[EM] 2nd Matt reply--12/20/03

[Diana Galletly]

On Sun, 21 Dec 2003, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote (of Matt):

> Yoiur protectiveness toward Markus is laudable, and I'm not criticizing
> that. But you need to understand that you're one of those people who, when
> something angers you or arouses your protective instinct, is ruled entirely
> by emotion, so that you send to us a "refuting" posting that either refers
> to no actual statements (refutation pretty much requires that you say
> exactly what you're refuting), or else makes a quite false statement such as
> your claim that Markus didn't say that our algorithm didn't work.

I have been following this discussion with increasing amounts of
astonishment.  I can make neither head nor tail of what is going on.
My hypotheses thus far have been

(i) Only about half the mails are reaching Mike and Markus, such that
each believes that they have already said something that the other hasn't
seen.  So they become frustrated and believe that they are repeating
themselves over and over again (which in fact they are!) whilst the other
one has never seen the first instantiation of the message.  Perhaps they
have each other's messages filtered into /dev/null :-)

(ii) That whilst their written English appears to be pretty good, one or
the other of them has comprehension difficulties.

(iii) That one or the other of them is a computer rather than a person ;-)

Also I don't see the need for the insults.  Calling people "idiots", telling
them there must be something seriously wrong with them, and patronising
people by telling them that their reactions are driven by their emotions
rather than rationality is not helpful.

I was of the belief that both Mike and Markus are staunch Condorcetites.
Think how this petty squabble is just playing into the hands of someone
like Craig Carey, who also appears to use insults as his stock-in-trade
(as well as being pretty incomprehensible).

Diana.