by robertdreed » Sun Jan 08, 2006 11:38 pm
"by doing so you ignore a lot of interesting evidence"<br><br>Actually, in cases like this one, I save myself a lot of time. <br><br>I'm not being facetious with my references to mental illness. There was a time when, as part of my deep political researches, I began doing that whole number of scrying for patterns in etymology, numerology, semiotics, event synchronicities, and all sorts of other things that would only conceivably be considered as productive lead trails by criminal or forensics investigators if they were already adjunct to a body of substantive evidence, and only if the pattern formed was clearly and undeniably distinct. <br><br>I cut it out when I found myself going off the deep end- if only in terms of wasting my energy. I stopped short of succumbing to the delusions of reference characteristic of some variants of serious mental disturbance. But I saw for myself how it could happen.<br><br>I also found that frequently, isolated data points that initially appeared provocative and valuable dissolved when researched more fully. This most often happened in the case of the so-called "semiotic data" that I turned up, i.e., things like numerological occurences, or the fact that a given two subjects of my research grew up in the same city, attended the same college at the same time, lived in the same neighborhood, or shared the same surname. Occasionally, there was some significance. But a lot less than a novice to the discipline of investigative research might think. <br><br>Beyond a doubt, things like personal associations often cluster in absolutely weird ways. But they don't necessarily mean anything at all in terms of political conspiracy, even when they appear at first notice to be profoundly resonant. <br><br>I hope that's something that the people who were investigating <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>me</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> in the '90s found out for themselves. Whoever they were ;^) <br><br>If they were... ;^0<br><br>( Hey, if any of you are still around, I don't blame you for vetting me...some pieces of work I have in my cohort of friendships, eh? ) <br><br>Anyway, to get back to my point- I can no longer be bothered with things like criminal conspiracies that are constructed exclusively from the fantasyland of occult speculations. Give me some hard evidence to start with, and maybe I'll consider the role of such symbolism later on. But the case being discussed above is constructed exclusively of <br><br>1) presumptions in the absence of data;<br><br>2) "research" that was done pretty much exclusively by watching television broadcasts;<br><br>3) the most banal and commonplace sort of numerological coincidences;<br><br>4) a blizzard of "leading questions" that should rightfully be up to the writer to research and deliver any relevant findings, rather than hurling them at the readers and charging them with the task;<br><br>5) all the while positing conclusions as if they were foregone. <br><br>It's bad pedagogy. <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 1/8/06 11:42 pm<br></i>
