[discuss] [IANAtransition] Troll

Thu Apr 17 00:41:16 UTC 2014

Perhaps this portion of the thread might now  be taken off list? or be 
renamed nuances of language use in common and civil law jurisdictions...

On 4/16/2014 7:17 PM, Shatan, Gregory S. wrote:
>
> I don't know Goodwin's Law.  If you are referring to Godwin's Law, we 
> have not reached that point in discourse, yet, so I don't think it 
> applies.
>
> I'm not sure how the claim that I have "lost the argument" follows 
> from your prior statements, or is true in any fashion.  In my reading 
> on "fallacies of argument," I don't believe I came upon "unilateral 
> declarations of victory" as one of the commonly cited fallacies.  But 
> it probably should be.
>
> Since you as a Frenchman follow the French "official definition" and I 
> as an American, find my (different) usage supported in the American 
> Heritage Dictionary among other places, I think that underlines my 
> prior point, which is that there are variant meanings, and if one 
> wants to say "personal attack," it may be better to just say it, since 
> "ad hominem" will be understood by some and not others to be 
> synonymous with "ad hominem."  While it would be amusing to further 
> explore "ad hominem," it would not be germane to this list.  I'd 
> rather try to define "multistakeholder...."
>
> Greg Shatan
>
> *From:*JFC Morfin [mailto:jefsey at jefsey.com]
> *Sent:* Wednesday, April 16, 2014 11:18 AM
> *To:* Shatan, Gregory S.; 'Michel Gauthier'; Jay Daley; 
> ianatransition at icann.org; discuss at 1net.org List
> *Subject:* RE: [IANAtransition] Troll
>
> Gregory,
>
> You are obviously an honest person. Kudos.
>
>
> Even if you did not take Latin at school,
> 1. you know about Goodwin's law. You have, therefore, lost the 
> argument, if there was one :-) !
> 2. you can accept that there are two different things to name: to 
> discuss other people's texts or person.
>
> The difficulty with English is the "common law" syndrome, where the 
> commonly used meaning precedes the "contracted" (in 
> dictionary/etymology) meaning. This is a big problem for the naming 
> space that we are discussing here as non english-native may think it 
> makes it unstable, and inadequate for computers direct entry. This is 
> the main reason for the distrust in some Anglo-Saxon global taxonomies 
> (where they easily confuse the name that one should put on the record 
> and the object one can sell). This is perhaps why ISO uses English and 
> French texts. Each language has their own complementary pros and cons: 
> let say that English is advantageous for politically changing 
> standards and French for norms.
>
> I am sorry, but I am French and I follow the French official 
> definition (very short) that you can find at 
> http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/ad%20hominem. This is Schopenhauer's 
> definition, which is well known in "mail-combat".
>
> It is worse than Goodwin's Law, which only refers to texts. Ad hominem 
> is often the path to ad personam, which among honest, intelligent, 
> informed, independent people demonstrates an inability to oppose the 
> person's arguments, either by personal incapacity or by logical 
> impossibility.
>
>
> Now, my strategy is simple, it is to evidence the boringly hidden 
> evidences that harm people's interests and, therefore, my, and my 
> people's and friend's, interests.
>
> In 1977, I was interested in Associations and SoHo operational 
> networking and I wanted to build my own civil and professional 
> international networking capability, optimizing to my advantage what 
> was credibly proposed in the digital field.
>
> There were three credible network technology applied "cultures";
> - one was private by Norm Hardy. It was user centric (Tymnet),
> - one was French Gov. research. As such it was open network centric by 
> Louis Pouzin,
> - one was French PTT projected plans. That Rémi Desprès has 
> technically led.
>
> The difference was in the globalism, equality, and neutrality priority 
> order.
>
> The CCITT (ITU) project favored equality among the users. It was to 
> start from the global monopolistic bandwidth and add a data capacity 
> on an equal footing for everyone. This is what the French Gov. favored 
> with Transpac and Minitel.
