CRAP! I just lost my entire post! I hae it when that happens. Here goes again...
Ketsugo:
if you search this thread you will not see an apology from Mick. That is beside my point. What I argued for is that what you said was not "just an opinion", and it was not the same thing Mick did. An opinion would be to say "Mick was wrong to tell SKTRGNLDR to F off." An argument would be to say "Mick was wrong to tell SKTRGNLDR to F off, and here's why..." The ... is where premises are given which are meant to support the conclustion that, in thi shypothetical example, Mick was wrong to tell SKTRGNLDR to F off.
You think Mick was wrong. That is fine. To respond in kind to Mick would be to tell him to F off, from your perspective. Instead you insinuate that Mick has such a bad attitude that he probably got a DISHONORABLE DISCHARGE from the militaty as a result of it, as evidenced by Mick's e-mail response. You address this claim in your last post, saying, "Please don't misquote me! I stated Wonder if he received a dishonorable discharge?!? BIG difference. IMO."
What you have offered is not an opinion, but an insult. The concept of conversational implicature shows that your correct quote still is an insult. To say that you wonder if mick received an honorable diischarge is to imply that Mick's attitude is so bad, it is likely the reason that Mick is no longer in the military. Furthermore, the reason that Mick is no longer in the military is that he was dishonorably discharged. Conversational implicature is akin to talk of the letter of the law and the spitit of the law. You weren't really wondering if Mick was dishonorably discharged. Given the context of this entire thread, you brought up "dishonorable discharge" to insult Mick, not because you were wondering about a fact of the world. Even IF you were JUST WONDERING, given the context of this thread you still should not have posted your statement.
Think of it this way. Suppose we were discussing physics. There is a debate in mysics about Einsteinian Relativity and Quantum mechanics. Both theories have been experimentally verified to great degrees and impact our lives daily. But the problem is that the two theories seem to contradict each other. That is enough backroung for my point, as this is not physicsforums.com! So, suppose you were arguing that Relativity will win the day in this dispute. Now, in response, suppose I said, "Yeah, but Relativity isn;t going to win out as it isn't as powerful as Quantum mechanics and as Einsten wrote it, Relativity doesn't capture non locality. Hmm.. wasn't Einstein a Jew anyway?"
My wondering about Einstein's heritage canbe seen as just that; wondering. But given the context (the debate about physics), by conversational implicature I am being anti-semitic. In logic it is called an ad hominem argument, and is fallacious. Perhaps what Mick did was wrong, but argue about why the act was wrong. Insulting Mick is a dishonorable thing to do. You can do the honorable thing and apologize for your wrong act which is a separate incident from Mick's e-mail. If you say, "I won't until he won't", then you aren't seeing th epoint. It maters not who said what and when and to whom and all that, really. If you did something wrong, and I ARGUED that you did, you should own up to it.
Mick is a moral person himself, and I want to share something that occurred on a thread made early on when the Strider Forum just opened. Mick said this in a thread:
A word or two on sharpened crowbars
There is a lot of talk these days about "tactical knives." If you look through the forums,
you will no doubt notice it. When I look through these posts, I can't help but notice that
the word "tactical" has been bastardized quite a bit. Now it basically means BLACK.... I
guess... In one post I think it was summed up rather nicely:
"Is it vouge now to have the thick tactical look or do these knife really have an
advantage? "
With the exception of correcting the misspelling of "tactical" this is a direct quote. I have
no idea who authored this quote, it isn't important. It's the idea I'm after. The thought
that this person, and others, think this way. I can't decide to laugh or vomit.
Mick went on to offer reasons why the spirit of the quote was wrong. Also, Mick wanted to keep the person quoted anonymous, as Mick wanted to talk about the content of the quote, not the person quoted. Well, the person came on the thread and posted. He said that the quote was his, but then did 2 things. The poster filled in more details about what he said and why he said what he said to help us readers out. As well, the poster said that Mick only partially quoted him and didn't accurately capture what was said. In response, Mick said this:
Okay...
First of all, you're a stud for coming forward and claiming my clipped phrase. Very honorable indeed.
Secondly, your post didn't offend me. I wanted to address the topic, your post expressed the thought that I was after: The fact that there are people out there who are using knives to do things that maybe shouldn't be done with a knife. But if they did not, your safety would be in jeopardy. Sometimes knives must be tools. Sometimes people forget. That bugs me. Those people should be thought of.
I'm sorry if my posting of your quote was offensive. It wasn't meant to be. I had in fact hoped you would remain unanimous, but am glad you have not. E-mail us, we'll send you a shirt or something.
Notice that Mick apologized for the partial quote and thanked the poster for his response. Also, Mick said the guy had a lot of balls for standing up for himself when he thought he was wronged. The poster received a shirt for doing so as well.
I offer the anectode to temper temptations to attack Mick personally. As I have said before, if you have a problem with what Mick said, go ahead and say so. If you want to argue that Mick was wrong (or right), please do so. Make sure you offer premises to support your conclusion. If you want to insult Mick, through conversational implicature or directly, you do nothing but dishonor to yourself.
There is nothing wrong with admitting when you have been dishonorable. To repeat what I said earlier, I e-mailed a forumite apologizing for doing what I thought was a dishonorable thing to a person to whom I look up to. In response, the person actually told me I did nothign wrong. But I felt I did do something wrong and I apologized for it.