The Philosopher's Vice
Dear Thomas,
Please stop engaging in the philosopher's vice. (I call it this because I find that iff a person is a philosopher, he can be observed to engage in it.) It is frustrating, it is stupid, and it immediately puts you on the "asshole list" until further notice.
I address this to you not because you are the only person who does it to me, but because you are the most recent and I am most upset about it.
I will explain the vice to you. The Philosopher's Vice is that tendency of your kind to take domain-specific statements and generalise them, as a sort of ludicrous form of counterargument. I will provide an example:
In the context of a conversation about roleplaying game settings,
"I hate it when people take two cultures and mix them up haphazardly to make a third!"
The Vice: "Oh, but then you can't love Afghan food, or for that matter modern Vietnamese. In both cases two culinary cultures have merged to form a third thing!"
You will observe that, while the latter statement is true, the former is not only patently false, but it is also a staggeringly rude conversational tactic. This is the speech of madmen and swine.
If you never do it again, it will still be too soon, but I will no longer have this beef with you.
Love,
Shreyas
P.S. I realise that you only do this when you are tired/frustrated/otherwise incapable of civil talk, but that is no excuse. I will berate and abuse you every time you do it until you learn, for your own good. It is infuriating to the point that it makes me want to stop calling you my friend, and I do not want to be reduced to this. Look! I have already been reduced to very deliberately abusive talk. Furthermore, I do not think I am alone in my reaction.
P.P.S. This isn't intended as an ultimatum or anything; it's an explanation/exploration of what is going on in my head. If you want to make me really angry, then I have told you a way to do it. If you want to keep carrying on enjoyable conversations with me, then here is a guidepost: Don't Go There. Probably there are historical reasons that this particular rhetorical crime makes me as mad as it does; I don't know them just now. More importantly, I don't want you to become part of those reasons.
Please stop engaging in the philosopher's vice. (I call it this because I find that iff a person is a philosopher, he can be observed to engage in it.) It is frustrating, it is stupid, and it immediately puts you on the "asshole list" until further notice.
I address this to you not because you are the only person who does it to me, but because you are the most recent and I am most upset about it.
I will explain the vice to you. The Philosopher's Vice is that tendency of your kind to take domain-specific statements and generalise them, as a sort of ludicrous form of counterargument. I will provide an example:
In the context of a conversation about roleplaying game settings,
"I hate it when people take two cultures and mix them up haphazardly to make a third!"
The Vice: "Oh, but then you can't love Afghan food, or for that matter modern Vietnamese. In both cases two culinary cultures have merged to form a third thing!"
You will observe that, while the latter statement is true, the former is not only patently false, but it is also a staggeringly rude conversational tactic. This is the speech of madmen and swine.
If you never do it again, it will still be too soon, but I will no longer have this beef with you.
Love,
Shreyas
P.S. I realise that you only do this when you are tired/frustrated/otherwise incapable of civil talk, but that is no excuse. I will berate and abuse you every time you do it until you learn, for your own good. It is infuriating to the point that it makes me want to stop calling you my friend, and I do not want to be reduced to this. Look! I have already been reduced to very deliberately abusive talk. Furthermore, I do not think I am alone in my reaction.
P.P.S. This isn't intended as an ultimatum or anything; it's an explanation/exploration of what is going on in my head. If you want to make me really angry, then I have told you a way to do it. If you want to keep carrying on enjoyable conversations with me, then here is a guidepost: Don't Go There. Probably there are historical reasons that this particular rhetorical crime makes me as mad as it does; I don't know them just now. More importantly, I don't want you to become part of those reasons.