DIP 1015--Deprecation of Implicit Conversion of Int. & Char. Literals to bool--Formal Assement

[Walter Bright]

On 11/13/2018 8:49 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> Not AFAIK, but calling someone or something extremely stupid or foolish is
> almost always a terrible idea in a professional discussion (or pretty much
> any discussion that you want to be civil) - especially if it can be
> interpreted as calling the person stupid or foolish. That's just throwing
> insults around. If an idea or decision is bad, then it should be shown as to
> why it's bad, and if it is indeed a terrible idea, then the arguments
> themselves should make that obvious without needing to throw insults around.
> 
> It's not always easy to avoid calling ideas stupid when you get emotional
> about something, but the stronger the language used, the more likely it is
> that you're going to get a strong emotional response out of the other person
> rather than a logical, reasoned discussion that can come to a useful
> conclusion rather than a flame war, and asinine is a pretty strong word.
> It's the sort of word that's going to tend to get people mad and insulted
> rather than help with a logical argument in any way - which is why Walter
> called in unprofessional.

Exactly right.

It's not that I'm angry about this (I'm not), I've been around too long to get 
annoyed at this sort of thing. I'm pointing out that using such tactics will 
produce the following reactions:

1. professionals (i.e. people that matter) will ignore you

2. the recipient will get angry with you, will go out of his way to refuse to 
acknowledge your position, and will entrench himself deeper in his position

3. discourage professionals (i.e. people that matter) from participating in the 
forums

4. you'll find yourself interacting solely with other egg-throwers, 
accomplishing nothing

None of these are a desirable result.