[cap-talk] Capabilities and Freedom vs. Safety

[Jonathan S. Shapiro]

On Fri, 2007-08-03 at 13:13 +1000, James A. Donald wrote:
> Had I realized you were genuinely interested, I would
> have quoted the relevant exerpts...

James:

I am interested up to a point, but other demands on my time at the
moment preclude giving your posts any substantial attention.

Your writing, to me, has a very low signal to noise ratio. This is not
an assessment of your technical views. Rather, it reflects the fact that
you do not linearize your arguments concisely and you are easily
diverted from your main point into extraneous discussion. Some readers
find this type of wandering style appealing. For me, the problem is that
it requires the reader to maintain a very large state cache in order to
keep track of the discussion. Given my other commitments, I simply do
not have that much attention capacity to give you, which makes it almost
impossible to converse productively.

I am interested, and I will contribute where I can do so usefully within
the constraints of my available capacity.


Jonathan