Reply To: General thought on old coal mines.

[Rezwan]

Aeronaut wrote: But much as I would love to reach a full consensus, I’m not fool enough to believe that I will ever see one, or that in practice it’s really a good thing.

Oh, I don’t like the idea of consensus either. To some extent, the word gives me the heebie jeebies. I guess that’s what Brian has about other words. Although he seems to go from heebie jeebies into full anaphylactic (sp?) shock.

Striving for consensus is what we suffer in Iran under theocracy. I am happy with disagreement. Hence my humoring of Brian for longer than most.

For some reason Brian conflates consensus with cooperation. And I don’t think he understands spontaneous organization. After all my eloquence here, I suspect it won’t happen any time soon.

If you want to make sense, like you often did last year, please feel free to do so. Otherwise, I move that we cap this thread.

Good call, Aeronaut. Duly capped.

Last words:

Food for thought:
“Wikinomics, how mass collaboration changes everything”;
“Here comes everybody: the power of organizing without organizations”.

Something to be more afraid of, threats to internet as collaborative tool, see:

“The future of the Internet” – Jonathan Zittrain

Brian: The world has moved on from the cold war days you’re stuck in. Collaboration isn’t the dirty word you think it is. It’s just a very ordinary and voluntary mechanism.

Once you add force, it ceases to be “collaboration” or “cooperation” or, indeed, “spontaneous” by definition and becomes “coercion”. I thought that was self evident, but apparently it needs a hundred years to explain.

And about Iraqi death toll, if America were invading Canada and some Canadians chose to resist by blowing things up and killing other Canadians in the process, your accounting would be different. You wouldn’t be able to get over the initial cause – the American invasion. But go ahead, find ways to discount those deaths and move them over to another column. It will take quite a bit of truth and reconciliation to work it all out, and your biases are already clear. It goes back to the initial political cartoon that kicked off this thread. You downplay the deaths of people in this conflict, and scream bloody murder about having to make any substitutions in the energy sector. Great values.

Also, feel free to start another website to compete with this one, and go rant there. I trust most people are OK cooperating and collaborating here, but if that’s a fearsome burden for you, you can leave. Any time. Don’t feel trapped. You have free will. This is just one of many competing websites. Many more out there for weeping and gnashing of teeth.