But on the comment policy post itself:

http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2007/06/comment_policy.html

comment lengths from Prok include 501 and 428.

Now… I don’t normally pick nits at this level. But I read his response/challenge on his blog to be about all comments:

“Seriously, Rhys, I challenge you to do a simple thing. Go to Terra Nova. Read my posts. Even in this last thread only, or go to many of the last ones. I challenge you to find a single one of the following: personal attack, vulgarity, nastiness, off-topic, more than 400 words.

I read the “many of the last ones” to mean “recent.” He says he meant just the ones made after the new rules.

The word-count thing was the easiest (and most quantifiable) to check. I’ve often enjoyed Prok’s comments on TN and elsewhere, but don’t think he gets how irritating he can be, nor what constitutes “nasty,” “personal” or “off-topic.” Those are, of course, subjective qualifications. But on many posts, the comments went back to earlier/other issues that had nothing to do with the topic. And if Prok’s definition of moderately polite, online discussion isn’t up to the standards of multiple blogs… well, that’s the price for being an iconoclast.

The point I’m making is that he denied ever writing comments longer than 400 words, and challenged his readers to find an example. So I did.

When discussing stuff, rationality isn’t just related to “truth” in terms of big, soft, philosophical ideas. It’s hard enough to have civil discourse about things that are essentially related to feelings and opinions, where disagreement is really based on a point of personal preference. Which is all good.

But if Prok is ready to deny and challenge something as readily measurable as the length of his responses… that’s disconnected to a level of reality in a way that I (and, I suspect, many) aren’t ready to participate with.

We can go back and forth for days on stuff we disagree on. That’s cool. That’s what open forums are about. But you can’t just say stuff that’s demonstrably false and expect people to then go, “Oh, well… just a difference of opinion.”

Secondly, even if you believe that everyone’s truth is equally deserving, and that nobody is in possession of “the” truth, that doesn’t mean that some statements are demonstrably untrue. I can sit here at my desk and say I’m commenting from Lebanon, in the year 1972. Mmmm… Not so much.

So while some people may not be in possession of the truth, some people are definitely in possession of not-truth.

Prok says that he never made comments over 400 words on TN. In a quick search of the archives at TN, the *first* comment I found from Prok contained 1,129 words. See:

http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2007/06/censoring_sexua.html

So… while I may not be in possession of “the truth,” I am in possession of a word processor with word-count, and eyeballs, and memory. Prok and I both went over 400 words on many occasions.

I’m just not delusional about my particular brand of silliness.

Intellect is, to a certain degree, an over-valued concept anyhow. Unlike creativity, which is universal, for practical purposes intellect is only effective in select situations.

Intellect is vital to science, for instance. When it comes to psychology, however, intellect can override better judgement to the detriment of the patient. It’s this type of moment that something else needs to come in… something not based in the perceived solidity of fact.

When it comes to business and getting things done, too much intellect can impede the decision-making process and bankrupt you. The world is full of rich idiots.

Post-modernism, like all philosophy, is useful only in its application. I’m not a big fan of spending a lot of time with philosophy in general… but then again, that’s my personal philosophy.

Oh god. What the hell am I doing? I’m going to crack open that bottle of rum and play Half-Life 2 tonight… shoot some bad guys…

I haven’t found anybody saying it’s better than the alternatives, although I’m sure you could find a few things it’s better than.

Maybe blogs and forums are simply not the right place for academic discussions….