I promise to stay on topic after this
I thought I'd made it clear I'd ducked out
of this thread. As a few of you seem determined to keep addressing me
I'll add this.
When posting to a 'public' space, responses to a post are not
necessarily responses to a person. Once the post is put out there, it
is open to discussion. Saying something like "This is what I have to
say and I am DONE, I don't want to hear any argument or responses!" -
sounds a lot like.... well, not wanting to discuss things that
disagree with previously held beliefs.....like a person may not want
to hear things that disagree with them. Which is something that you,
specifically, disparage.
In general, in WSS, we maintain a fairly high level of discussion, but
this does require....conversation.
I ducked out because I suspected some people would take it
personally. That sucks. I kinda hoped for a little more on this forum
but alas that is not the case. There has already been considerable
spin added to what I wrote, treated as an attack on custom makers and
attack on production makers blah blah attack attack attack. To the
contrary I simply made some observation statements about knives. These
knives come from somewhere, either custom or production, if someone is
going to get a bee up their arse when someone says something about
knives they don't want to hear pretty soon I won't be able to discus
knives with you at all. Sad.
My obersavation was that the original post in question (not the OP of
the thread) did include personal attacks- anonymous, or attacks on
persons as a set or class, but- attacks. What's sad, to me,
personally, is not being willing to discuss and clarify. (Addressing
the issue that you left out development of nonstainless steels over
the past several decades as well as the development of stainless
steels is an example of an area where I think a good discussion could
be had.)
If there is some inaccuracy in what I write feel free to challenge it
it you have evidence. It may be that I am wrong. titt certainly
corrected an inaccuracy in something I wrote recently and I welcomed
that. Or it may just be that I have deliberately missed something in
order to be succinct. My posts often drone on enough without me adding
in every little brain dump variable I can think of. Examples of which
here include me not digging about in the grey area of what is
stainless and what is carbon or the joys of ZPD-189 or something. As
one highly astute member pointed out the carbon vs stainless debate
comes up a lot. So had it crossed the mind of anyone that rather than
trying to tread that hackneyed old path I might have been trying to
explore new aspects of it?
But, you appear to be complaining about challenges. I don't know what
evidence to use to discuss challenges because ... well, no evidence in
support of a given position was supplied initially. "I said it, and
it's true and I have no responsibilty to back up my claims, it is the
responsibilty of people who challenge me" doesn't work well on a high
level- which is one of the things I enjoy about WSS: there is
generally a basis of evidence somewhere, from personal experience or
research.
Being succinct is good, but ignoring something like- just to re-use
my previous example on the metalurgical development of non-stainless
steels (and methods for working with existing steels for higher
performance)- this seems to me to be a key area where leaving out what
amounts to every steel except '1095' is not succinct, but inaccurate.
The various characteristics, in functionality and manufacturability on
different shop levels, of various steels *is* relevant to the OP's
question. Hackneyed or not.
What some people seem to be taking quite erroneously as an attack on
carbon blades [do I really need to qualify that for the purpose of
this post], probably because of their own vested interests, is
completely out of step with my objectives. There was no attack. The OP
asked about stainless and whether it was necessarily inferior....
This is, again, an area where more than one post (at least in my case)
was being responded to. There is a flavor in a section of this thread
where 'simple carbon' steel is being attacked. As old, outdated,
inferior, being made into myth, used by knifemakers to
price-gouge. Then there's this frequent reference to a disagreement
being out of selfishness- this feels like an attack on every
knifemaker reading this who works in non-stainless.
It also sucks because I had a good idea for a thread discussion on
another topic that I though might be interesting but on the basis of
what I'm dealing with here I wouldn't touch that with a stick. Someone
else might want to take it on though. Someone willing to twinkle toes
round the people that take stuff personally and actually try discuss
observable things.
Here is is – We know that the perception of helplessness is no friend
to the survivor. Capable effective people that take action and have an
internal locus of control fare better than people that conceive of
themselves as victims. So, what of the role of supernatural beliefs?
Does believing in a god and praying give people hope, and that enables
them to cope better with adverse circumstances? Or is it a self
defeating thing that one does when one gives up control? Good topic
huh.
Okay, there's a few problems here. One is that there's an appearance
(please, it's okay if I'm wrong, one reason I'm putting this out) of
"you all don't play my way, so I'm going to withhold this cool
discussion from you" - which is entirely too common on the internet
for me to casually ignore. I should, probably.
Another is that this type of discussion is often started from a
faith based atheistic, 19th century 'scientific'
viewpoint. This causes all other views to be out of the center of the
table and to even be involved int he discussion you have to bend
things to match a specific rule set and world view.
I am specific about this atheism being faith based as it's NOT
agnosticism, but a belief that anything not observed or observable
with old technology can't possibly BE real or observable.
There is also a tendency to equate ALL spiritual and religious beliefs
with a certain type of western God-ism. An example to the contrary- my
spiritual and religious beliefs do not include anything that would
count as a god in the most common english definitions of the word. A
higher power, certainly, but there's.... a difference. My religious
views also count it as flat out WRONG to give up control to another
being in the sense that many religions preach.
If one tries to have a conversation about supernatural beliefs that is
based on the idea that you know they are all false and just give
people a sense of hope, you won't have a very good discussion.
I ducked out because I suspected some people would take it
personally. That sucks. I kinda hoped for a little more on this forum
but alas that is not the case.
Once again-
Making accusations and claims, then ducking out without allowing for
any discussion- is not good. I, myself, hope for more on this forum- a
chance to clear up misunderstandings, more closely define broad brush
strokes, etc.