>
> Vint Cerf's project (EIN 48) favored the extension of local to global 
> in a first time, to experiment first a global coverage for the USG 
> ARPA, and then to extend it to other technologies.
>
> I chose to follow the first one. Tymnet provided me (and everyone, 
> which is why we made 100% of the international packet switch services 
> start using it) with a neutral and open capacity that soon proved to 
> be consensually accepted as global and reasonably equal (within the 
> structural limits of the US law; no problem in France once Transpac 
> started). I created  further the Tymnet Extended Services department, 
> including our "Eurolab" with the "VGN for all" project and even a 
> both-ways international Minitel gateway, with US and Canadian Minitel 
> accesses.
>
> Obviously, politics interfered: the French Gov closed Louis Pouzin's 
> project at the end of 1978 that we had planned to interconnect, but we 
> connected ARPA to support Jean Ichbiah ADA work at CII-HB (which 
> produced the machines for the two French projects). 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Ichbiah. We were all in the Paris 
> west-area.
>
> Legally, there was the need to compose with communications monopolies.
>
> 1.  the FCC had to introduce neutrality vs. non-neutrality (basic vs. 
> value-added [now enhanced] services) to permit Telenet and Tymnet to 
> legally operate outside of the ATT Bell System monopoly. In addition, 
> the FCC gave Tymnet a license to document the US naming, as Telenet 
> only used digital addresses (IP and key CCITT X.25 contributors with 
> the French teams).
>
> 2. we deployed network traffic and technology neutrality worldwide 
> with PTTs, where there was no legal problem. This made us hold mixed 
> public operators/private network projects (at that time, I attended 
> Group III meetings in Geneva in the State Department delegation!).
>
> However, international and technological network neutrality (we had a 
> large catalog of [cross-technology interfaces]) turned out to be to 
> the US mainstream industry disadvantage in permitting French, 
> Canadian, German, and US start-ups to compete with them. McDonnell 
> Douglas counter-strategically acquired Tymnet and strangled its 
> technological neutrality, while PTTs in several countries made 
> neutrality legal: the OSI platform was the law and it was to be 
> contractually guaranteed by operators.
>
>
> Architecturally things have not changed very much but they have 
> matured. The Internet developed based on Louis Pouzin's datagram and 
> network of networks catenet concepts, but it is still at its first 
> experimental stage. It has, therefore, not reached the transparent 
> neutrality capability. It is still unable to interconnect 
> non-I*technologies, hence all the Web, Apps, etc. patches that have 
> been made a "feature" by the RFC 6852 economic standardization 
> paradigm. It is still unable to support privacy, prevent spam, insure 
> security, etc. There is only one thing it does well: support 
> non-neutrality.
>
> The architectural reason why is that there is a lack of a border 
> between the network and the user areas: the concept of a smart 
> multi-technology and robust barbican (OSI presentation layer six) has 
> not been implemented yet (people are only allowed to build firewalls, 
> anti-viruses, spam-filters, use ISP nameservers, daily lose their IP 
> address). This has permitted the fostering of a non-neutral intrusive 
> (they call it inclusive) technical practice, decentralized among main 
> edge providers, i.e. true stakeholders (NSA, Google, Apple, Microsoft, 
> Facebook, etc.) which populate and sponsor ISOC, Unicode, OpenStand, 
> IEEE, W3C, etc.
>
> However, IDAN2008 and RFC 5895 have shown that the EIN 48 project has 
> nominally progressed. This is probably why the internet project fared 
> so well: it is simple and consistent, even if it suffers from the 
> Loc/ID BUG (in order to Be Unilaterally Global): IETF has developed 
> all of what is end to end (barbican to barbican) necessary in order to 
> build the Internet informed intelligent interfaced user (IUser)'s 
> Barbican at the fringe (*) and to relate from Barbican to Barbican, as 
> it was integrated in CCITT OSI and the core of the use oriented Tymnet 
> neutrality.
>
> (*)  Brian Carpenter will explain to you what it means. There is a 
> divergence on the edge/barbican location. Vint Cerf wanted it on the 
> network side, and I got it on the user-side. This is what is referred 
> to as the "presentation layer on the user side" (PLUS).
