Well, I'll give you a B+ for seriousness. But what you've said is still jargon-heavy and vague and "mysterious" (can't be done on paper).
I will say that what you're alluding to sounds a lot more complicated that OTHERS have said, about learning it in 15 minutes, etc.
....I may be getting the feeling that the "new approach" of the CTE acolytes will be to offer something SO COMPLEX that nobody will understand it enough to be able to criticize it
But if you can't understand something well enough to criticize it, you can't understand it well enough to USE it.
EDIT: Anyhow, I'll take your word that (apparently) CTE cannot currently be EXPLAINED well enough to be critically discussed--even if I can't resist saying that seems a bit implausible to me.
CTE can be explained well enough to be critically discussed. That is the whole premise of your thread.
Where do you get these sayings like "if you can't understand it well enough to criticize it then you can't understand it well enough to use it."
Throughout this thread you call people names and chastise them for not using language properly and yet you continue to make absurd statements like the one above.
Let's turn this absurd one around a little bit and see if it applies to you,
If you can't understand something well enough to use it then can't understand it enough to rightly criticize it.
The fact is that you can be critical of anything. Whether you are right or not is another facet of critique.
In this case you don't know how to apply the thing you are denouncing. So your critique of it and the condescension you show to all those who are proponents is worthless. You opinion is not even subjective because you have no experience with the subject matter.
Seriously, is this what they teach in Berkley? To go on rampaging critiques with not one shred of familiarity with the subject matter?
What you fail to acknowledge is that people continue to have positive results years after meeting Hal, Stan, Dave and others who know these aiming systems. Long after the enabling party is out of the picture. Long after the initial WTF euphoria passes which comes from making those tough shots split the pocket.
There is enough anecdotal evidence piled up that even the battle-hardened opponents see that there must be some reason that the systems work on some level.
That's the middle ground Pat spoke of. There doesn't have to be an either/or here.
As to the idea of "what works". When you see a person playing pool you do not know what they are doing to aim. Most of the time action of approaching the shot and assessing it and then getting down on the shot happens fairly quickly and fluidly. If you and I met casually in the pool room and we decided to gamble then I would bet a million dollars the last thing on your mind would be how I am aiming. What would probably cross your mind is how I could slice a ball down the rail at warp speed with inside english and go three rails across the table for perfect shape and then dog a hanger right behind it.
The point being that pool has a simple scorecard. Make balls, win games, win matches.
A player knows himself well enough to know when he is doing this more or less consistently.
So there is no need to continue the comparisons to placebos and subconscious manipulations.
If however the missing link turns out to be subconscious adjustment to the right line then so what? If the A-B-C instructions get me within one mm of the right aiming line and then my subconscious engages and nudges me over then that's great. The result is the exact same, more shots made, more games won, more matches won.
Because my subconscious obviously wasn't able to fill in when I was using the easily diagrammed Ghost Ball method as my results were inconsistent when using it.
The fact is that someone who claims to be a trained scientist, molecular biologist, ought to refrain from making blanket statements like x-is-silly when they have no practical experience with x. In my uneducated common sense view I tend to think one would want to explore x to be able to make such statements.
Please let us know when you have actually tried CTE - I would expect that once you have learned it you can define it along with any limitations which may exist.
Until then please forgive me for not taking you seriously.
Unsubscribing to this thread.
Bye y'all.
g'luck with your internet war.
