And this isn't mean spirited?
Don Frack:
"ignoring Steve Jones
rantings. I had just stopped bothering, but hadn't filtered him out"
"THE most mean spirited trash"
"> My exposure to Steve is that he likes to take soundbites from the
Internet,
> or skim through current literature and comment ad nauseum. Occasionally,
he
> even has something interesting to say, but the signal-to-noise ratio seems
> to be too low for some of us."
"What, do these guys attend classes to memorize
the knee-jerk response?"
I'm not disagreeing with your point. But your post would have made its good
point without all this. Its extraneous to the discussion. It is perhaps
unfortunate that Troy was used as an example, but I do not think Steve was
attacking him. Merely pointing out that Troy, not being a recognized
authority in the field, would not be able to comment. Steve was merely
trying to show how ridiculous this was, because obviously Troy has studied
evolutionary biology a great deal. So did Hoyle. What is the difference?
But I think the whole point is being missed. That someone should or should
not be quoted based on whatever authority they have on a subject has no
bearing on whether or not they can participate in a discussion in that
subject. With respect to Troy, surely he will not be quoted, except to this
small group or others he participates in, merely because his name is not
known. If he writes a book which becomes recognized by leader's in science
and/or the populous, then he will be quoted. The whole point of quoting
when trying to convince another person of your opinion, is that the name
either be easily recognized or easily researched and found to be recognized.
But that does not bar him from participating in this discussion or making
relevant comments. Doesn't even bar anyone from making irrelevent comments.
Ami Chopine
Thanks,
Ami Chopine
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue May 02 2000 - 11:29:22 EDT