🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan21.192029.5021@exu.ericsson.se> exuhag@exu.ericsson.se writes:
>John Hutchinson writes:
>>
>>We suffer flame-wars evidently because so many people are
>>emotionally insecure and need constant assurances that the choices
>>they make in life are, in fact, "good" ones.  This little quirk is
>>commonly known as "cognitive dissonance" as is quite common among
>>younger, less mature individuals who have not yet learned how to
>>cope with their own feelings, much less coexist with others.

Did you study psych, John?  You seem to know the right terminology...
You ARE quite right about the reasons for flame wars.

The other "half" of the reason is the fact that a forum like Usenet
doesn't "punish" people very much for making mistakes - not even BIG
ones like saying that my computer is...<omitted>

People can flame away, and the only feedback comes in the form of
electronic signals on one's terminal.

People will say things on the net that would get them SERIOUSLY beaten
up if it was said face to face.

>I've noticed that all the snippets of wisdom accumulated over the millenia,
>all the valuable lessons people have learned time and time again, have been
>completely forgotten by the vast majority of computerphiles.  It is completely
>amazing to me that so many people are running around under the impression that
>people should be judged by the type of computer they own or language they
>choose to program in--and that money _can_ buy happiness and bigger _is_
>always better.

There's so many that have SO much technical knowledge about some areas
of computing, but don't know anything about anything else.  What's
almost worst is that sometimes they're most blind to knowledge about
things that are STRONGLY related to their expertise.

>I have run into many people who flagrantly brag that they own a 66
>MHz 486.  That really is pathetic when you stop and think about it. 

Yup, it IS pathetic.  For that kind of money I'd get one of the
low-end Sparc systems, and run rings around those 486es.  :-)

>Hey, this stuff is supposed to be fun.

But you may be missing the point that to many people, flaming IS fun!

I don't have time for it, and on those occasions that I do flame
people, it means that they really HAVE raised my personal ire.  That
rarely happens in "technical" areas.

-- 
Christopher Browne                |     PGP 2.0 key available
cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca           |======================================
University of Ottawa              | Genius may have its limitations, but
Master of System Science Program  | stupidity is not thus handicapped.