Not Knowing What's Worth Knowing

This article, by New Yorker writer Adam Gobnik, contains the best definition of a crank or conspiracy theorist I have ever read. It's so good it almost distracted me from the real topic of the article. I was irresistibly reminded of Above Top Secret and many of its denizens.

Here, fellow-members, is a mirror. Gaze and wonder.

This one...?

You can tell the half-bright from the barking because the barking don't know how little they know, while the half-bright know enough to think that they know a lot, but don't know enough to know what part of what they know is actually worth knowing.

Reminds me a bit of this...

If you write about Botticelli as a painter of the Italian Renaissance, you'll be told sapiently that there was never really a renaissance in Italy for him to paint in. If you write about Abraham Lincoln and emancipation, you'll be bombarded, on a Fort Sumter scale, with people telling you that the American Civil War wasn't really fought over slavery. The Spanish Inquisition was a benevolent, fact-checking organisation, Edmund Burke was no conservative… On and on it goes.

And what makes this guy believe everything he writes is absolutely true and everyone else who questions what he writes is wrong? It seems to me like his conviction is a bit too high on the chart.

reply to post by Astyanax

I'm not quite sure how you arrived at this...

...contains the best definition of a crank or conspiracy theorist I have ever read.

...Huh??




From the author of your link...

Science is really just that child's groping, with wings on - no, not with wings on, rather up on stilts, awkward-looking earthbound instruments, that get you high enough to see the world.

...wtf??



The article in the OP is a fine example of nothing about nothing - open to much interpretation though.

An egotistical rambling, nothing more... anyhow, that's how I read it.

reply to post by ChaoticOrder

Which of those statements do you disagree with?

reply to post by Astyanax


Excellent article and thanks for posting it! It indeed shows many parallels to some trends in this forum hehe.

reply to post by Perhaps


That is how you read it? Do you think you fully understood it?

And are you by any chance subscribing to one of the weirder theories here and feel attacked in your world view maybe?