Quote
Originally posted by Martin Turner:
**Ok. You want me to show specifically where you are making personal attacks?
In your posts you have accused me of being arrogant, pompous, lecturing, and determined to rubbish other people's view points. In fact, you use the word 'arrogant' in your very last post. These are personal attacks.
Second, you are quite wrong about the nature of debate. In debate, you get a limited amount of time to make your case. You do this by presenting your case, not by going through the other person's points one by one.
I don't actually see you asking me any questions. You use the form of questioning as a rhetorical device, but you don't seem to be after any new information. I've already given my opinions, and I know that you don't like them. Why do I need to repeat them again? But, in any case, where is it written that the universal law of civility is that every question asked must be answered?
If you really want to know why I disagree with your approach, then you are going to have to put up with what you will probably call a lecture. If you don't want a lecture, just skip the next bit.
Your approach fits into what Strategists refer to as the 'Planning School' of strategy. There are more or less ten schools of strategy, and the best discussion of them is found in Mintzberg, Ahlstrand and Lampel's 'Strategy Safari', or in the condensed article at the start of the FT/Prentice Hall's 'Mastering Strategy'. You can find both of these books on Amazon. For the record, the ten schools as defined by Mintzberg are Environmental, Cognitive, Entrepreneurial, Power, Positioning, Cultural, Planning, Emergent, Design and Configuration. As well as defining these schools based on academic studies of strategy over the last 90 years, Mintzberg also critiques each school, and shows that no single school can give us the answer to 'what is strategy'.
The planning school is very much about laying everything out in detail and working through a defined process. There are some situations where the planning school is appropriate. The construction phase of a building project is one example. On the other hand, the school has been widely critiqued because in most situations it creates more problems than it solves. The Planning School is widely credited for the failure of the Schlieffen and Falk plans which plunged Europe into the first World War. Most especially, the Planning School is generally considered to be a failure when it comes to creative projects, unless it is mixed in with elements of the other schools. I spent last Thursday working through 21 tender documents about strategies for redeveloping the image of a town in the West Midlands. All of them included elements of the Planning School, in that they had GANTT charts or equivalents. However, they all took a broader approach, some favouring the Cultural schools, some the Design, and some the Environmental. We would in fact have rejected any that merely adopted one of the schools of strategy at the expense of all the others.
As far as plugin design is concerned, I personally feel that a planning approach doesn't reflect the way most of the classic plugins were made. I think it's too mechanical and can stifle creativity. I would much rather take a leaf out of the Cognitive School book. Cognitivists are much more interested in brainstorming, lateral thinking, and generally finding as many different perspectives on the problem as possible. To the cognitivist, there isn't one 'correct' approach, there are thousands of approaches which are worth trying. Often an unpromising approach will yield surprisingly good results.
Strategy lecture over. Probably just better to get Mintzberg's book.
For the rest, I wish you well in your plugin design, and I look forward to playing it when it's ready.
**
Heres a little information on debate and rhetoric.
There are two general types of debate in the US: Lincoln-Douglas and Policy. Both involve extensive rebuttals. You present your case, someone else so, and then the rebuttals and counter-rebuttals begin.
(url="http://"http://www.uoregon.edu/~forensic/affirmative_html.html")http://www.uoregon.e...ative_html.html(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.uoregon.edu/~forensic/LDValue.html")http://www.uoregon.e...ic/LDValue.html(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.urbandebate.org/impact_policydebate")http://www.urbandeba...ct_policydebate(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.bethel.edu/college/dept/comm/npda/npdarules.html")http://www.bethel.ed.../npdarules.html(/url)
Mr. Turner, please note the format of both of those debates and the fact the both involve extensive rebuttals. Now what does a rebuttal entail, addressing the specific points of an opponent. I believe that directly contradicts your statement. There is indeed a limited amount of time to make your case but that is for the sake of keeping the debate relevant.
You may argue that these examples are of American forms of debate but the essence of debate is universal. Heres a nice little link of the nature of rhetoric in the Greek context:
(url="http://"http://www.acadjournal.com/2002/v7/part5/p1/")http://www.acadjourn...02/v7/part5/p1/(/url)
Again, the process of rhetoric mentions periods of argumentation and responding to objections, or in more concise terms, a rebuttal.
What am I after when I question? I am after the truth and to strengthen my argument which I feel is correct. If youre not willing to have your opinion criticized, you should not be presenting it to the general public. Its not a matter of representing your arguments, it about refuting mine which require additional thought and evidence. You seem disinterested in that but as I said before, you seem highly interested in maintaining the sanctity of your opinions and protecting them from any criticism.
First off, Id like to note that my strategy does not advocate completely the Planning School as you portray it. What your description provides is the extreme example of what it is, which is exactly what a book should do: provide an extreme description to better contrast the differences between various strategies. However, for applications in real life, it is not accurate given that most philosophies of that school will fall into a moderate range, something that likely combines the traits of that school and many others.
I also have an issue with your historical analysis. The Schlieffen and Falk plans were not the cause of World War I. The war and the plan were the products of German militant nationalism and desire to gain more power and land. At the time, German had few colonies and foreign protectorates. With the advent of militant nationalism and imperialism, German leaders very strongly wanted to gain more of those resources they lacked. Then we had the more immediate causes of the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and the pan-Slavic nationalism.
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(url="http://"http://www.zhouj.net/days/")Days of Glory(/url), Upcoming TC for EV: Nova
).