S
Steve Holden
Is there *any* problem you don't have a fatuous answer for?Alf said:
regards
Steve
regards
Steve
S
Steve Holden
[several paragraphs-worth of bothering further]Stephen said:
So you didn't believe me when I said
regards
Steve
T
Terry Reedy
Except for the cross-namespace nature of the assignment, yes. Glad you
agree.
No. Given
def f(*args, **kwds): print(args, kwds)
the objects bound to args and kwds are a tuple and dict *derived* from
(that collect together) the objects passed.
Terry Jan Reedy
A
Alf P. Steinbach
* Duncan Booth:
Your statement seems pretty irrelevant to anything.
It's almost hilarious, quoting a single paragraph about how irrelevant the C
pointer is, and responding with something like that.
Do you understand that you're restating (in the form of exemplifying) what
you're quoting?
Did you /read/ what you quoted?
All theree of your points about Python are wrong; I don't know about the Ruby point.
First, the current Python language specification formally prevents the
optimization you mention, because there's no support for binding to do anything
but direct binding leaving object identities unchanged.
But in practice that's no big deal though: I can't imagine any code relying on
identities of completely immutable objects.
Second, even the variant that was tried improved performance.
But it would reportedly have wreaked havoc with imperfect C code.
Third, the optimization doesn't do away with pointers. If it did then it would
transform the language completely. The user's view is still one where names
denote pointers.
It seems that you're thinking of C pointers.
That's pretty dumb since
(1) it doesn't make sense, and
(2) it has been mentioned in almost every article in this thread, including
my first, and including the single paragraph that *you quoted above*,
which was only about that, that
we're not talking about C pointers here.
Python names denote pointers by definition (of pointer).
The word itself doesn't imply other baggage, no.
It might help to *read* what you're quoting, try to follow references, so on.
Cheers & hth.,
- Alf
Your statement seems pretty irrelevant to anything.
It's almost hilarious, quoting a single paragraph about how irrelevant the C
pointer is, and responding with something like that.
Do you understand that you're restating (in the form of exemplifying) what
you're quoting?
Did you /read/ what you quoted?
All theree of your points about Python are wrong; I don't know about the Ruby point.
First, the current Python language specification formally prevents the
optimization you mention, because there's no support for binding to do anything
but direct binding leaving object identities unchanged.
But in practice that's no big deal though: I can't imagine any code relying on
identities of completely immutable objects.
Second, even the variant that was tried improved performance.
But it would reportedly have wreaked havoc with imperfect C code.
Third, the optimization doesn't do away with pointers. If it did then it would
transform the language completely. The user's view is still one where names
denote pointers.
It seems that you're thinking of C pointers.
That's pretty dumb since
(1) it doesn't make sense, and
(2) it has been mentioned in almost every article in this thread, including
my first, and including the single paragraph that *you quoted above*,
which was only about that, that
we're not talking about C pointers here.
Python names denote pointers by definition (of pointer).
The word itself doesn't imply other baggage, no.
It might help to *read* what you're quoting, try to follow references, so on.
Cheers & hth.,
- Alf
A
Alf P. Steinbach
* Steve Holden:
I thought the answer could help.
You thought you cold do a bit of ad hominem attack.
That's the difference between us.
Cheers,
- Alf
I thought the answer could help.
You thought you cold do a bit of ad hominem attack.
That's the difference between us.
Cheers,
- Alf
S
Steve Holden
Well, the way I see it, you assumed you knew better than Stephen, andAlf said:
insisted on proposing a solution to a problem that he clearly stated he
had no interest in. I'm not quite sure, given that, what the point of
the advice was.
However, my question was genuine, based on your observed behavior. I
agree I might have phrased it more politely, but I do find your
self-assurance somewhat irritating.
regards
Steve
A
Alf P. Steinbach
* Steve Holden:
You're going into motivations, that it seems to me that you're projecting,
saying that any helpful suggestion mean that one thinks one knows better and
implies a desire to demonstrate imagined superiority.
You're trying to portray a helping hand as a negative personal characteristic of
the helper.
"the only reason that guy tries to help you is because he wishes to show how
superior he (thinks he) is".
That's your style in a fair number of postings, and now here:
* ad hominem attack,
* projection (at least the way I read it), and
* inject - noise - about - something - completely - irrelevant
Note that readers can easily guess about motivations for the last.
