If you found the discussion fruitful in the end, why is that not the bottom line? (Especially if this fruitfulness involved “reasonable conclusions” being reached?)
(Here I am talking about “the bottom line” only with respect to your interaction with me directly, ignoring any effects like the benefit of a comment exchange to other commenters or to readers, etc.)
You say that you “had the feeling that to interact with [me] at all was to an invitation to be drawn into an vortex of fact-checking and quibbling”. But as we can see from the linked examples, there generally was not, in fact, any “vortex of fact-checking and quibbling”.[1] So it would seem that the “feeling” you had was false-to-fact. Do you agree with this evaluation?
Indeed, in the exchange at the first link, the putative roles were reversed—you were questioning me about what I believe, etc. Of course, I have no objection to this! But it hardly serves as an example of me drawing anyone into any vortices of quibbling…
I have two questions:
If you found the discussion fruitful in the end, why is that not the bottom line? (Especially if this fruitfulness involved “reasonable conclusions” being reached?)
(Here I am talking about “the bottom line” only with respect to your interaction with me directly, ignoring any effects like the benefit of a comment exchange to other commenters or to readers, etc.)
You say that you “had the feeling that to interact with [me] at all was to an invitation to be drawn into an vortex of fact-checking and quibbling”. But as we can see from the linked examples, there generally was not, in fact, any “vortex of fact-checking and quibbling”.[1] So it would seem that the “feeling” you had was false-to-fact. Do you agree with this evaluation?
Indeed, in the exchange at the first link, the putative roles were reversed—you were questioning me about what I believe, etc. Of course, I have no objection to this! But it hardly serves as an example of me drawing anyone into any vortices of quibbling…