, "The ball's in your court, Larry"
involving a post which apparently defaulted to the local net a long time
ago, and of which I sent him a copy about a week ago.  I expected Larry
to fix up that post with some additions of his own, addressing the issues
in the post, just as he "posted something for me" a while back, but adding
lots of comments of his own, and what looked like a tangle of barbed 
wire in the left hand margin.  Come to think of it, it's probably just
as well he did not do that, and I get to post it in more or less its
original form.

The post is germane to a number of minor altercations I have had with
Larry (and even with Mark Cochran) this past month.  Larry accused me
of having lied about him, and this post contains one of the two cases known
to me where he accused me of lying with the evidence there next to his
accusation.  [There may have been others.]  The other case has been cleared
up already: I accused him of making selective deletions, he said I was
lying, I pointed out what I considered to be a selective deletion, and then
Larry let me know that he had a very selective definition of "selective
deletion" which allowed him to accuse me of an untruth (though hardly a
lie) with impunity in this case. [He also uses a definition of "lie" that
makes it synonymous with "untruth".] 

Anyway, here too [below] we have a case of me interpreting his words 
one way, him interpreting them another, and him at least *appearing* to
accuse me of lying [you can't always tell with Larry] as a result.

Also, Mark Cochran has accused me of being condescending towards people,
in that I used words to the effect, "Now, come on, Son."  In this post appear
THREE of the FIVE such expressions I recall using in the last SIX months,
and I will let readers judge how justified I was in using them.

Here we go:

Date: 24 Sep 92 18:31:05 GMT
Newsgroups: talk.abortion,alt.consciousness
Subject: Re: The fundamental question of abortion
Distribution: world

In <1992Sep22.235824.36109@watson.ibm.com> Larry Margolis <margoli@watson.ibm.com> writes:

>In  <nyikos.717180262@milo.math.scarolina.edu>  nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos) writes:

[addressing Ron Bense:]

>> Are you trying to pull a Larry Margolis on me?  Did you see what I wrote
>> about the Merriam-Webster definitions of "fetus" and "embryo" in the
>> J'ACCUSE thread?

>Did you see where I pointed out that that was unrelated to the definition I
>was quoting (one for "atheist", which you claimed related to a belief in
>an afterlife)? 

Still up to your old conditioned reflexes ("I pointed out that"), I see.
It related in the sense that you have a (probably feigned) naive faith
in the Merriam-Webster people, whom I caught in a ridicuous inconsistency.

> Did you see where I pointed out that *every* dictionary
>I've checked says "atheism" refers to lack of a belief in a God, and does
>not mention an afterlife at all? 

Sure, but we're talking about the real world, and a Methodist minister
therein, who was thoroughly convinced that there was no life after death.
If he believed in a "God" at all, he did not believe in the kind with the
ability to continue a person beyond death.  Nor in one capable of
surviving his own death, like Krishna and Rama, to name two non-Judeo-
Christian-Islamic gods.

You, Larry Margolis, are welcome to dismiss all this as baseless
speculation, but I am addressing the other people on this net as well
as you, and telling them that Larry Margolis goes by a very well chosen
definition of "speculation" that allows him to label as such almost
anything with impunity.

> Did you see where I speculated that you
>were trying to change the subject because you knew you were wrong about
>"atheism"?  Just wondering, since I didn't see a response...

Now this fits MY definition of baseless speculation.  I saw it, but I have 
lots of posts to reply to, and don't always have time to respond to the
rattling of empty barrels.

>> Bottom line: I believe that even the faintest awareness of one's sensations
                          ^^^^
>> is enough to qualify one for protection as a person, maybe not to the
>> extent of the 14th amendment, but certainly enough not to be deprived of
>> life without some very extreme circumstances, obtaining in well under
>> 10% of all pregnancies.

>And that awareness isn't possible before 28 weeks.
     ^^^^

Careful what you say, son.  If your "that" goes with mine, you have
just slandered me, and you know it.

>> after Margolis had accused me of ignorance of set theory and logic?

>Please stop lying about what I said.  I said you've *shown* ignorance,
>not that you *are* ignorant. 

I'll let readers judge for themselves just which of us is lying.  Here
is the relevant text of the most relevant post, between asterisks:

			*********************

>> >You've certainly shown no sign of it; in fact, you've shown yourself
>> >to be rather ignorant of logic and set theory.
>>
>> Careful what you say, son.  I am one of the world's leading experts
>> in set-theoretic topology and have reviewed 9 articles for the Journal
>> of Symbolic Logic, and over a hundred for Mathematical Reviews.

[A tedious passage using set theoretic language, yet having only trivial set
theoretic content, and using the word logic, yet having to do with 
empirical data, deleted.]

>Note
>that I didn't say that you *are* ignorant of logic and set theory, just
>that this is what you've shown us.
 
Sorry, son, you don't get off the hook so easily.  Perhaps your
literal-minded brain sees a substantial difference between:

">> >you've shown yourself
 >> >to be rather ignorant of logic and set theory."
and
":-(  you've proven
 :-(  you are rather ignorant of logic and set theory."

but to a normal person, the connotations of these two clauses are
essentially the same.  And in logic and set theory, the words "prove"
and "show" are completely interchangeable.

All kidding aside, I don't think you are as ignorant of connotations
as you are pretending to be here.  You are very adept at using the
clause "pointed out that" to create the connotation that the things
"pointed out" are verifiable facts.

			**************

[Surprise, Larry! I now know how to convert files into posts.]

> When I gave an example, you ran away.

Your example was laughably elementary.  It was a piece of propaganda
dressed up to look like a piece of set theory.  And the "logic"
had to do with empirical data, not reasoning.

[Obsolete comments about a de facto killfile deleted.]

Peter Nyikos
Newsgroups: talk.abortion