On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 11:44 PM, Joshua Zeidner <
jjzeidner@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 11:40 PM, Craig White <craigwhite@azapple.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, 2008-09-28 at 23:08 -0700, Joshua Zeidner wrote:
>>> On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 10:58 PM, Lisa Kachold <lisakachold@obnosis.com> 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
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