From: fournet.arnaud
Message: 57605
Date: 2008-04-18
>>========
> My apologies if this should be directed elsewhere. On
> any list there are experts, beginners and cranks --and
> those who fall in between. We should be mature or
> realistic enough to respect those who have more
> expertise and refrain from continually badgering
> everyone with screams that the accumulated knowledge
> of the discipline is a pile of shit and that I, only
> I, have the truth, revealed to me by a striped-ass
> baboon or some holy text. That said, there is a place
> for new ideas, but the burden of proof is on the
> innovator not established wisdom. Intellectual inquiry
> is not religion, not faith, and must constantly be
> tested --but in an intellectual manner. The facts
> speak for themselves and cannot be warped to suit the
> hypothesis. Speculative long-range ideation is fine
> but can't be proven without systematic reconstruction
> from the bottom-up not the top-down. With all due
> respect to Lenin, intellectuals are not democratic
> centrists with a bolshevik top-down system in which
> facts spring from the conclusion. With all due respect
> to hyperactive anarchists, we need to follow a
> research methodology or we will just be engaging in
> associative blind-guessing. David has a point that
> anyone who is interested in pseudo-scientific
> endeavors such as Marrism, obsession with conclusions
> based on mass comparison should make their case on
> another list. But unless someone is terrorizing the
> list, we should use our delete buttons rather than
> throw them of the list. We also should not feel afraid
> to make our feelings know since we have invested a
> certain cathexis in this list. I have disagreed with
> Piotr, Miguel and Brian but I don't call them idiots
> or liars or insult their lineage. Be civil and
> realistic. If this list is your only social activity,
> it's time to find a significant other, write refereed
> academic articles or publish a book on what you so
> fervently believe in.
>