From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sun Jun 08 2003 - 04:27:50 MDT
On Sun, 8 Jun 2003, Damien Broderick wrote:
> I wrote:
>
> >Flandern is in fact the sort of crank who has a Ph.D. in Astronomy from
> Yale University
>
> On the other hand, he's also the sort of crank who believes the Cydonia
> region on Mars contains artificial structures, and advances theories about
> exploding planets in the solar system.
>
> http://www.metaresearch.org/solar%20system/eph/eph2000.asp
>
> Rats. Then again, let 1000 cranks bloom.
I'd disagree the cranks distract us from the real work that needs
to be done. It just needs to be focused.
It is very difficult, but one has to learn to distinguish between
people who are educated and people who are brilliant. People
who are educated can distribute knowledge -- people who are
brilliant create it.
So the Cydonia artificial structure perspective has just a little
too much "why there" and "why then" flavor for my taste (when we
know they can create MBrains). On the other hand exploding planets
doesn't seem *that* unreasonable (whether due to natural or
artificial causes).
So without more investigation I can't easily say whether Flandern
is "educated" or "brilliant".
Robert
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