@harold-not-the-barrel ,
"Now we have legions of arrogant novices, snake oilers and all kinds of besser wissers trying to be so darn smart here."
"This thread is just another symptom of that cancer that eventually will destroy great forums, and whole civilization in the end. Unless we want to stop it."
Good points for sure, but aren’t you forgetting reader responsibility? One of the main points of any forum is to read various points of view and then to draw your own conclusions.
Since all we have to go on are words it should be second nature for us to always ask basic questions eg
What are the poster’s intentions?
What are they trying to sell us?
Are they factually correct or trying to ’blind us by science’ or careful omission?
Is the argument balanced, or are we only hearing one side?
Who are they trying to help?
In fact doesn’t all the information we encounter from third parties (where trust is not automatically given) need to be treated in this manner?
As for civilisation being destroyed by this ’cancer’, I am reminded of that Gandhi quote when asked what he thought about Western civilisation,
“I think it would be a good idea."
In other words, we’re not quite there yet, not in the political realm and not yet even here on Audiogon!
