Clearly, I don't consider distaste for anonymous postings to be "only human nature", because it's not in *my* nature, and I consider myself human.

I didnt say distate. I dont think anonymous posting is distasteful, I just think its human nature to assume that one anonymous poster is the same as another, particularly when their writing style is similar. And I would say that observing patterns and making predicitions based on them is human nature. Since you have dropped the primary basis by which we can distinguish you from others with a similar posting style its hardly surprising that people might make assumptions that you are the same author of some other post.

What puzzles me even more is that those who seem to object to "anonymous" posting are typically people who themselves post under some anonymous pseudonym, rather than their own real world identity.

I think the difference is that the pseudonym is associated to one person. You can go through all of my posts and form an opinion of me and what I say based on those writings. I on the other hand have to take every post you have made as anonymonk stand alone. I cant use any other post to form an opinion of your comments.

For instance if I am asking a question then presumably I dont know the answer, so it becomes difficult to distinguish between good answers and bad. If someone answers that I have seen answer correctly something I did know I have a certain basis to assume that their answer in this new area is likely to be right. Of course it may be wrong, in which case my opinion of their answers is likely to reduce. Over time it becomes fairly clear who knows what they are talking about, or who is a good person to speak to about certain issues.

But the anonymonk he posts as a virgin every time. When he posts I need to look for more subtle clues in his posting to determine whether he is worth listening to. And IMO this makes it all the more likely that spurious opinions about whether two AM posts were by the same person are to arise.

So, no, i dont think it hypocritical to have a psudonym and to make a point out of your posting as AM and expecting to be treated as a full user.

I was always taught that educated debate focused on ideas, not on people. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to disagree.

I think if you think about this a bit youll see there is something wrong with this simplification. If you are interested in physics and some guy walks up to you and starts babbling about some crazy theory that is totally above your head you probably wont take the time to even find out if it makes sense, but if the same guy is standing at the front for your lecture hall and gives the same speech you probably will have a totally different opinion. Whether its right or wrong, its life in my opinion.

There are just so many ideas out there, we use our knowledge of a person to help filter out the quality from the crap. When you go totally anonymous, you might as well be anyone, saying anything. Maybe even someone malicious saying something that looks right but is in fact deeply wrong. You cant do that twice using the same account name. :-)

What puzzles me even more is that those who seem to object to "anonymous" posting are typically people who themselves post under some anonymous pseudonym, rather than their own real world identity.