malaria in Africa

[Charlie Bell]

On 19/02/2008, at 8:41 AM, Gautam Mukunda wrote:
>
> I replied:
> Look, Charlie, Dan is fantastically good at researching and  
> analyzing data.

Yes, he can be.
>  There's something frankly perverse in the idea that such an ability  
> (one that puts him in the tiny handful of the very best I've ever  
> met at such things) is something that he should _not_ use on the list.

No, all I'm saying is that using it all the time, even in what start  
as relatively light chats, is very difficult for other people. Either  
people don't have the time to respond, or whatever they were focussed  
on gets lost in the glare.

Yes, it's a very powerful tool, but its power would be more  
appreciated if it weren't used in every thread. And having seen the  
way Dan uses it all the time, I'm afraid I simply can't accept that he  
doesn't know that he's simply drowning most people. The relevant  
expression is "using a sledgehammer to crack a nut". Discussion  
techniques should be modulated to the tone of the discussion, and  
replying with the same huge volume to each response makes it  
impossible to have a discussion - it either turns into painful point- 
by-point rebuttal or large chunks simply go unreplied to.

It's also, as you're well aware, to use precisely the same data to  
arrive at very different conclusions depending on framing. So  
sometimes it doesn't matter how well an argument is supported.


Charlie.