carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (09/10/85)
Here is a description of encounters with cranks from Daniel Cohen, *Myths of the Space Age*. It will sound familiar to net.origins regulars. ... a head-to-head collision with a confirmed crank can be a really frightful experience. Suddenly one must deal with a mind that cares little for evidence and even less for logic. The crank seems to have twice as many hours in the day as an ordinary person does to gather information, usually obscure and almost always irrelevant, to support his obsessive beliefs. In any argument, he flings this information at his opponents in great handfuls. No sooner has the critic knocked down one set of propositions than another set comes flying at him and that, too, has to be dealt with. The crank can produce a seemingly endless stream of books, articles, and letters, and most of all he can talk, talk, talk. A confrontation like this can be agonizingly frustrating and unbelievably exhausting. Bertrand Russell once observed that the only way to deal successfully with a true crank is to counter his preposterous assertions with even more preposterous ones, until he is driven away, thinking that you are the crank. Few, however, have that much energy or imagination. Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
sidney@faron.UUCP (Sidney Markowitz) (09/19/85)
In article <181@gargoyle.UUCP> carnes@gargoyle (Richard Carnes) quotes: > > [ ... ] Bertrand > Russell once observed that the only way to deal successfully with a > true crank is to counter his preposterous assertions with even more > preposterous ones, until he is driven away, thinking that you are the > crank. Few, however, have that much energy or imagination. > >Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes I'll bet that Ted Holden is an evolutionist following Betrand Russell's advice. Notice how quiet the "scientific" creationists have been lately. Now, who out in netland has had personal contact with a UFO and will debate Ted on the *real* story of the seeding of Earth by alien intelligences? Whoops, almost forgot... :-) Sidney Markowitz ARPA: sidney@mitre-bedford UUCP: ...{allegra,decvax,genrad,ihnp4,philabs,security,utzoo}!linus!sidney -- Sidney Markowitz ARPA: sidney@mitre-bedford UUCP: ...{allegra,decvax,genrad,ihnp4,philabs,security,utzoo}!linus!sidney
dsr@uvacs.UUCP (Dana S. Richards) (09/23/85)
> Here is a description of encounters with cranks from Daniel Cohen, > *Myths of the Space Age*. It will sound familiar to net.origins > regulars. > > ... a head-to-head collision with a confirmed crank can be a really > frightful experience. Suddenly one must deal with a mind that cares > little for evidence and even less for logic. The crank seems to have > twice as many hours in the day as an ordinary person does to gather > information, usually obscure and almost always irrelevant, to support > his obsessive beliefs. Most cranks should be ignored for just these reasons. But there are cranks and there are cranks. The above note is about those that are truly confirmed and I believe "beyond hope", i.e. inaccessible by argument from any direction. What intrigues me more are the truly "reasonable" people, people you respect for their insight and analytical abilities, who have "blindspots" where their faculties take a vacation, so to speak. This happens in all fields, not just creationism, and I think we all suffer from it to some degree. My question is What has been written on this anomolous (normal?) behaviour?