There are many people who read just the Usenet group, e.g. via Google groups.
When you say you don't understand the point of the advice, you're saying that
* those people don't matter, and that
* it doesn't matter whether they can read Stephen Hansen's articles.
That's
* slighting Stephen Hansen, and
* showing off an extreme ego-centric view of the world,
sorry.
Thanks.
Cheers & hth.,
- Alf
You're going into motivations, that it seems to me that you're projecting,
saying that any helpful suggestion mean that one thinks one knows better and
implies a desire to demonstrate imagined superiority.
You're trying to portray a helping hand as a negative personal characteristic of
the helper.
"the only reason that guy tries to help you is because he wishes to show how
superior he (thinks he) is".
That's your style in a fair number of postings, and now here:
* ad hominem attack,
* projection (at least the way I read it), and
* inject - noise - about - something - completely - irrelevant
Note that readers can easily guess about motivations for the last.
There are many people who read just the Usenet group, e.g. via Google groups.
When you say you don't understand the point of the advice, you're saying that
* those people don't matter, and that
* it doesn't matter whether they can read Stephen Hansen's articles.
That's
* slighting Stephen Hansen, and
* showing off an extreme ego-centric view of the world,
sorry.
Thanks.
Cheers & hth.,
- Alf
S
Steven D'Aprano
That phrase you keep using, "ad hominem"... it doesn't mean what you seem
to think it means.
An ad hominem attack is not when somebody makes a criticism of you
personally. It is when somebody says something along the lines of "Don't
pay any attention to Alf, he doesn't know what he's talking about, he's a
<whatever>".
You might not like the personal criticism, but that doesn't make it
either an attack or a fallacy.
A
Alf P. Steinbach
* Steven D'Aprano:
<url: http://www.tfd.com/ad+hominem>
ad hominem Latin [æd ˈhɒmɪˌnɛm]
adj & adv
1. directed against a person rather than against his arguments
2. based on or appealing to emotion rather than reason Compare ad rem See also
argumentum ad hominem
Steve Holden attacked only at the personal level, via characterization.
In response to ...
.... Steve Holden wrote:
<quote>
Is there *any* problem you don't have a fatuous answer for?
</quote>
Which doesn't have anything to do with any subject matter discussed, not even
the PS that he was replying to (which absolutely didn't warrant that description
or any negative response), but which does convey an impression of a person.
Then he wrote
<quote>
you assumed you knew better than Stephen [Hansen]
</quote>
which again is only about a person, and here about the person's motivations for
trying to help.
And there was a bit more with some collateral damage in the implications.
It's pretty dirty and yes, personal attacks are ad hominem; see above.
The ad hominem attacks that he appears to routinely engage in reflect back on
Steve Holden but the sub-threads that they invariably spawn also constitute a
high level of noise deflecting from whatever issue was discussed.
Cheers & hth. (especially the dictionary reference),
- Alf
PS: in order to recognize various forms of fallacies the following is a quite
useful resource: <url: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/>. I just typed
"fallacies" in the Firefox address bar. - DS
<url: http://www.tfd.com/ad+hominem>
ad hominem Latin [æd ˈhɒmɪˌnɛm]
adj & adv
1. directed against a person rather than against his arguments
2. based on or appealing to emotion rather than reason Compare ad rem See also
argumentum ad hominem
Steve Holden attacked only at the personal level, via characterization.
In response to ...
.... Steve Holden wrote:
<quote>
Is there *any* problem you don't have a fatuous answer for?
</quote>
Which doesn't have anything to do with any subject matter discussed, not even
the PS that he was replying to (which absolutely didn't warrant that description
or any negative response), but which does convey an impression of a person.
Then he wrote
<quote>
you assumed you knew better than Stephen [Hansen]
</quote>
which again is only about a person, and here about the person's motivations for
trying to help.
And there was a bit more with some collateral damage in the implications.
It's pretty dirty and yes, personal attacks are ad hominem; see above.
The ad hominem attacks that he appears to routinely engage in reflect back on
Steve Holden but the sub-threads that they invariably spawn also constitute a
high level of noise deflecting from whatever issue was discussed.
Cheers & hth. (especially the dictionary reference),
- Alf
PS: in order to recognize various forms of fallacies the following is a quite
useful resource: <url: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/>. I just typed
"fallacies" in the Firefox address bar. - DS
A
Alf P. Steinbach
* Ben Finney:
Or to weaken an argument, or to draw attention away from an argument, or to
weaken future arguments...