>
> This fully addresses my 1977 expectations, and what the WSIS 
> unanimously demanded in calling for a "Human Righted" people centered 
> information society. This is what the WCIT majority called for in 
> Dubai. This permits the protection of our humanity from the "open 
> gates" business greed of the US edge operators. This permits our 
> personal democratic choices, and protects fair competition from MS 
> collusion and economic invasion.
>
>
> My only targets are:
>
> 1. to devise, develop, experiment, and deploy my digital relational 
> space (VGN) from my "smart barbican" (or IUI: intelligent use 
> interfaces) and organize with others the protected, free, and 
> innovative digital fringe to fringe relational ties (this is the 
> InterPLUS).
>
> 2. to test if the olicannopole wants to cooperate and dialog on an 
> equal footing basis or not. I have nothing against them (and do not 
> need them: they only use a very tiny portion of our technologically 
> available common spectrum): we only need to know if we can cooperate 
> or coexist in peace, or if they have decided that they cannot survive 
> us. In that case, we will only ignore them, as long as they do not 
> claim to represent and fight us. Anyway, time and self-ordered 
> criticality play for us.
>
> They should also remember who is paying them.
>
> Obviously, banning on the ground that I am a dissenting Stakeholder or 
> because I am not a Stakeholder who no right to free speech because I 
> speak the truth about the technology and users would make an 
> interesting last minute contribution to Sao Paulo.
>
> jfc
>
> PS. I suppose that if they ban me, they will quote this mail as having 
> been sent after collective warning and will attach it to the decision. 
> It will make at interesting reading for those wanting to understand 
> how well ICANN has prepared this debate framework (and therefore its 
> ability to frame far more complex IG cases than mine).
>
>
> At 05:16 16/04/2014, Shatan, Gregory S. wrote:
>
> I was going to say that you were the confused one, but instead, I did 
> some research.  My conclusion is that the usage itself is hopelessly 
> confused.  (In other words, neither of us are confused per se.)
>
> A quick survey reveals that the use and meaning of the terms ad 
> personam and ad hominem seem to be so thoroughly confused and jumbled, 
> both in academic use and popular discourse, by so many people, that it 
> is probably better to stay away from them entirely, and just say what 
> one means without resort to Latin.
>
>  Indeed, it appears that there are so many whole essays and scholarly 
> articles -- even books -- written on the various meanings of ad 
> hominem, that it would be worthless for us to discuss it.  I expect 
> that if you brought a Classicist, a logician, a philosopher and a 
> student of rhetoric (Classic? "New"?) together to discuss the meaning 
> of ad hominem (and ad personam), they would probably come to blows.  
> And I'm sure that each one would say he (or she) was right and the 
> others were wrong.  An argument among scholars of argument about 
> differing theories of argument would be rather amusing....
>
> Contrast the following:
>
> A.  From Peter A. Angeles, Dictionary of Philosophy-- published by 
> Barnes and Noble, copyright 1981.
>
> 3. Fallacy of argumentum ad hominem (argument against the man) . The 
> Latin means "argument to the man." (a) Arguing against, or rejecting a 
> person's views by attacking or abusing his personality, character, 
> motives, intentions, qualifications, etc. as opposed to providing 
> evidence why the views are incorrect. Example: "What John said should 
> not be believed because he was a Nazi sympathizer."
> ...
> 6. Fallacy of argumentum ad personam (appeal to personal interest). 
> Arguing by appealing to the personal likes (preferences, prejudices, 
> predispositions, etc.) of others in order to have an argument accepted.
>
> B.  Arthur Schopenhauer, The Art of Controversy, XXXVIII:
>
> A last trick is to become personal, insulting, rude, as soon as you 
> perceive that your opponent has the upper hand, and that you are going 
> to come off worst. It consists in passing from the subject of dispute, 
> as from a lost game, to the disputant himself, and in some way 
> attacking his person. It may be called the argumentum ad personam, to 
> distinguish it from the argumentum ad hominem, which passes from the 
> objective discussion of the subject pure and simple to the statements 
> or admissions which your opponent has made in regard to it.
