Well, redbaron, to be frank, me too.
However, I am more amused than any other thing: you know, at my workplace, EVERY time somebody says something like "I must know better than you because I have done blah, blah, blah..." we cordially
knock him in the head a couple of times and say in one voice:
"This is engineering, not religion! You can't claim authorithy here! You have to convince us!".
This is not trivial in science or engineering: it is good for the person explaining as much as for the person asking, actually, it is like some kind of duty. This is what I meant with the idea of "you learn more when you explain something than when you learn it for the first time".
I believe this is (thanks heaven!) the environment you and others have developed in this forum. After a while, we know who knows (I know you know who knows about what...
) and we are not afraid to ask and learn: heck, that's why we are here. This site is a resource for all of us, not a parade of egos.
This is why I agree with you that the idea of somebody saying "I know better than you because I am the son of Superman" is not good at all.
On the other hand, feelings are hard to convey with writing and SLC is not commenting directly on the quality of the threads here or even arguing about them. The word "entertaining", that SLC uses has different meanings in different languages (at least, in Spanish is more like "divertido" ("amusing"?) than "chistoso" ("funny"?). Same with "chuckling" as opposed to "laughing". I normally try to take any post with a grain of salt and this is all I invite you to do.
For me, to have a professional guy reading my comments, and NOT making any comments of his own on the issue at hand, corroborates them. This, or the guy is lazy or, worse yet, tacky about knowledge. I don't presume SLC to be anything else than a cordial guy (unless he proves me wrong
).
Finally, yeah, I remember Ranger/Acer...
Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officiis (On Duties) wrote:Above all, the search after truth and its eager pursuit are peculiar to man. And so, when we have leisure from the demands of business cares, we are eager to see, to hear, to learn something new, and we esteem a desire to know the secrets or wonders of creation as indispensable to a happy life. Thus we come to understand that what is true, simple, and genuine appeals most strongly to a man's nature.
To this passion for discovering truth there is added a hungering, as it were, for independence, so that a mind well-moulded by Nature is unwilling to be subject to anybody save one who gives advice or is a teacher of truth or who, for the general good, rules according to justice and law.
I believe that the first paragraph describes why the forum could attract the likes of SLC (if he is who he claims to be) and the second one describes your attitude.
