ESR's Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto

[Undertoad]

My "dig" referenced your style because I refuse to even address arguments so full of ad hominem. I won't talk with people who do that kind of thing with malicious intent, why should anyone?

I will miss you if you go, but I press you with this: why would you want to hang around someplace where everyone agrees with you? Why would you be so mad at people who disagree with you? Why do you want to judge them not only incorrect, and ignorant, but aggressively, willfully so?

Most people who disagree with you aren't somehow basically broken; they just come at things from a different point of view than you do. You study things in depth from your direction, and so things that appear to be blatantly obvious to you may be blind spots to others. (And to others, the blatantly obvious for them is sometimes a blind spot for you.)

To take the step of deciding that those who disagree with you are in fact basically faulty is very intellectually dishonest. You do yourself a disservice. By coming to that conclusion, you ignore their points of view entirely. It closes your mind to the fact that there are many points upon which they are right and you are wrong. You think you cannot learn from them, so there is no point to sticking around.

See, nobody is always right. I made that my user title partly to remind myself that I'm sometimes wrong. Probably often wrong. The goal is not to be insecure in my own thoughts, but to allow myself to learn from others.

So when you say "you are wrong" in big bold letters -- call me "incredibly ignorant", "naive", etc. -- hey, I agree with you. I also find that it says much more about you than it does about me.