FLASH: Re: BILL WAGNER: Don't want to beat a dead horse, but....

[Alan Prather]

Well,


Yes bill....It's obvious that your Intent was to review the direction the

list seemed to be taking.

BUT, you seem to think that we are ridculing you for that. We aren't. You

see if I was in that Hypothetical study group you mention, I wouldn't

riducule the person who brought up the subject of where the group was going,

because I didn't in this case either.

What I, and many others in this group did get upset about was WHAT your view

on where this list should go, not the fact that you were bringing it up for

review.

-Alan Prather


----- Original Message -----

From: Bill Wagner <

billpwrtst [dot] com

>

To: <

alanprathercsi [dot] com

>

Sent: Friday, November 06, 1998 5:30 AM

Subject: Don't want to beat a dead horse, but....



>Alan,

>

>Let me ask you one question then I'll fade into electronic obscurity and

>you'll never have to hear from me again. Let's take a hypothetical

situation

>analagous to the issue I wanted to raise in the mailing list. Let's suppose

>that, when you were a 17-year-old at Carnegie-Mellon, you had a group of

>friends on your dorm floor. Every week this group of friends would get

>together to discuss and assist each other with their respective academic

>endeavors, this group had a definitive stratification as far as ability

>levels, but everyone cooperated and the smart guys were more than willing

to

>help the slower students. Now suppose that two guys in this group got

>accepted to school (let's say in the AI research program) and they take on

>all kinds of classes that deal with highly advanced topics (some of which

>may be beyond their scope). Now let's say that these students start

behaving

>frantically (with lots of !!!!!!s) every week in the discussion group. They

>don't know calculus and they consistently need calculus help at 11 at night

>(see any of Russell Unger's frantic requests for help on a deadline) when

>you wish they were instead focussing on gathering a broad conceptual

>understanding of the latest AI project you are working on. Could you really

>be sickened by someone in this group who merely wanted to discuss the

>direction of your study group in light of these two students direction?

>I thought I was extremely careful not to insult anyone (instead I was

trying

>to get people to discuss the focus of this list, if it is a tech

>support/help list, fine, I will go elsewhere to discuss conceptual issues),

>but maybe I slipped (although a review of my post doesn't seem to indicate

>this).

>If you read all of this, thanks,

>

>Bill Wagner

>

>

>





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