QUOTE(Sxeptomaniac @ Wed 26th May 2010, 4:59pm)
I let my first run-in with the anti-ID group partly because I figured it was annoying but generally harmless. Unfortunately, the more they got away with, the more they felt they could get away with. They kept expanding their domain, until finally they were deciding the biography of a computer scientist was within their domain due to one single petition signature.
That's the nature of
hubris. It feeds on itself and grows like a cancer. They might have gone on a great deal longer if I had not been a colleague of that particular computer scientist, having known her for 25 years.
QUOTE(Sxeptomaniac @ Wed 26th May 2010, 4:59pm)
That's the nature of groups when they resort to bullying and refuse to accept criticism. Even if they are within their area of expertise for now, their arrogance grows along with the groupthink, leading them to consider themselves the arbiters of what is correct for an ever-expanding collection of articles. Eventually, their unwillingness to accept criticism becomes an unwillingness to examine any assumptions at all.
That was manifestly the most frustrating thing about dealing with IDCab. They simply could not entertain the slightest doubt about their haphazard theories of mind regarding the beliefs of total strangers whom they had never met, never interviewed.
QUOTE(Sxeptomaniac @ Wed 26th May 2010, 4:59pm)
Filll exemplified this when he declared that a editor's protests that they don't believe in Intelligent Design only reinforces his belief that they do. In essence, nothing anyone did could make him re-examine his assumptions; as a result, those assumptions grew increasingly bizarre and unhinged from reality.
Filll had clearly gone off the deep end, but his confederates -- ConfuciusOrnis, Hrafn, Guettarda, Jim62sch, and FeloniousMonk -- blithely went along with him. To my mind, they had taken leave of their senses, and abandoned any pretense of respect for the protocols of the Scientific Method.
It's not uncommon to come across people with recognizable misconceptions (and even some disturbing delusional beliefs). But when such people arrogate to themselves the power to decide what belongs in an encyclopedia (especially biographies of living people), the results can be appalling.