Dragaera

The Great Debate....to DDB

Claire Rojstaczer ambyrglow at softhome.net
Fri Nov 29 09:50:22 PST 2002

>Steven Brust writes:
>   Why?  Because, even though the other way of doing it (reply goes to the
>   list, not the person) is more convenient, I have been told that there are
>   hidden dangers involving potential hacking and suchlike to doing it
>   that.  Do I know this is true?  No, but I have *faith* in DDB, who told me,
>   and...I BELIEVE!
>   This is faith.
>   On this subject, I am NOT thinking.  I am accepting an answer on faith.
>

I would argue that you're still thinking, and doing quite a lot of 
it.  You're thinking about what you know about DDB, and whether he's 
a trustworthy person based on past examples of interaction (I don't 
think your trust in him can necessarily be described as faith if you 
do know him well enough to have a body of previous experience from 
which to draw patterns and conclusions).  You're thinking about what 
you know of hackers and the Internet, and whether what's being 
described sounds plausible, regardless of whether or not you actually 
understand the details.  You're thinking, in the end, about whether 
the trade-off between convenience and safety is worthwhile.

The fact that you're not thinking about the details of mailing list 
management doesn't imply that your brain has entirely turned off on 
the subject, only that you're relying on secondary facts to come to a 
decision.

I'll leave any possible parallels between this and religion to the 
religious folk.  Being an atheist, I'd just screw them up.

Claire