05-24-2003, 12:30 AM
Hi,
If you think that someone's hiding their lack of an argument behind a wall of fog, there are two good recourses. The one I usually use is to simply ignore them -- life is too short to untangle their cotton candy arguments.
The other course is to crush them. As you say, the dictionary is your friend. Take their post, paragraph by paragraph or even sentence by sentence. Do a "Reader's Digest condensed story" on it. Make it as terse as you can.
Then make fun of them for having said nothing and said it so well. Most posters will not survive the experience. They'll often go elsewhere after having been shown to be a fool.
He told me that it wasn't a "bug," it was a glitch
Hmm. A fool, indeed. In the lexicon I grew up with, a "glitch" is a short term problem, usually unreproducible. The Jargon Dictionary seems to agree. http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/g/glitch.html You had a perfect opportunity to play the "You don't even know the words, how can you understand the concepts?" trump on this "dood".
When someone tries to "baffle you with bullsh!t" think of it as an opportunity ;)
--Pete
If you think that someone's hiding their lack of an argument behind a wall of fog, there are two good recourses. The one I usually use is to simply ignore them -- life is too short to untangle their cotton candy arguments.
The other course is to crush them. As you say, the dictionary is your friend. Take their post, paragraph by paragraph or even sentence by sentence. Do a "Reader's Digest condensed story" on it. Make it as terse as you can.
Then make fun of them for having said nothing and said it so well. Most posters will not survive the experience. They'll often go elsewhere after having been shown to be a fool.
He told me that it wasn't a "bug," it was a glitch
Hmm. A fool, indeed. In the lexicon I grew up with, a "glitch" is a short term problem, usually unreproducible. The Jargon Dictionary seems to agree. http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/g/glitch.html You had a perfect opportunity to play the "You don't even know the words, how can you understand the concepts?" trump on this "dood".
When someone tries to "baffle you with bullsh!t" think of it as an opportunity ;)
--Pete
How big was the aquarium in Noah's ark?