However, although in this particular case the Ad Hominems constituted logical
fallacies, not all Ad Hominems are logical fallacies.
For example, if a person is a chronic liar, has a known history of lying, then
that can have a strong bearing on whether the person's claims -- technical or
about other persons -- should be seriously considered[1].
Cheers & hth.,
- Alf
Notes:
[1] As explained at <url:
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/personal-attack.html>
Or to weaken an argument, or to draw attention away from an argument, or to
weaken future arguments...
However, although in this particular case the Ad Hominems constituted logical
fallacies, not all Ad Hominems are logical fallacies.
For example, if a person is a chronic liar, has a known history of lying, then
that can have a strong bearing on whether the person's claims -- technical or
about other persons -- should be seriously considered[1].
Cheers & hth.,
- Alf
Notes:
[1] As explained at <url:
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/personal-attack.html>
G
Gabriel Genellina
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This doesn't make it an ad hominem fallacie. This is just criticism
directed to your person, that you may like or not. It would be a fallacie
if it were intended to dismiss your argument.
From the above site:
"this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character
of person making the claim [...] Second, this attack is taken to be
evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making
(or presenting)."
That second part is missing in S. H. posts.
D
D'Arcy J.M. Cain
Yes they are. Using the reputation of someone to prove or disprove
their claims is a logical fallacy.
Yes but it's still a fallacy. Taking the author's history into account
may be valid for deciding that further investigation is warranted but by
itself it does not prove anything about the claims. Suggesting that it
does is fallacious.
"Bill is a liar therefore his statement is false" is a fallacy. "Bill
is a liar so take his claims with a grain of salt" is not.
There is another case. "Bill never tells the truth therefore his
claim is wrong" is not an ad hominem fallacy. It's a sylogism. It may
or may not be correct but if the first statement is true (Bill always
lies) then the the conclusion is true.
S
Steven Howe
Really, is this a relevant topic on a program mail list? You guys need
to get a room and start discussing angel counts on pinheads under the
blankets.
sph
to get a room and start discussing angel counts on pinheads under the
blankets.
sph
A
Alf P. Steinbach
* Ben Finney:
That's false. Happily anyone can check back, e.g. up-thread here.
Judging by the last few months the number of persons engaging in ad hominem
attacks in this group is small, counted on one hand with possibly one finger
from the other hand to help. They're very active. But happily, few.
However, in the other non-moderated groups I participate in the number of such
persons is essentially *zero*, not counting sporadic visits from trolls.
And that's ad hominem, implying unacceptable behavior on my part, which if you
could back up you'd cited.
Cheers & hth.,
- Alf
That's false. Happily anyone can check back, e.g. up-thread here.
Judging by the last few months the number of persons engaging in ad hominem
attacks in this group is small, counted on one hand with possibly one finger
from the other hand to help. They're very active. But happily, few.
However, in the other non-moderated groups I participate in the number of such
persons is essentially *zero*, not counting sporadic visits from trolls.
And that's ad hominem, implying unacceptable behavior on my part, which if you
could back up you'd cited.
Cheers & hth.,
- Alf
A
Alf P. Steinbach
* Stephen Hansen:
I'm happy that even though that may (with some low probability) be your actual
opinion, it's incorrect.
That is not a quote of me. It is a lie.
That's also a lie, and it's not a quote of me.
And just to be clear, as anyone can see by looking up-thread, generally,
contrary to your claims, I give references for whatever that I suspect might be
genuinely misunderstood.
And so I've done in (nearly) every article in the original thread, especially
for the terms, and still people have posted articles apparently mis-interpreting
those terms in very non-sensible ways -- one gets tired of that, yes.
It's true that that kind of insinuative arguments have been used in this group, yes.
It goes to alleged motives and alleged history instead of the technical, that
is, it is a purely personal attack.
So, ironically, you're here citing one kind of hominem attack -- not exactly
clever when you're arguing that such does not occur.
I do offer unsolicited help now and then, as I gave you and for which Steve
Holden decided that a bit of personal attack would be suitable.
But my help was just as much in order to help others (who can't read your
non-propagated articles) as in order to help you personally. That's the spirit
of Usenet in many other groups. One just helps out, and often the reaction is a
"thank you" instead of an ad hominem attack (as with Steve Holden) or, as in
your case, faked quotes and general lies, which is border-line ad hominem.
