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From: Jasper
Date: 7/17/04
Time: 3:04:30 AM
Remote Name: 69.212.61.175
Pat,
I’m with you on Elliot’s book (must have been thinking about you when I wrote “Lane”).
For a long time I wondered why I hadn’t read the book. Then someone sent me long excerpts from the book to show what KATO said about something. It all came back to me. This wasn’t what Kato said. It was what Mark Elliot said he said. Information like that is next to useless. Sometimes it’s worse than useless because it gets stuck in your head and you don’t always recall the source. That’s why I made a point of not reading it. I’d seen similar excerpts before.
Even if Elliot made an honest effort to quote Kato correctly, how can anyone tell when he did and when he didn’t? How can anyone tell when he relied on his memory and paraphrased when he indicated he was quoting? To further complicate thinks, this was supposed to be Kato’s book and Kato bowed out of the project before the book was published. So, how can we know where Elliot sipped in something of his own out of spite to discredit Kato? Id you buy what Elliot wrote you have to believe that Kato did it. I don’t think he says that (only read excerpts so I don’t know much of what he wrote) but from the passages I read that’s where the logic of his statements leaves you.
John’s Kato-did-it theory looks like a compilation of inferences from Elliot’s implications with lots of independent superficial research to “destroy” the findings of anyone who disagreed with him.
However, I have to stand by what I said about John being a good guy. He has demonstrated it to me numerous times. If you ever get a chance to TALK to him, you might see what I mean. His discussion board persona is a whole ‘nother guy. However, in real time or on the boards I get the impression that he is not used to dealing with people as intellectual equals and I think he looks at disagreements as contests to be won or lost. You and I look for evidence to show WHETHER we are right. John looks for evidence to “prove” that you are wrong.
Don’t discount the value of those efforts. John did more than anyone else to strengthen weaknesses in various scenarios I proposed. He clarified my thinking on some fuzzy points forced me to locate the source of information I knew was available but had a tough time finding. He found some of it for me thinking that it “destroyed” an assertion I made. It only made what I was trying to assert easier to accomplish. If he had “destroyed” a scenario or a theory I proposed, that would have been good, too.
Some people can’t grasp the concept of using theories only to test them and discarding them when the evidence doesn’t fit. John might be one of those people. His Kato-did-it theory is a Procrustean bed. If the facts don’t fit he either stretches them or chops them off until they do fit.
Bottom line: Don’t let my friend John offend you or make you work too hard. I’ve spent many hours checking sources and drafting various positions in a way that I thought was at least understandable. I got replies slamming everything I did. I got them faster than I could have typed them, much less THOUGHT about them. He copied what I wrote, pasted it and replied as though I wrote something different – something that a jackass would write. There is no intelligent way of dealing with that sort of thing. Now that you know what you’re up against it’s your fault if you try. –Jasper