Ban Xah Lee

[Bruce C. Miller]

On Mar 7, 6:52 pm, Xah Lee <xah... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Of interest:
>
> • Why Can't You Be Normal?

Though I doubt this will do any good, I'll offer some advice that
hasn't been mentioned here and solved a lot of the problems I've had
early in life with resistance to overly-emotional negative reactions
to my opinions.

Say a person spends a great deal of time and energy researching some
topic and, based upon the evidence uncovered, comes to a conclusion
about it that is contrary to the established position within a
community, like, that RMS is a crackpot, as a simple example, which is
something I happen to agree with but that won't win many friends in
#emacs. Now, you could go in #emacs and declare your discovery of this
important fact (and, if true, it is important, since RMS is
influential), but what do you suppose will happen? Will your message's
recipients, upon hearing this news, examine your evidence, spend a few
days questioning their own beliefs, then thank you for aligning their
thoughts more closely with reality? It's possible, but chances are
you'll just be greeted with a bunch of knee-jerk defensive reactions.

So, let me offer to you a notion that maybe you haven't considered:
who cares what other people think? Sure, it's a noble cause to spread
your ideas or at least get them out there in the public discourse,
even if they're wrong, but have some realistic expectations as to your
opinion's impact. I happen to think that the "common wisdom" about
most things is typically anything but wise, and often completely
incorrect, but I don't view it as my duty on Earth to convince the
world that MS bashing, socialism, religion, etc are stupid. If asked,
I'll offer my opinion and reasoning for it, but if the other person
remains unconvinced, it's his loss.

All this said, as someone that hangs out in some of the IRC channels
you've been banned from, and having read the logs that resulted in
your banning, it's pretty obvious you've got other problems on top of
this. As often cited, your propensity for monologuing, for one. IRC,
Usenet, and such are conversational mediums, while you fail to make
the distinction between them and writing on your website. If you just
want to make declarations and honestly have nothing to learn from
others, then these are the wrong outlets for you. Your awkward grasp
of the English language doesn't help either. If you want to
communicate ideas, it can only help to master the language in which
these ideas are encoded (think about some of the things you have said
yourself about the importance of standard protocols). And, most
importantly, while I don't think you're an idiot by any means, you are
obviously very lacking in the realm of emotional maturity. The
spectacle you've made of yourself with this thread is proof enough of
this. You are a grown man, take whatever time you need to stare at
yourself in the mirror until you realize this and become determined to
act like one.