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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5830382" data-attributes="member: 4937">Well, there is your problem: a lie can get halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its boots on.  Just because a meme is popular and easily and widely spread doesn't make it either true or valuable.   Racial sterotypes are really easily learned and spread about, but that fecundity doesn't make them defensible or constructive.  Sterotyping our fellow gamers is perhaps a less damnable offense against intelligence, but its no less wrong.   Popularity and ease of acceptance aren't good measures of whether knowledge is good.   Indeed, one of the reasons Mark Twain's observation seems to hold true is that falsehoods often are simply easier to understand than the truth.  Most fights, either on the boards or out in the larger world, are typically between two vast over simplifications.Do you think you can come in and dazzle people with big words and claims that you are being really philosophical, and then they won't think at all about what you say or its implications?   I do not have to accept your assumptions in order to engage the conversation.  It is completely valid to attack the premise of an argument rather than merely the details, and for that matter, I believe that the original poster was (also) attacking the premise that there existed a simplistic easily describable contrast between 'old school' and 'new school' games.False dilemma.  I've never claimed a preference for no distinctions.   As I said to start, I claim a preference for differences by degree rather than kind.   And even that is something of a simplification, because I don't deny that there are at times differences of kind as well and at times differences of degree are large enough that they are effectively differences of kind.   Indeed, if you wanted to some up my outlook on things it is, "The truth is never simple. It follows that no simple statement is ever completely true, including this one."But claiming that all distinctions require simplifications is nonsense and an excuse for sloppy thinking.  The usual problem is that human language lacks the necessary precision to address the complexity, and that human understanding is insufficient to properly measure and quantify the differences.  But none of that excuses ignorance or the defense of ignorance.In any event, this conversation is becoming way too meta, which is increasing my sympathy for Iosue by a large measure.   What's your experience of old school and new school anyway?</blockquote>

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