[MD] Decision

[david buchanan]

Steve said to Horse:

... I'm not sure promoting the SOL B.S. ought to be banned indefinitely. We (you) have to be careful to be open enough to contrarians so that we can benefit from them where possible (and it is not always immediately obvious) but also not allow them to ruin the discussion. I know you are interested in finding the proper balance between these concerns. What would you think about imposing a temporary rather than permanent moratorium on promoting SOL so that other issues may be more thoughtfully discussed for a time?



dmb says:

I think that's the right way to frame the issue. It's not about free speech. This has been going on for nearly twenty years and Bo has already articulated his thoughts several thousands times. It's about clutter. It's about spoiling the party. It's about sucking all the oxygen out of the room so that discussions about Pirsig's MOQ are suffocated. It's about not wanting to play a game with a guy because he simply won't or can't play by the rules. Usually, I just delete that stuff without reading it but recently came back from a little trip to find the posts were about nothing but Bo's theory. As I see it, that means there is zero discussion going on at the moment. Zip, zero, nada. 

How would you feel if you were trying to run a chess club and every day there was this one player who, every time you check-mated him he denied it and insisted that only he knew the "real" rules of chess. That's what it smells like to me. The has been check-mated many, many times but he doesn't know the game well enough to understand that. It was over a long time ago, but he just won't give up. 

Everybody agrees, I think, that the MOQ is out there now and it's open to evolution and modification. That's how it should be. Natural selection works on that level too, you know. But that doesn't mean we can't make judgements about what's plausible and what's not. That doesn't mean every idea deserves our respect or even our attention. Natural selection is supposed to weed out the mistakes, the dead ends, the less than viable. That's what discussion can help to do, sort out the plausible readings from the implausible ones. But what if the weeding process is not respected? Is that good for the MOQ or for anyone's intellectual development? I really think the whole enterprise is served badly if there are no standards, no rules. 

Paul Turner and I had a little chat on the topic in that old pub in Chester. He said, quite generously, that we understood the MOQ better than he did. When I objected that he was the author and so that was very unlikely, he said that he never had to defend the MOQ against so many different arguments and positions. I'm still not sure if I'm convinced but he does have a point. Debate is good. Contrarians are good. The resistance of conflicting views can serve to sharpen both perspectives. This is an essential part of the evolution and development of any idea or vision. But nobody's philosophical muscles are going to be strengthened by a weak opponent. A crackpot neo-nazi, ufologist being held in a secret world government prison does not deserve anyone's attention. We can all agree on that and so the range of tolerable opinion does have a limit. The question is where to draw the line.

Is 17 years of nonsense not enough? Shall we continue to entertain a theory that exists nowhere but here, which makes no sense to Horse or Ant or Dan and which has been explicitly rejected by Pirsig in Dan's book? I don't think so. They're not authority figures whose wishes are backed up by philosophy cops, of course, but they have worked very hard for a long time and they've earned a certain expertise. Pirsig's books, Ant's Ph.D., Dan's book, Horse's forum; each of these represents a tremendous amount of time and effort. That alone is worthy of respect. I think the fact that none of these guys agrees with Bo should really count for something. If all we can do is make our best judgements based on the present state of knowledge, what these guys think should matter.

I'm sorry but there is just no way to make Bo's equation any less plausible. Check-mate, check-mate, check-mate. It's not as useless as, say, satanic astrology, but it sure isn't helping anything or anyone. It's just clutter. It's just noise. I wish people would just ignore it and talk about something more interesting, something more worthy of debate. I don't know what the best solution is but it is a serious problem. Nonsense is always a problem in any philosophical discussion. Obviously. And personally, I'm really bored by that particular piece of nonsense. It's stale and it's tired. Even Bo should be sick of it by now.

It's nice that people are trying to be big-hearted and kind to Bo but that kindness and tolerance implies that Horse is being unkind and intolerant. That's really not fair. He's been far more generous than anyone has a right to expect. He let's people go on and on even when it's hard to believe they have any understanding of the books we're supposed to talking about. Think about the way Pirsig fought AGAINST the lowering of standards at the college in Bozeman, the way he fought against passing every student regardless of their actual accomplishments. Is it cruel to flunk the bad students or is it more cruel to lower the standards to the point where even the laziest, most incorrigible student gets a pass? I think Horse has concerns the bigger picture that outweigh whatever hurt feelings might result. He likes Bo but there is something to be said about the needs of the forum itself. I often wonder who has been scared away from this forum. Maybe there was some relatively serious thinker who lurked but left after a while because she found too much weirdness and nonsense here. Maybe there were 100 such potential members who concluded that we are not serious people. Maybe it's a bigger problem than we'll ever know. 

My two cents,

dmb


 		 	   		  
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