Центристы

Dec 05, 2009 16:17

Случайно забрел на встречу "центристов". Это, типа, scholar_vit и компания. Они, значит, сидят, и обсуждают два вопроса. Они их всегда ( обсуждают... )

пациент, left_legends, beloved me, liberals

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shkrobius December 6 2009, 02:29:03 UTC
I confess I do not get it. If you are a leftist, why not identify yourself a leftist, be proud of it, join the avant guarde and march towards the brightest of morning stars? Instead, this queer insistence on being a centrist. "Ninazino" is remarkable in this sense. Hers is a show of perpetual Hamletian uncertainty and Socratic hesitation; after painful, vocal, and protracted contortions, the invariably leftist solution is being chosen with metronomic predictability. It is mystery to me what is the purpose of this entertaining ritual. Coming out of the closet is child's play in comparison with this weekly drama. It is like being gay and watching the parade from the sidelines hoping that no one would notice the erection. Who needs that?

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shkrobius December 7 2009, 02:36:51 UTC
Look, I know him for 30 years - we are old buddies. We seldom agreed on anything, to which you were a casual witness. This was not the end of the story, though. I have discussed these passages with a Lubavicher Rabbi Baruch Schlomo Davidson who, following my request spent one year studying. He told me at the end that I was wrong and such an interpretation is possible; in his opinion, it was closer to what the sages meant. I disagreed, and we had heated discussions with this rabbi, but what I want to tell you is that I did not have strong hand in that discussion and I was shown that by a person whose opinion is well informed ( ... )

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arbat December 7 2009, 05:20:55 UTC
"he skillfully walks you into traps that you do not see, but I do"

There is only one way to avoid traps: to start from some moral axioms and then to derive everything else. And then test all the slippery slopes.

As for skills... Communists in the USSR had a very polished demagoguery designed by one of the most advanced propaganda machine in the history of mankind. These guys are just amateurs trying to follow an old cookbook.

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arbat December 7 2009, 12:55:12 UTC
Твой собеседник покончил с собой, - упал грудью на обоюдоострую кнопку "удалить журнал".

Не дожидаясь истечения тех суток, которые я ему дал на подтверждение другого набора "сведений", которые он обо мне опубликовал.

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shkrobius December 7 2009, 16:03:36 UTC
That was quick.

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(The comment has been removed)

shkrobius December 7 2009, 20:11:59 UTC
Maybe you should drop it altogether. Does not seem like a good investment of your time.

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страшно перечесть arbat December 8 2009, 04:18:01 UTC
Слушай, по секрету - это не всегда приятно, вот так столкнуться с собственным старым текстом. Написал что-то, и забыл. А потом тебя тыкают в это носом. И ты идешь, и читаешь, - а там "не взирая" написано раздельно!

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Re: страшно перечесть shkrobius December 8 2009, 16:34:45 UTC
That's hardly a secret to me; it happens all the time. There is a couple of papers of mine that I'd wish I'd never published; a guy made a career proving me wrong - literally. Such things can't be helped. A colleague of mine says that 50% of his papers are wrong, another 48% are crap, but for the residual 2% he is a Fellow of the Royal Society. The truth is that if someone revisits and proves you wrong or undermines your original argument, it can't be total crap, even if you think it is. The total crap is forgotten the next day. Sometimes it works in the opposite way: you make a speculative guess without thinking twice about it, then someone spends years trying to prove you wrong and it turns out to be correct. This morning I got a paper for review that does just that with one of mine; I forgot all about it, but some guy from Trieste is making a big deal out of it. He spins it as a way of converting biomass into fuel on the cheap and the whole strategy hinges on this speculation to be correct... It turned out, there is a whole group ( ... )

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chasovschik December 6 2009, 04:27:42 UTC
There is an important difference, though. Unlike ninazino, a real leftie never hesitates. He knows for sure from the very beginning.

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shkrobius December 6 2009, 07:27:53 UTC
Don't you know from the very beginning what the end result of all this hesitation is going to be? I'm afraid you are taken for a ride.

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chasovschik December 7 2009, 19:38:12 UTC
That's a certain possibility.

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sowa December 8 2009, 02:51:30 UTC
No, no, she never hesitates. As shkrobius said above, one can get this expression if one observes her for a month or two, but for a long time - no. She is waltzing around, with the endpoint known in advance. She knows in advance where she will end, and the observers know. Everything is certain.

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