[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
I’ve taken enough shots at you and will refrain this time. You’re free to draw whatever conclusions you like about why people decide not to engage your hero.
What conclusions do you draw from him bailing on the hypocrisy discussion? He claims he bailed because I wouldn’t go off on a tangent discussion. Since I won’t answer his questions why should he answer mine? That’s a bit dishonest as well since I wasn’t asking him any question. I was spelling out in specific details of his hypocrisy. Details that remain uncontested at this point.
[/QUOTE]
Since your question is similar to the one I’ve got pending from Polycarp, I’ll try to answer both at once.
There are several reasons a poster might decline to answer a direct question, some legitimate and some less so. It’s not as though any avoidance of or evasion to a question must equate with a similar avoidance in another poster’s mind.
For example, I plan on never giving Zoe the benefit of a courteous response again to any question because I think she’s a –what was **badchad’**s phrase?—mush-brain, out to start up shit with me, obsessed with showing that I’m faking my background, and determined to refuse to see any merit in my posts. Responding to such a person is just to encourage her, with almost no upside. This we may call an evasion of policy: I see her name, and a light goes on: “Don’t bother taking her seriously. She’s of no consequence.” If **Zoe ** wants to label me a coward, or unable to handle her fine mind, that’s okay with me, because I have zero respect for any drool coming from her toothless mouth.
Other avoidances of policy are more selective: Tom insists he isn’t going to discuss the subject of belief, except of course he is constantly discussing that subject necessarily in a thread on religion. He just pulls that chestnut out whenever the subject of belief arises AND Tom suspects, probably rightly, that his beliefs will be used to embarrass him. So he rants on (and on and on) about how discussing beliefs is a violation of the UN charter, or some such silly shit.
Some avoidances are just practical. I really did have to work out earlier, and it’s entirely possible that when I came back, I might have forgotten about Polycarp’s request. Justly, he might have thought that my forgetting was deliberate and then demanded somewhat uncivilly that I answer him NOW, to which I might have thought, “Oh, fuck you and your demands—I’m not your performing pony, shit-for-brains,” a frame of mind not very conducive to a lucid response.
Your problem with badchad might be a chicken and egg kind of thing. It doesn’t really matter, does it, who started being non-responsive first, you or him? He and you each have a perfect right not to respond, or not to respond quickly enough, or not to respond to the exact point that your interlocutor wanted a response to, and it’s easy to see how an innocent non-response on either of your parts could then result in the other one taking offense at being ignored and making a policy decision not to answer you until he gets the precise response from you that he wanted, an unlikely event.
Essentially, this is a sad and self-perpetuating cycle, deriving as it does from a lack of respect on everyone’s part. Once people start acting in bad faith, and presuming bad faith in the motives of others, this is inevitable, especially here in the Pit. I wish people would cut each other a little more slack, which could prevent some of the problems here, but once we start arguing for victory and not for knowledge, it gets difficult. For example, I got on What Exit’s nerves a few posts back by implying that he’d called me a jerk, when I was trying to be funny. I consider Jim a friend of mine, and was humorously implying that, for his own sake, he’d be better off to take the majority opinion as to whether I am being a jerk here, but he took me at face value, and took offense. Oh, well. We’ll patch it up, I’m sure, but if we didn’t have a history of friendly posts, I wouldnt be so sure. It’s just that easy to misread tone, and go off on somebody.
I’ve rambled on a bit, and am not sure I’ve responded to your question or to Polycarp’s, other than to assert that we avoid responding thoughtfully to each other’s questions for a variety of reasons, some good, some not so good. Evasions and avoidances have in common the notion of “Hey, don’t try to change the subject on me,” the problem being that it’s equally possible that someone IS trying to change the subject out of cowardice or malice as it is that he considers the shift to be minor, or even a legitimate variation on the same theme. We don’t all understand the proper subject in the same, or even similar, ways, and this yields further misunderstandings.
I appreciate your attempt, after so much hostility on both our parts, to engage in discussion with me, precisely as if I were a temperate and well-behaved poster.