well i am very pleased by the reactions to the articles i wrote: the responses have fallen into two categories. "i understand / i think this person is off their head" and "i think he's right / i think he's totally wrong".

very interesting to note that the split between these two categories is roughly equal, with there even being people in the "off his head" and "right" brackets...

the provoking nature of one of the articles was intended to bring out issues i consider to be important to the fore. one thing that hasn't really been discussed or mentioned, with people focussing instead on personal attacks, is the issue of perceived arrogance.

intelligent people need space in which to work with other intelligent people, and academia helps in this respect in some ways (and hinders in others). the level of expertise required for enormous projects is immense, and to have potentially hundreds of newbies and inexperienced people trying to help out is, in most cases, a complete waste of both the experts and the novices' time.