Anyway, please stop post faked quotes and general lies, as you do above.
Cheers & hth.,
- Alf
I'm happy that even though that may (with some low probability) be your actual
opinion, it's incorrect.
That is not a quote of me. It is a lie.
That's also a lie, and it's not a quote of me.
And just to be clear, as anyone can see by looking up-thread, generally,
contrary to your claims, I give references for whatever that I suspect might be
genuinely misunderstood.
And so I've done in (nearly) every article in the original thread, especially
for the terms, and still people have posted articles apparently mis-interpreting
those terms in very non-sensible ways -- one gets tired of that, yes.
It's true that that kind of insinuative arguments have been used in this group, yes.
It goes to alleged motives and alleged history instead of the technical, that
is, it is a purely personal attack.
So, ironically, you're here citing one kind of hominem attack -- not exactly
clever when you're arguing that such does not occur.
I do offer unsolicited help now and then, as I gave you and for which Steve
Holden decided that a bit of personal attack would be suitable.
But my help was just as much in order to help others (who can't read your
non-propagated articles) as in order to help you personally. That's the spirit
of Usenet in many other groups. One just helps out, and often the reaction is a
"thank you" instead of an ad hominem attack (as with Steve Holden) or, as in
your case, faked quotes and general lies, which is border-line ad hominem.
Anyway, please stop post faked quotes and general lies, as you do above.
Cheers & hth.,
- Alf
S
Steven D'Aprano
Alf, although your English in this forum has been excellent so far, I
understand you are Norwegian, so it is possible that you aren't a native
English speaker and possibly unaware that quotation marks are sometimes
ambiguous in English.
While it is true that quoted text is officially meant to indicate a
direct quote, it is also commonly used in informal text to indicate a
paraphrase. (There are other uses as well, but they don't concern us now.)
Unfortunately, this means that in informal discussions like this it is
sometimes difficult to distinguish a direct quote from a paraphrase,
except by context. In context, as a native speaker, I can assure you that
Stephen Hansen's use of quotation marks is a paraphrase and not meant to
be read as a direct quote.
As a paraphrase, it's not a *lie* -- it should be read as Stephen's
*opinion* of your actions, not a direct quote. Stephen might, or might
not, be *mistaken*, but it's unlikely he's actively lying. Arguing
pedantically that you didn't write those exact words won't win you any
friends or supporters.
You can choose to defend yourself against a gross misrepresentation of
what you actually said; or you can accept that it captures the spirit
(but not the letter) of your words; or you can choose a middle position,
and accept that even if it is not a 100% accurate representation of your
statements, perhaps it is 90% accurate, or 10%, or 50%. The exact amount
doesn't really matter, and will be subjective, and frankly I don't care.
But whatever degree you choose to accept, it is obvious that a number of
people are not just being annoyed by your behaviour, but they are annoyed
enough to publicly chastise you for it. That includes Steve Holden, who
is usually far more even-tempered than (e.g.) me.
Without necessarily suggesting that you are 100% to blame for the
antagonism, its unlikely that so many disparate individuals are all 100%
mistaken. As you say, the public record is there for anyone who wishes to
read the history.
Believe me Alf, the fact that people are taking the time to try to argue
with you instead of just kill-filing you is a compliment.
R
Robert Kern
Yes. Meta-discussions about how we discuss programming productively are also
on-topic.
--
Robert Kern
"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
an underlying truth."
-- Umberto Eco
E
Ethan Furman
Steven said:
It's a compliment I am not paying, although I am grateful to those who
are attempting to teach him. At the rate it's going, though, I don't
see myself buying any book he produces.
Besides the arrogant attitude, he is wrong on so many things about
Python it is truly stunning. He seems to have confidence born of
ignorance... a scary sight to see.
In the spirit of being helpful and not just being a jerk myself:
Alf,
Using smileys after declaring somebody is mistaken/wrong/etc makes you
look bad.
Not attempting to learn the language makes you look like an arrogant
idiot (case in point: passing-by-object).
Accusing anyone and everyone that criticizes you of making ad hominem
(sp?) attacks makes you look like a whiner.
After all is said and done - if you had a truly good grasp of Python, I
might buy your book even if you still had -- ummm -- a less than winning
presence on the mailing list; but right now your understanding is not
worth paying for.