>
> C.  Listverse, 30 Latin Terms Explained:
>
> Ad Hominem: An ad hominem argument consists of replying to an argument 
> or factual claim by attacking a characteristic or belief of the person 
> making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance 
> of the argument or producing evidence against the claim. It is most 
> commonly used to refer specifically to the ad hominem abusive, or 
> argumentum ad personam, which consists of criticizing or personally 
> attacking an argument$B!G(Bs proponent in an attempt to discredit that 
> argument.
>
> D.  The American HeritageR Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth 
> Edition copyright c2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. 
> Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
>
> ad hom$B!l(Bi$B!&(Bnem$B!l(B adv.
> Usage Note: As the principal meaning of the preposition ad suggests, 
> the homo of ad hominem was originally the person to whom an argument 
> was addressed, not its subject. The phrase denoted an argument 
> designed to appeal to the listener's emotions rather than to reason, 
> as in the sentence "The Republicans' evocation of pity for the small 
> farmer struggling to maintain his property is a purely ad hominem 
> argument for reducing inheritance taxes." This usage appears to be 
> waning; only 37 percent of the Usage Panel finds this sentence 
> acceptable. The phrase now chiefly describes an argument based on the 
> failings of an adversary rather than on the merits of the case: Ad 
> hominem attacks on one's opponent are a tried-and-true strategy for 
> people who have a case that is weak. Ninety percent of the Panel finds 
> this sentence acceptable. The expression now also has a looser use in 
> referring to any personal attack, whether or not it is part of an 
> argument, as in "It isn't in the best interests of the nation for the 
> press to attack him in this personal, ad hominem way." This use is 
> acceptable to 65 percent of the Panel. $B!&(B Ad hominem has also 
> recently acquired a use as a noun denoting personal attacks, as in 
> "Notwithstanding all the ad hominem, Gingrich insists that he and 
> Panetta can work together" (Washington Post). This usage may raise 
> some eyebrows, though it appears to be gaining ground in journalistic 
> style. $B!&(B A modern coinage patterned on ad hominem is ad feminam, 
> as in "Its treatment of Nabokov and its ad feminam attack on his wife 
> Vera often border on character assassination" (Simon Karlinsky). 
> Though some would argue that this neologism is unnecessary because the 
> Latin word homo refers to humans generically, rather than to the male 
> sex, in some contexts ad feminam has a more specific meaning than ad 
> hominem, being used to describe attacks on women as women or because 
> they are women, as in "Their recourse ... to ad feminam attacks 
> evidences the chilly climate for women's leadership on campus" (Donna 
> M. Riley).
>
> E.  Argumentation Theory after the New Rhetoric, Frans H.  van Eemeren 
> (in l$B!G(Banalisi linguistica e letteraria xvii (2009) 1)
>
> In their definition of argumentum ad hominem, Perelman and 
> Olbrechts-Tyteca refer to Schopenhauer.  Unlike Schopenhauer, they see 
> nothing reprehensible in this form of argumentation. They even argue 
> that without ad hominem argumentation it would be impossible to win 
> others over to a particular standpoint. In their view, ad hominem does 
> not denote a specific (and incorrect) argumentation technique, but a 
> general characteristic of all successful argumentation.  According to 
> the new rhetoric, arguing ad hominem means starting from the 
> audience$B!G(Bs opinions concerning facts and values. Perelman and 
> Olbrechts-Tyteca place ad hominem on the same level as arguing ex 
> concessis.  Arguing ad hominem amounts to utilizing what the audience 
> is prepared to concede (concedere).
>
> Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca also discuss the argumentation technique 
> of personally attacking the opposition.  in order to avoid confusion, 
> they do not call this technique argumentum ad hominem but argumentum 
> ad personam. They do not reject a personal attack on the opposition. 
