Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3785630" data-attributes="member: 4937">First, before we can even have this discussion, you'd have to stop treating the claim like a straw man.  If you don't want to read what other people say according to the principle of charitably interpreting what they say in the strongest possible light, don't be surprised if what they are saying never makes any sense to you.  They have a responcibility to be clear about what they mean, but you have a responcibility not to willfully misconstrue thier meaning.Willfully misconstruing someone's meaning by twisting thier words or taking them too literally is not nearly the strong argument some people here seem to think it is.The phrase 'change for change's sake' doesn't imply that there is no reason at all for the change, because obviously even, 'Because they want to' is still a reason.  Rather it implies that there is no pressing reason for making the change compared to the effort and cost of making the change, or indeed that the real reason comes down to simply 'because they want to' or some similar whim.  Generally, if something has worked for a long period and there is no obvious tangible benefit to making the change, then it is considered fair to claim that it is nothing more than 'change for change's sake'.  Putting out a new product for financial reasons is a plausible motive for 'change for change's sake'.  I'm not necessarily in agreement that it is the motive here, but it is certainly a possibility.Frankly, I think that this discussion is going to run into a wall very quickly because of the problem of defining what is an 'obvious tangible benefit'.  The problem is that people of a more conservative mindset tend to believe that the burden of proof lies with those that want to make the change.  That is, before a change is justified, you have to prove that the change will result in an obvious improvement.   People with a more liberal mindset tend to believe that the burden of proof lies with those that don't want to make the change.  That is, they believe that you must demonstrate that the current system will clearly perform better than the proposed change and indeed typically believe that if you can show that there is any problem at all with the current system that some sort of change is obviously justified.  These two different view points are going to clash dramatically over what consitutes 'obvious tangible benefit' and how you'd go about proving it exists.For example, if someone doesn't find AoO problimatic and if he is either naturally conservative in his views or his lack of problems with AoO's has tended to make him conservative in his thinking about them, then he will tend to see the argument that 'other people have a problem with AoO' as demonstrating something about other people but nothing about the AoO rules.  Thus, the two sides will almost certainly talk right past each other.  The conservative will tend to say, "Demonstrate to me that the new rules will be better.", where as the liberal will tend to say, "Demonstrate to me that the old rules can't be improved."  Neither side really cares about the question that the other side is asking.</blockquote>

Verification