On Oct 7, 2012, at 12:14 PM, Jaros³aw Lipski <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> So you see Mace as an oddball, inaccurate observer, someone quick to jump >>> to odd conclusions, old deaf man who had lost touch with reality, an idiot >>> who constructed an instrument impossible to play etc >> >> What I said was: "I'm not inclined to regard Mace as a scientific observer; >> more like the eccentric uncle who makes dubious sweeping pronouncements at >> family dinners." >> > Well, I've quoted your own words, but maybe you had something else on mind, > sorry . No, *I* quoted my own words, which did not include "idiot," "old," "lost touch with reality," or "etc." I didn't opine about how quickly he reached his conclusions (he doesn't strike me as a man who did anything quickly). I also didn't say "mentally ill." I certainly didn't say he actually had a dyphone built, notwithstanding what he wrote. I spend a lot of time professionally evaluating whether things witnesses tell me are credible; many are not, for all sorts of reasons, the most common being triumph of vantage point over all other considerations (just this morning I read through 18 "character" letters written to convince me that a person was honorable and honest; none of them mentioned his felony fraud conviction, leaving me to wonder if the writers even knew why they were writing). We all know the world is full of ostensibly normal and sane persons who reach positions of prominence and responsibility saying things that are not credible; in my country they tend to get nominated for public office a lot. Although we seem to have "pivoted," as Mitt Romney might say, into a discussion of how reliable a witness Mace was, this thread began when Benjamin Narvey -- a person normally given to reasonable observations and conclusions -- said he'd had an experience from which he concluded (or re-concluded) that synthetic strings are harder to keep in tune than gut, and carbon fiber are particularly difficult. I think he's extrapolating too much from too small a sample, and his experience is atypical of most experiences with synthetics and gut; certainly it's different from mine. I think a musicologist of the 23rd century reading Musick's EMail Monument, a collection of Narvey messages on a hard drive that survived the Great Warming Catastrophe of 2089, would likely be misled on that particular point, even though Benjamin is not an "old deaf man who had lost touch with reality," although he may be one if he's still around in 2089. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
