OK, if I'm late for work tomorrow, it's your fault.

:-)

"Bruce J. Richman" said:

As I've made clear many times, my comments refer only to a person's
online behavior. Since I haven't observed their offline behavior, I can
only speculate about what it might be. Of course I'm more qualified to
use these terms, because of my training and professional background.

That is indeed clear to me, and goes without saying.

Either you post here as Bruce Richman, a private person, or you post
here as Dr. Bruce Richman, Licensed Psychologist.

The 2 are inseperable, and in my view this is a false dichotomy.

By itself, it would be.
However, the way it looked to me in one of your earlier posts, just
*because* you're a licensed psychologist, your evaluation of someone
*as based on their usenet posts* would somehow be more valuable than
when another person without your skills would say the same.

If that is the case, when you're calling e.g. Lionel delusional,
you're saying this as Dr. Richman, and as such, have to take the
responsibility for that evaluation in follow-ups.

At the same time, you're saying this as private person Bruce Richman,
meaning we shouldn't read this as a professional observation and you
wouldn't be responsible as Dr. Richman for what you have written.

O God, if only I could find the right words to express what I *really*
mean by all this.

Maybe we should just drop this.

As
you well know, there are several individuals here on RAO that claim
becasuse they have an engineering background or have published
something to do with audio, that they are more qualified than others to
talk about certain things.

Well, to be fair, in an *audio* newsgroup that can be expected :-)
However, it should be made clear to anyone reading RAO that all what
is said here, is merely *opinion*.
When I express my opinion about Martin Logan speakers, that opinion
doesn't carry any more weight than yours, just because I happen to be
an EE.
At least, I hope that people actually understand the distinction.
I would hate it when someone would buy a ML just because I said ( as
an engineer) that I like them.
That's a responsibility I'm not willing to take.
Of course, there are other questions that I can answer just because of
my background, and that are mostly verifiable (Arny will probably
disagree *grin*), like questions about tube life, circuitry or other
technobabble that can be verified.
At that moment, I'm speaking as the engineer that I am, but again, I
hope at the same time that it is clear that I don't posess all wisdom.
That's as far as I want my responsibility to go.

And while I'm saying that, it probably is a reasonable analogy to your
position.

Do you follow what I'm trying to communicate so poorly here?

They make no effort to separate their
vocational activities and/or experience from their online posting
opinions. Similarly, I'm more qualified to talk about abnormal
behavior and psychological subjects in general than other people here
because of my clnical background and training. It is unfair to axpett
a psychologist to not draw on his training, while simultaneously
overlooking the fact that others constantly try and throw their
"engineering" or "book" background in the faces of those that they
attack. (No, I'm not referring to you, Sander ). If I understand
you correctly, you'll agree that everybody can use their background as
they see fit, and should not be expected to divorce themsdeleves from
that when posting to RAO.

I agree with you in full, it's unreasonable and probably impossible to
put your professional hat aside, just as I can't.
However, talking about audio and having it wrong, isn't a very big
deal IMO. Enough people to correct me when I'm wrong.
Evaluating people's character however, whether right or wrong, brings
with it a much larger responsibility.
Just because you *are* a mental health professional, people (whether
or not unconciously) in a certain way *expect* that responsibility
from you, and will call you on it.
Not fair, and probably not called for, but it happens.

I'm sorry, I have no better way to put it.
I hope you understand my point.

Let me give you an example of the irresponsible misuse of terms by
people not qualified to use them at all. Lionel has called me senile,
as part of his routine flamethrowing babble routine. If he believes
this, then he is clearly delusional, in the clinical sense, since theee
is no evidence to suggest that anybody posting to RAO is senile.

I don't think for a moment that he means what he says (or I should
have a very poor judgment of character, which I have not).
I think that Lionel tries to deliver a message similar to mine above.
I'm pretty certain he knows the meaning of the word, perhaps not in as
many (legal) detail as you do, but the general sense will do.
If I'm wrong about this, I apologize in advance to the both of you.

(Oh,
and for the record, Licensed Psychologists evaluate senility in others
as part of legal proceedings in which elderly people sometimes have to
have a guardian appointed to hande their financial and medical
decisions because they are "incompetent" (legally speaking) to do so
independently. OTOH, if he is just tossing out an insult in his usual
mindless, robotic way, then he is displaying his ignorancre about what
the term really means.

He could use it as mockery?
Heck, I probably called Howard senile or something similar.
I'm assuming that people know I'm not serious.

It's highly unlikely that a senile person can
post to an Internet NG, given the fact that most have short-term memory
deficits and can't remember recent events. That would include an
inability tot remember what other people had recentely posted. OTOH,
delusions are defined as beliefs of a persistent, psychotic type about
either oneself or others. Lionel has demonstrated that this is part
of his online behavior since he has repeatedly used terms like senile
with no evidence to support his false statement. Psychotic beliefs are
ones that aren't based on reality, nad as indicated above, this is
clearly the case re. Loionel's misuse of terms about which he knows
nothing.

I think you're taking his posts too seriously.

Enough now, I really have to go to bed.

--
Sander de Waal
" SOA of a KT88? Sufficient. "