On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 11:44 PM, Joshua Zeidner wrote: > On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 11:40 PM, Craig White wrote: >> On Sun, 2008-09-28 at 23:08 -0700, Joshua Zeidner wrote: >>> On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 10:58 PM, Lisa Kachold wrote: >> >>> > But that is a famous Ron Paul quote that can't be backed with fact: [...] >> >> Ron Paul is a polarizing figure and that totally marginalizes any points >> that he makes. > > In what way? jmz I would like to chime in here. *if* (say) Copernicus or Galileo or somebody, had presented their ideas regarding the heliocentric theory (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliocentrism#Religious_attitudes_to_heliocentrism) in a way that "technically" was the same as they did, but if certain folks just did not "like" them personally (hey -- that may actually be similar to what really happened!) *then* they could claim -- rightly or wrongly -- that since theory X was being promoted by person Y, and a given representative of the establishment (back then it was mainly religious; for today's world, think "Mainstream Media" /slash, "dot gov") holds the opinion that person Y is a kook, or is not well received in polite society, etc. etc., then they could dismiss the ideas (theory X) without having to address the real underlying issues. One of the most popular ways to do this (dismiss the ideas, without addressing the real issues) is to claim that person Y is doing such a bad job of presenting the ideas (theory X), that one cannot even understand what it is that they are saying, well enough to be able to do a FAIR evaluation, of whether it is ON TRACK or not. Of course, I realize that sometimes folks bend over backwards to avoid this mistake, and even to avoid the APPEARANCE of having made this mistake. Example: there are still folks today, who are trying so hard to be open-minded about the "Cold Fusion" theories of Pons and Fleischmann (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion_history#Recent_developments) (and : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion_history#Lack_of_theoretical_explanations too!) that some experts still disagree about whether it should be "CASE CLOSED" by now, or if work should still continue, sorta "humoring" those guys... YMMV... But Galileo still stands as an example of how possible it is, for someone to start out "not liking" (/slash, disagreeing with) a given theory, and go from that to marginalizing the person who is arguing in favor of it, (maybe even saying some "not nice" things about the person), and then in turn use the alleged "kookiness" of the person ["bearer of bad news"], in an effort to bury said news [/theory]. Just one person's take on things . . . -- Mike Schwartz Glendale AZ schwartz@acm.org --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss