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The common logical fallacy is fallacious unless it happens to be
true. However, I won't dispute it being a fallacy almost all of the
time, since that is why I said it makes me uncomfortable. I certainly
don't recommend it as a way to make decisions, but unfortunately, I
think this time it was warranted. And my personal opinion was, and
remains, that it does not pose a greater problem in and of itself,
except perhaps for the unlikely circumstance that the various
stakeholders think that this is sufficient as is,because it isn't. It
is, I obviously believe, a worthy advance. For those who disagree,
the door to paricipate in improving it is open with the caveat of
OASIS membership, of course.
Ciao,
Rex
At 3:37 PM -0400 4/4/04, Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
>At 6:48 AM -0700 4/4/04, Rex Brooks wrote:
>
>>Lastly, who wants to cast the vote the prevents allowing the only
>>viable, public standard completely uncoupled from partisan
>>politics, that stands a chance of saving a single life in a time
>>when another incident such as 9/11 or 3/11 could happen at any
>>time, especially if that public standard, because it IS public, CAN
>>be amended to do its job better?
>
>Without knowing anything about CAP, I do recognize here a very
>common logical fallacy that leads to bad policy and bad government.
>The assumption that we must do something because, hey it might work,
>ignores the very real costs of doing something, including,
>sometimes, the possibility that it may be actively harmful and
>perhaps even counterproductive. Solutions based on newer technology
>are not always better. If CAP is bad enough, it indeed might be
>better not to have it at all. It is ridiculous to claim that we
>should support because it might stand a chance of saving a single
>life, unless we can also say with reasonable confidence that it will
>not costs lives (or freedom, or privacy, or wealth, or any other
>concepts we hold dear).
>
>The only reasonable way to judge a standard like this is to tally up
>the advantages *AND DISADVANTAGES* and see if the advantages
>outweigh the disadvantages. Sometimes it's a judgement call which
>different, rational people may come to different conclusions about.
>For instance, the law enforcement community places almost no weight
>on privacy and civil liberties. Many citizens place much greater
>weight on those values. Nonetheless you have to make the comparisons
>to speak sensibly about such matters.
>
>I am reminded of the XML 1.1 debates, in which I was repeatedly
>accused of being morally suspect merely because I dared to raise
>the question of what the disadvantages of moving to a new version of
>XML were, and whether the advantages were of sufficient weight to
>counterbalance them.
>
>As I said, I really don't know if the advantages of CAP outweigh its
>disadvantages or not; but if I felt they did I would have no
>compunction about casting a vote to reject it, even in the absence
>of other alternatives. Sometimes when faced with a bad spec, that's
>the only sensible and logical choice. Sadly the inertia of standards
>efforts (not just at OASIS but at the JCP, the W3C, and elsewhere)
>means standards tend to get approved even when they shouldn't be I
>suspect a procedural change might be in order. To be approved a spec
>must pass two separate and independent votes: one by those who
>worked on the spec, and one by interested parties who did not
>participate in the development of the spec, and made no investment
>to be wasted if the specification fails to pass the vote. Sadly, I
>know of no standards body that operates in such a bicameral fashion.
>--
>
> Elliotte Rusty Harold
> elharo@metalab.unc.edu
> Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003)
> http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaulaitA
--
Rex Brooks
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth
W3Address: http://www.starbourne.com
Email: rexb@starbourne.com
Tel: 510-849-2309
Fax: By Request
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