Hoping-this-helps-but-not-really-expecting-it-to-ly yours,
~Ethan~
A
Alf P. Steinbach
* Duncan Booth:
Sure. I already did in the article you're replying to, immediately following
what you quote above. You snipped that which you're asking for, so I requote:
<quote>
First, the current Python language specification formally prevents the
optimization you mention, because there's no support for binding to do anything
but direct binding leaving object identities unchanged.
But in practice that's no big deal though: I can't imagine any code relying on
identities of completely immutable objects.
Second, even the variant that was tried improved performance.
But it would reportedly have wreaked havoc with imperfect C code.
Third, the optimization doesn't do away with pointers. If it did then it would
transform the language completely. The user's view is still one where names
denote pointers.
</quote>
Since in the quoting above no reference to definition of "pointer" remains:
"pointer" refers to a copyable reference value as seen from the Python level, in
the same way as "pointer" is used by e.g. the Java language spec.
No, I can't see how you can deduce any such connection from I wrote.
Whether objects "move around" depends on what exactly you mean by "move around",
and given that, it may then depend on the Python implementation.
However, from the Python point of view every object has a fixed unique id,
available via id().
I'm guessing wildly that you're trying to illustrate id's that don't correspond
to memory addresses?
If so, then that's correct: a Python (or Java, or whatever language) pointer is
not necessarily directly a memory address, and furthermore id is not guaranteed
to reproduce the bits of a pointer value -- which might not even make sense.
All that id does is to produce a value that uniquely identifies the object
pointed to, i.e. it corresponds to the pointer value, and although in CPython
that's simply the bits of a C pointer typed as integer, in IronPython it's not.
Cheers & hth.,
- Alf
Sure. I already did in the article you're replying to, immediately following
what you quote above. You snipped that which you're asking for, so I requote:
<quote>
First, the current Python language specification formally prevents the
optimization you mention, because there's no support for binding to do anything
but direct binding leaving object identities unchanged.
But in practice that's no big deal though: I can't imagine any code relying on
identities of completely immutable objects.
Second, even the variant that was tried improved performance.
But it would reportedly have wreaked havoc with imperfect C code.
Third, the optimization doesn't do away with pointers. If it did then it would
transform the language completely. The user's view is still one where names
denote pointers.
</quote>
Since in the quoting above no reference to definition of "pointer" remains:
"pointer" refers to a copyable reference value as seen from the Python level, in
the same way as "pointer" is used by e.g. the Java language spec.
No, I can't see how you can deduce any such connection from I wrote.
Whether objects "move around" depends on what exactly you mean by "move around",
and given that, it may then depend on the Python implementation.
However, from the Python point of view every object has a fixed unique id,
available via id().
I'm guessing wildly that you're trying to illustrate id's that don't correspond
to memory addresses?
If so, then that's correct: a Python (or Java, or whatever language) pointer is
not necessarily directly a memory address, and furthermore id is not guaranteed
to reproduce the bits of a pointer value -- which might not even make sense.
All that id does is to produce a value that uniquely identifies the object
pointed to, i.e. it corresponds to the pointer value, and although in CPython
that's simply the bits of a C pointer typed as integer, in IronPython it's not.
Cheers & hth.,
- Alf
A
Alf P. Steinbach
* Steven D'Aprano:
I'm aware that Stephen Hansen maintains that, but I'm not replying to his
ramblings about insanity and so on (perhaps he is a child, but I'm not replying
to that kind of stuff).
Anyway, in the original article he refererred to part of the quoted text,
quoting that in turn as an example of how allegedly patronising (or whatever)
I'd been to him.
Re-quoting a part *does not make sense* for paraphrasing.
And anyway, he wrote a piece where quotes seemed to signify quoting, drawing
conclusions from the quoted text.
It's just plain lying.
Cheers & hth.,
- Alf
I'm aware that Stephen Hansen maintains that, but I'm not replying to his
ramblings about insanity and so on (perhaps he is a child, but I'm not replying
to that kind of stuff).
Anyway, in the original article he refererred to part of the quoted text,
quoting that in turn as an example of how allegedly patronising (or whatever)
I'd been to him.
Re-quoting a part *does not make sense* for paraphrasing.
And anyway, he wrote a piece where quotes seemed to signify quoting, drawing
conclusions from the quoted text.
It's just plain lying.
Cheers & hth.,
- Alf