[EM] Discourse

[Benjamin Grant]

Thanks for everyone's candor and feedback. I can certainly appreciate how
annoying it is to deal with someone like myself that 1) is often asking
questions that everyone else had heard many times before and knows the
answer by heart, and 2) someone who may not be able to understand the
explanations when they are given.

I am running into #2 a lot, so much that I am wondering if this list is
really mostly for people who are already trained, steeped, and comfortable
with concepts like utlity and Batesian regret, with high level math and set
theory, and so on.

It may simply require more time and effort than I have to give to understand
the answers to these questions, I certainly do not have the option presently
to take courses in these advanced subjects. I was hoping there would be a
more down-to-earth way to "get" this stuff, but whether there's no way to
"dumb" this stuff down, or whether it's just not something that people here
are interested in, either way I can appreciate it.

Finally, while I was surprised that erudition didn't eliminate the
"churlishness", my best approach to that fact is probably to get a thicker
skin. I'm not promising to be a punching bag, mind you, but I can probably
be a little less sensitive and just assume that these groups are more
pugnacious than I had imagined.

Thanks everyone. I'm going to keep my subscription to these groups for now
(if I may), and I will try to be mindful of all of the above if and when I
continue interacting with them.

-Benn Grant
eFix Computer Consulting
benn at 4efix.com
603.283.6601