Quote from: Hyena on February 27, 2016, 01:21:44 PM

Quote from: LMGTFY on February 27, 2016, 12:43:21 PM

Your thesis is that warfare-persistence was a design goal for ARPANET. Reading back over this discussion I'm surprised you think there's any doubt about that. Perhaps your earlier comments were the fruit of my imagination, but my imagination is still seeing your earlier comments in this thread. Anyway, your thesis - that should be pretty easy for you to prove, eh? Specifically, your thesis is falsifiable - I can show a statement from the guy who commissioned ARPANET saying that warfare-persistence was not a design goal, and iterating what the real design goals were. That too is falsifiable - if you care about the accuracy of your claim, you could make some effort to disprove Charles Herzfeld's statements regarding the design goals of the internet he commissioned. It would make for an exciting new theory about the early history of The Internet - you could be famous.

No, you are absolutely wrong. I have repeated it over and over again and you seem to be deaf, blind and dumb to my statements. I understand your frustration over the fact that I am not playing my role in admitting ownership over the statements that you have so carefully crafted for me. However, you need to understand that what you are doing, is a pointless waste of time. Let me make it really simple for you, because who knows, perhaps I'm talking to a mentally gifted person.

1. The Internet was designed, amongst other things, to withstand war.
2. The commissioner did not have this in mind, but that doesn't falsify the previous statement.

Your fallacy lies in the fact that you insist on the commissioner to have been the sole creator of the Internet while in reality he was just a commissioner, much like a police officer is a law enforcer (but not the creator of the law).

Or perhaps this will light a bulb for you:
If something works very well in a certain condition, then it was designed for such a condition, even if the human aspect of the great designer was not immediately aware of that.

You seem to be stuck in the old and rigid way of thinking where a paper trail dictates reality and not vice versa. I repeat myself again and again that there is no way of knowing what were the real reasons behind the creation of the Internet. For starters, the commissioner could lie either knowingly or unknowingly. The papers could be deceiving. If I was to pretend that recorded history is always the utter truth, then of course I would agree that the Internet was not designed for war, being the idiot that I am and believing the sources that you have presented.

And since I already know that you have so hard time admitting your defeat I can already guess that you will almost certainly repeat yourself like a broken gramophone. For that reason, I will say one more thing to save myself from too many replies to your funny act of banging your head against the wall.

Even if the Internet was obviously and absolutely a terrible invention under the typical conditions of war and your beloved commissioner stated that they never designed the Internet to withstand war, even then I would not immediately interpret this with absolute certainty as what really happened. I was not there when it happened, I have no way of knowing what really happened, but I do have my common sense --- if it looks like cat, acts like a cat and meows like a cat, then it must be a cat. If it looks like it was designed to persist in rough conditions then it was probably designed to persist in rough conditions (no matter what your beloved government-that-would-never-lie-to-you says).

1. If this was the case, you will be able to provide evidence in support of your thesis that the Internet "was designed, amongst other things, to withstand war".
2. Charles Herzfeld stated that:

Quote

The ARPAnet was not started to create a Command and Control System that would survive a nuclear attack, as many now claim. To build such a system was clearly a major military need, but it was not ARPA's mission to do this; in fact, we would have been severely criticized had we tried. ...

...and, knowing your fascination with the differences between nuclear- and conventional-warfare, and anticipating yet another attempted derailment, I'll quote the rest:

Quote

... Rather, the ARPAnet came out of our frustration that there were only a limited number of large, powerful research computers in the country, and that many research investigators who should have access to them were geographically separated from them.

He's not talking about his intent; he's talking about the intent of ARPA as a whole, and its sponsors in the wider military and government. He's talking about the design goal being linking computers and networks at scattered (military) research locations to allow sharing of research resources.

"If something works very well in a certain condition, then it was designed for such a condition, even if the human aspect of the great designer was not immediately aware of that." I think if you truly believe that (and to give you the benefit of the doubt, I'm sceptical that you do truly believe that) then your definition of "design" is wide enough to drive a cart-horse through. The Internet works very well for the distribution of pornography - why oh why didn't ARPA think of the children? Oh wait, because working very well in a certain condition isn't evidence that the Internet was designed for that condition. Commerce works exceptionally well on the Internet - we should thank ARPA for designing the greatest commercial platform of all time. Oh wait, etc etc. Your argument now appears to be "I concede that warfare persistence wasn't a conscious design goal, but because the Internet may exhibit warfare persistence then we can consider it a design goal regardless".

Sorry, your lightbulb is still flickering. Did you replace it after your "the military only design things to persist warfare" fiasco?

Like your duck-test (sorry,"cat test), I employ a similar test. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You've made an extraordinary claim, that flies in the face of the available evidence, and your attempts to justify it have, to date, been demonstrably risible. It should be trivial for you to prove your claim that (your words) "the Internet was designed, amongst other things, to withstand war". The rhetorical dilettantism of a Philosophy 101 student, slightly tipsy in the student union bar and bent on convincing his bored audience that the sky is red and football doesn't exist, is amusing the first few times we encounter it, but ultimately grown ups crave actual rational thought and not silly parlour tricks. You made a statement - back that statement up with facts.

I'll be happy to admit defeat - if you can show that (again, your words): "the Internet was designed, amongst other things, to withstand war" has evidence supporting it (and, of course, that the evidence isn't trivially falsifiable - some random on the Internet with a conspiracy theory obviously doesn't count). Design docs from the time, diaries from engineers involved, Herzfeld's shrink's notes revealing him to be a fantasist - honestly, the potential for evidence supporting your assertion is practically limitless. If you cared about the accuracy of what you're claiming, you could have made a good start on finding something to support your claim by now.