Oh, I don't know. Most people who have come up with very IMPORTANT true things were first made fun of. I think you take the issue too seriously. The NORMAL human thing to do when you think someone has a "goofy idea" is to make fun of it. The one who's right gets the last laugh--I'm quite sure Lou understands that clearly.
As I understand it, the ideas that are the source of CTE have been discussed for AT LEAST ten years--so "from the very beginning" statements...certainly don't apply to ME. Furthermore, it was Hal who called LOU originally, to offer information on the topic. When someone puts information and ideas in the public sphere, there's every reason to expect those ideas to get a good going over.
But there HAS been a tendency toward mean-spiritedness (at least from me). That's fundamentally because CTE advocates insist on making ASSERTIONS that they won't back up! The ONLY reason this has gone on so long is that CTE advocates CONTINUE to make the same assertions while CONTINUING to refuse to back them up. Sorry, but that gets annoying after awhile. If they don't WANT to back up their assertions (their right), then they shouldn't keep MAKING them--and not expect some critically-minded people not to get tired of listening to baseless assertions which, on their face, don't seem to make sense.
That's right, we do (well, personally I'm just assuming--since Stan seems to be widely known as trying to have a positive influence on pool for many many years). If this is all about's Lou's one post, I think it has been misjudged. I don't think it was his intention to frame STAN like a carnival barker, I think he was putting it in terms of the carnival barkers you CAN see anytime you turn on a TV (which I haven't done for ten years--I'm going on memory on that one).
Sometimes I AM left to wonder why SO MUCH emotional energy is spent defending the PEOPLE involved with CTE, and SO LITTLE intellectual energy is spent defending the IDEA of CTE. I'm 95% interested in the idea.
I don't believe such claims without convincing evidence. I know from a great deal of real world experience that many people often MISJUDGE such things. And this is exactly where the religion analogy comes in: Just BELIEVING something doesn't make it true; and things don't BECOME true just because they're strongly believed.
OTOH, from a geometrical perspective, there IS reason to think that people could be confused about what CTE does, or does for them. The whole scenario invites EXAMINATION--which is what these threads try to do. The reason they devolve into something less is almost always the relentless LACK of information input from CTE advocates to SUPPORT the CLAIMS they wish to make.
I've been told that you're a formidable player. That certainly must mean SOMETHING. I have to say though, that NO voice of authority could make me reject fundamental rules of geometry--stuff I've known and lived by since the fourth grade. People have accepted, lived by, even put their LIVES ON THE LINE based on certain basic, simple mathematical realities for a good TWO THOUSAND YEARS. Giving that up would take a WHOLE lot more than what I'm seeing on this forum!
Well, around 1900 or so, poking fun at a wagon-maker's livelihood might eventually come to have been seen by the wagon-maker as doing him a FAVOR.
When you put your ideas on a public forum (as Hal did), you're subjecting them to public examination and criticism. Nobody gets to have one but not the other--unless you live in North Korea.
