Why ban Anonymonk?

By doing so, we would only fall into the trap of becoming the very thing that he alludes to us being (or being in danger of becoming) in his opening sentance:

We are not a cult, we are not a ring, we are not fundamentalist..."

If an argument, statement, belief or opinion has any merit, it has so regardless of the author or proponent, or your knowledge of the author or proponents name, age, sex, race. It also has merit regardless of your ability to sanction that author or proponent for stating their argument, statement, belief or opinion.

Whether the argument has merit, is not the same as it's being correct. The only logical criteria for deciding if an argument has merit are:

• Could it be true?
• Has it been proven false?

If the answers to those two questions are 'yes' and 'no' respectively, then the argument has merit. It still may not be right, but it is worth considering until such time as it can be shown that either it could not be true, or is not true. However, that leads to a greater dilemma. That of deciding what could be true, or proving that it is not.

In this, some of the things to look out for are.

Does the argument hold water if you exclude such things as:

• Authorship.

  Whilst knowing the author, and therefore their experience, background, previous works can be a criteria for forming your own opinion when you do not have the experience, time or knowledge to form your own. Arguments that rely upon citing ones own experience or that of another do not have merit unless they also have merit without reference to that experience.

  For instance, the oft-used internet acronym IANAL. Does this lend weight to an argument or detract from it? Actually neither. First off, it pre-supposes that anyone reading would act upon the opinion expressed without obtaining independant verification of that opinion. It further implies that everyone who INAL, would similarly also note same against their opinions. Finally, it suggests that if the opinion expressed was that of a laywer, then that opinion is tantamount to be factually correct.

  Disregarding issues of jurasdiction and case law, if it were possible to make simple statements of fact regarding 'the law' there would be no need for lawyers. It simply isn't possible to state a fact regarding a legal matter, only trends, currently applicable case law. Even the individual decisions of individial high-court judges can vary over time, be overturned by others and be latterly deemed incorrect.

• Statistics.

  The only statistics worthy of mention in an argument are those of the "made-up, pushed to the extreme" kind.

  Sounds bogus right. Consider the statement that "People living in the Mid-West USA would be foolish to purchase house insurance that covered their homes from collisions with icebergs as it is 99.9999999999% certain that this catastrophy will never happen". That's a worthless statistic right?

  Well no. Not necessarially. One of the possible readings of that statistic is that the author accepts the possibility that roof damage from a block of frozen waste from a passing aircraft. (Shit happens! second story. Note the byline) could, given the insurance industries propensity for wrapping everything in obscure language and case law, be adjudged as an "iceberg". As such, whilst the statistic itself has no merit, the use of the statistic shows the authors acknowledgement of possibilities outside the range of normal experience. As such, it adds rather than detracts from the argument.

• Reference works.

  References are difficult to quantify and must be taken on a case-by-case basis.

  If the reference is a relatively new one, even if it comes from a 'reputable source', it is quite likely to be refuted by an equally reputable source at some point in the near future. This is the nature of science. At the leading edge, theorem and counter-theorem vie for allegiance until eventually, one, the other or both is disproved. In many areas of science, it is impossible to prove a theorem right. The best one can say about most of them is that they fit the observed data and have yet to be proven wrong.

  Conversely, if the reference is a relatively old one, even if it derives from some standard or defacto-standard reference work, it is quite possible, even likely that it has been superceded. For me, the definition of 'old', is that you have reached that point in life when several things that you were taught as facts at school, no longer are such. When you reach that point and you find yourself having to re-evaluate everything you 'knew' in case it has been superceded, you can rightly claim to be old.

  The most frequent examples of this in my experiences at this site relate not to programming but to english. There have been several discussions relating to english, english grammer and particularly my use of english--which was never my forte anyway--where my previous 'knowledge' has been shown to have been either superceded or at least is, on-the-cusp-of-changing. That's further exacerbated by cultural differences of the "We say per-tay-toe, you say pa-tar-toe" variety. That said, most of the time it's just that when I learnt (or is that learned) english and in my use of english since, I was more concerned with conveying a concept than with correctly formulating the means of communication. Sloppy? Maybe, maybe not.

  Until a form of written and/or spoken language is invented that can be shown to be inequivacally correct in its every use(*), I'll concentrate of attempting to convey my message rather than on the formulation of the message itself.

  (*) I hold out no hopes for this happening in my lifetime, and if it does, I have no reason to suppose that it will be english. After all, a sixth or more of the world's population speak chinese, though from my limmited understanding that is even less likely to reach the grace of inequivicality than english.

There are many other headings that could be added to the list above, but the upshot (or rather my conclusions with the emphasis on "my") of all of it is

1. Examine what is said, not who speaks. (or should that be whom?).
2. We at PerlMonks and in the wider community should not shy away from discussions based on opinions for which we have a distaste, or that we hope are wrong.

   To do so only forces us into a clique or cult mentality where preaching to the converted is applauded and rewarded and all else is dismissed. Nothing is a surer indication of a doomed community than when it closes it's doors to the outside world.

For me, ideas are good. Discussion is good. Argument is good. That doesn't mean to say the we have to respond to every argument on a point-by-point basis matching like-for-like. It means that we should consider the argument, decide (individually rather than collectively) whether it has merit, and respond in-kind if it does, or point out it's weaknesses as a position without resorting to counter-claim, counter-statistic, counter-reference or counter-experiece, as these only bolster the original argument by giving it credability.

Only by examining the argument from a dispationate viewpoint can we reinforce the strength of our own arguements and by doing so, force the OP to reexamine and perhaps modify theirs. Of course, its also possible that in the process, we may modify our own opinions.

It is the openess to the modification of ones beliefs, arguments and opinions that sets the thinking man (or woman) apart from the brainwashed, cultists and zealots.

Closures in Perl are good, closed-minds are not.

I hope I will be forgiven for my occasional use of the unmandated, collective "we" in this. It is sometimes extremely difficult and tiresome to confine oneself to the first-party personal pronoun.