Richard and Bill, On 11/18/08, BillK <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 1:22 PM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > > I see how this would work: crazy people never tell lies, so you'd be > able > > to nail 'em when they gave the wrong answers. > Yup. That's how they pass lie detector tests as well. > > They sincerely believe the garbage they spread around.
In 1994 I was literally sold into servitude in Saudi Arabia as a sort of slave programmer (In COBOL on HP-3000 computers) to the Royal Saudi Air Force. I managed to escape that situation with the help of the same Wahhabist Sunni Muslims that are now causing so many problems. With that background, I think I understand them better than most people. As in all other societies, they are not given the whole truth, e.g. most have never heard of the slaughter at Medina, and believe that Mohamed never hurt anyone at all. My hope and expectation is that, by allowing people to research various issues as they work on their test, that a LOT of people who might otherwise fail the test will instead reevaluate their beliefs, at least enough to come up with the right answers, whether or not they truly believe them. At least that level of understanding assures that they can carry on a reasoned conversation. This is a MAJOR problem now. Even here on this forum, many people still don't get *reverse* reductio ad absurdum. BTW, I place most of the blame for the middle east impasse on the West rather than on the East. The Koran says that most of the evil in the world is done by people who think they are doing good, which brings with it a good social mandate to publicly reconsider and defend any actions that others claim to be evil. The next step is to proclaim evil doers as "unwitting agents of Satan". If there is still no good defense, then they drop the "unwitting". Of course, us stupid uncivilized Westerners have fallen into this, and so 19 brave men sacrificed their lives just to get our attention, but even that failed to work as planned. Just what DOES it take to get our attention - a nuke in NYC? What the West has failed to realize is that they are playing a losing hand, but nonetheless, they just keep increasing the bet on the expectation that the other side will fold. They won't. I was as much intending my test for the sort of stupidity that nearly all Americans harbor as that carried by Al Queda. Neither side seems to be playing with a full deck. Steve Richfield ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
