Respect

[Sean Crist]

On Tue, 21 Sep 1999, Richard M. Alderson III wrote:

> to which I can only say that I've expended my efforts, obviously in
> vain, in an attempt to educate a non-linguist on the intricacies of a
> field in which I have spent 30 years now.  Since Mr. Long is unwilling
> to entertain even for a moment that his notion of how the world must
> work might be incorrect, I must confess myself equally unwilling to
> debate the issue any longer.

I'm glad you said this, because I had been resisting saying something of
this sort myself.  It isn't just Steve Long.  You'd think that some of the
non-specialists would appreciate the efforts that we're making here;
ordinarily, we get paid to do this (not paid much in my case because I'm
just an ABD [all but dissertation], but paid just the same).

What we've gotten in return are consistently hot-headed posts telling us
just how wrong we are, how wrong our methodology is, how wrong our
conclusions are, how wrong the whole field of historical linguistics is
after some 200 years of work.

It's certainly OK to hold opinions which are at variance with the majority
scholarly view; I can certainly think of cases where I do so myself.
Probably nobody agrees with the majority on every point.  But there seems
to be a certain glee here in attacking every point, and doing so with
arguments which in many cases reflect sheer ignorance.  It is starting to
get very tiresome.  If you guys are trying to get all the specialists to
throw up their hands and leave, you're doing a good job of it.

  \/ __ __    _\_     --Sean Crist  (kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu)
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