[MD] kill all intellectual patterns

[david buchanan]

Arlo said to Mark:

Let me restate this [Mark's claim], "When dmb interprets Pirsig's ideas, he does so in a completely literal fashion, which means he has mistaken Pirsig's ideas for Quality."   I doubt very much anyone would mistake a person's ideas for "Quality". What he appropriately does (IMO) is take Pirsig's ideas for what they are, static intellectual patterns of value, and pursues them with an eye towards what amounts to 'excellence' as applied to intellectual patterns; clarity, cohesion, precision, etc.


dmb says:
Mark's complaint is just face-facing, ego-driven nonsense. It's a transparently childish attempt to weasel out of facing the textual evidence. It's not that my "interpretations" literal. That's a rhetorical (and delusional) slight of hand, one that Mark uses to congratulate himself for being such a deeply profound thinker. Marsha uses this bullshit tactic too. The reason for this, of course, is that their claims and statements can always be thoroughly defeated by simply quoting the books. In both cases, they don't understand Pirsig's core concepts and they are confused about the most basic distinctions in the MOQ. Every attempt to explain these fundamental errors and correct them with explicit statements from Pirsig is ignored and evaded for reasons that are just as hair-brained and contradictory as the original error. As far as I can recall, neither one of them has ever made a relevant point in response to these corrections. Never once. 

Some people can learn faster than others and that's fine. But the level of incorrigibility demonstrated by these trolls can't be explained by the standard variations in intelligence. These cases are so extreme that there must be a fairly serious psychological problem at work here. Whatever the cause might be, the effect is a constant stream of interruptions and diversions from folks who just cannot or will not play this game we call philosophy. I think we can have compassion and still fully recognize that they are turds in the punchbowl.