> They do warn, however, that in certain cases it is not so expedient 
> because it may have the reverse effect.  Scientific audiences in 
> particular, have a low esteem of personal attacks. Then the attack on 
> the opposition backfires and the speaker$B!G(Bs (or writer$B!G(Bs) own 
> standing, prestige and credibility are reduced.
>
> F. Jefsey
>
> "This is all the easier in English in that the confusion between the 
> two phrases [ad hominem and ad personam] already belongs to the common 
> language." 
> http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/iucg/current/msg00610.html 
> <http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/iucg/current/msg00610.html%A0>(Part 
> of a very long thread devoted to use/misuse/differing use of "ad hominem")
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michel Gauthier [mailto:mg at telepresse.com 
> <mailto:mg at telepresse.com>]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2014 7:03 PM
> To: Shatan, Gregory S.; 'Jefsey'; Jay Daley; ianatransition at icann.org 
> <mailto:ianatransition at icann.org>; discuss at 1net.org 
> <mailto:discuss at 1net.org> List
> Subject: Re: [IANAtransition] Troll
>
> Greg,
>
> I am afraid you confuse ad hominem and ad personam. I think one should 
> be carefull at not cofnusing terms, because this would to exactly do 
> what Jefsey wants: to show the NTIA, the world and FLOSS that the 
> ICANN MS community can only ban competition and is unable to cooperate 
> with VGN Masters. This would legitimate their claim that they must 
> develop their own "fail secure plan for the net" in case they are 
> unwelcome. They would love that you ban a network pioneer:
> he would make the head-lines during Sao Paulo, and ten other ones 
> would replace him.
>
> M G
>
>
> At 23:53 15/04/2014, Shatan, Gregory S. wrote:
> >"Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or
> >argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the
> >author of or the person presenting the claim or argument."
> >
> >I don't see anything ad hominem about Jay Daley's message, since it
> >goes to the nature of the texts, not the writer.  On the other hand,
> >accusing someone of being a mouthpiece for another organization or
> >"blundering", strikes me as ad hominem.
> >
> >Greg Shatan
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: ianatransition-bounces at icann.org 
> <mailto:ianatransition-bounces at icann.org>
> >[mailto:ianatransition-bounces at icann.org 
> <mailto:ianatransition-bounces at icann.org>] On Behalf Of Jefsey
> >Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2014 5:45 PM
> >To: Jay Daley; ianatransition at icann.org 
> <mailto:ianatransition at icann.org>; discuss at 1net.org 
> <mailto:discuss at 1net.org> List
> >Subject: Re: [IANAtransition] Troll
> >
> >At last!
> >
> >It took time! To know what would be the ICANN decision!
> >So it is delivered through an NZ ad-hominem. Good, now we know.
> >
> >Sorry, I am quite buzzy right now....
> >I will come back on this later on.
> >
> >jfc
> >
> >PS. If this was not an ICANN decision but an individual blunder, ICANN
> >people can let me know.
> >
> >
> >
> >At 22:51 15/04/2014, Jay Daley wrote:
> > >Are there others out there who would agree with me that this list is
> > >being overwhelmed by messages from at least one troll?  In particular
> > >messages that make ludicrous claims, provide nonsensical analysis,
> > >follow arbitrary directions and altogether are disruptive to the
> > >conversation taking place?
> > >In my view this list is too important and already too time consuming
> > >to allow any trolls to disrupt it in this way.
> > >If so then what if any process do we have for removing such a troll?
> > >I note that the IETF, which is a long established multi-stakeholder
> > >organisation has also had problems like this and has occasionally had
> > >to ban people.  Those bans were then subject to two levels of appeal:
> > >
> > >https://www.ietf.org/iesg/appeal.html 
> <https://www.ietf.org/iesg/appeal.html>
> > >https://www.iab.org/appeals/ <https://www.iab.org/appeals/>
> > >
> > >cheers
> > >Jay
> > >
> > >PS I have posted the same message to discuss at 1net.org 
> <mailto:discuss at 1net.org>
> >
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