I never really liked Hegel. I like Sun Myung Moon's alternative
to the Hegelian dialectic, as expressed in a book by the late
Dr. Sung Han Lee: 'Essentials of Unification Thought'.
For those with the background and capacity to understand it,
Dr. Lee's "Appraisal of Traditional Systems of Logic from the
Perspective of Unification Thought" at
http://www.unification.org/ucbooks/euth/Euth10-03.htm
shows that Jimbo's NPOV policy is actually closer to Rev. Moon's
idea than to Hegel's.
Yes, I'm actually calling an atheist "heavenly" :-)
Ed Poor
Jonathan Walther wrote:
> One way to state the NPOV policy is that it encourages people to use a
> Hegelian dialectic. I wish the NPOV policy could just say "Use the
> Hegelian dialectic". That whole thing about "neutrality" is delicate
> and confusing otherwise.
It really isn't that confusing if you actually read what we wrote about
it. It's a heck of a lot less confusing than goddamned Hegel. :-)
If you read the "write for the enemy" section you will see that the
current document actually specifically repudiates using anything like a
"Hegelian dialectic." (I take it Jonathan means that we ought first to
make the text biased in one direction, then biased in the opposite
direction, and then someone like me or Ed should come in and find common
ground.) That's not really how we've worked, and I think it's a grand
thing we haven't, too--because we don't have enough "synthesizers" and
far, far too many partisans who would be (and, when they can get away with
it, *are*) only too happy to use Wikipedia to advance their personal
causes, at least until the next step in the dialectic came along. ;-)
Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell
Jonathan,
1. Engaging in an edit war is beneath your dignity. I thought, based on
our private correspondence, that you were above such things.
2. *sigh* Must I remind you that two wrongs don't make a right? Warnings
will be directed at ALL parties who are in the wrong; not just the other
edit warriors.
Please try to understand the difference between objective fact and
neutrality. For example, that North Korea, Cuba, and the Soviet Union
were ruled by murderous tyrants is IMHO a "fact". Incredible as it may
seem, there are some contributors who dispute this fact. So, we are
forced by *our own policy* to step back from asserting "the truth" and
humbly stating that "According to sources X, Y and Z these lands were
ruled, etc."
Likewise, you may have some crucially important information about social
workers in your clutches ;-) but for the sake of our neutrality policy
WE MUST say, e.g., "Source X says that social workers are trained this
way, and Source Y says that social workers aid kidnappers, etc."
You've got these nasty SW fiends by the short hairs, Jonathan. If you
want to give them what Robert Heinlean calls the Kansas City clutch, all
you have to do, Jonathan, is attribute your sources.
What's so hard about that?
Ed Poor
Jonathan,
Are you and Clutch the same person? If so, please stop referring to
yourself in the third person. It makes me dizzy :-).
Ed Poor
-----Original Message-----
From: koyaanisqatsi(a)nupedia.com [mailto:koyaanisqatsi@nupedia.com]
Sent: Sunday, December 08, 2002 9:29 PM
To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: Re: [WikiEN-l] Clutch is on a POV tirade
Jonathan Walther wrote:
>Looks like Clutch is telling the honest truth, to me. Sorry you feel
>offended by it. Instead of erasing what he says, try to provide
>factual counter-views.
Nice tactic, except the burden of proof is on the people making
outrageous
claims to provide support for those claims. One encounters only a few
partisans and/or kooks before deciding they're not worth the trouble.
kq
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l(a)wikipedia.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
The latest digest claims to have five messages in it
when listed in my inbox, but when I open it there are
only three. Since no one's talking about anything but
Chinese spam (sounds tasty), I'm not worried about
missing anything too important but I do wonder if
anybody else has ever seen this.
Tokerboy
__________________________________________________
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Jonathan Walther wrote:
>Looks like Clutch is telling the honest truth, to me. Sorry you feel
>offended by it. Instead of erasing what he says, try to provide factual
>counter-views.
Nice tactic, except the burden of proof is on the people making outrageous
claims to provide support for those claims. One encounters only a few
partisans and/or kooks before deciding they're not worth the trouble.
kq
What do they have to do with each other?
Well, this was news to me a few days ago, but the article at [[Ireland]]
is restricted to the topic of the Republic of Ireland, and the article at
[[China]] is restricted to the topic of the PRC. The two articles (in
their current state) raise the issue of whether the names of ancient lands
and civilizations should be annexed to the dominant modern political
incarnations, to the exclusion of other, closely related states or
political entities. But this has nothing to do with *political* debates
over Northern Ireland or Taiwan, as I hope the following remarks will make
clear.
It's bizarre, but the issue developed in two totally different ways on
[[Talk:Ireland]] and on [[Talk:China]]. On the Ireland talk page, Scipius
was the only hold-out for the view that [[Ireland]] should be concerned
only with the Republic of Ireland. On the China talk page, Roadrunner was
apparently the only defender of the view that [[China]] should be about
all of China, not just the PRC.
A comment from Mav (whose judgment and hard work I admire virtually always
:-) ) suddenly turned a light on in my head (i.e., I had a sudden
realization). He said: "English speakers call it 'China' in overwhelming
numbers." I (just now--my China talk page comments are all brand new)
replied by saying the following:
Your pronoun contains the whole problem: English speakers call *what*
China in overwhelming numbers? They certainly use the word "China" in
overwhelming numbers, and it's safe to say that they use the word "China"
to mean "China" in overwhelming numbers. Even the following must also be
conceded: when referring to the vast modern state that rules over the
ancient land known as China, people still use the word "China" (rather
than "People's Republic of China"). But it seems that no one has noticed
that glib pronouncements such as "English speakers call it China" simply
do not entail that that is all that the word "China" means. The following
two statements are converses, and as they are universal affirmative
statements and as I just got done teaching intro logic, I'd like to point
out that they are not logically equivalent:
* Every time someone wants to refer to the PRC is a time they use the word
"China." (Not actually true, of course, but this is very often, even
usually the case.)
* Every time someone uses the word "China" is a time they want to refer to
the PRC. (Outrageously false. It totally depends on the context.
Chinese history isn't the history the PRC, for example.)
End of quote.
I think I understand now why Mav and some others were so seemingly (to me)
peremptory about the issue. It's because they are working on
[[WikiProject Countries]], and they take it to be in they brief to find
the appropriate short form name of every country on the list. I suspect
the people at work on this WikiProject see "People's Republic of China"
and say, quite reasonably, that people call the PRC "China"--that's the
popular name. Similarly for the case of "Republic of Ireland" and
"Ireland. But again, that doesn't mean that "China" always means the PRC,
or that "Ireland" always means the Republic. The PRC and the Republic
have been around for less than 100 years, and China per se and Ireland per
se are ancient and far greater and ultimately more important than the
modern states.
I think the biggest mistake here is failing to pay due attention to the
fact that the articles about nations and political entities and countries
are not limited to the list of names given in the CIA Factbook. In the
context of an encyclopedia, it seems pretty obvious that "China" should be
used to mean China--not just part of it--*all* of China, its whole
history, its many languages, its people (all of them), etc. This,
unfortunately or not, means that the article about the modern state, the
PRC, cannot dominate the page called [[China]]. Similarly, the article
about the modern state, the Republic of Ireland, cannot dominate the page
called [[Ireland]]. China and Ireland as topics are much bigger than
those states.
Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell
I just deleted a page of garbage and at the bottom of the deletion page it
says "This page has been accessed times. The page was last modified 23:59 Dec
31, 1969. This page is available under the GNU FDL.". Xo?
phma