> Thanks so much for the response. I was on the right track all along. I just
> want to ask one question regarding the Brett, Brodie drama. Does it really
> matter if they are one [and] the same? I don't think that I have seen a
> Brodie post yet on this matter so I am not speaking from the experience
> that the rest of you share. Just curious......
Well, to some extent it doesn't matter--if Brett's posts are worthwhile,
then they are so regardless of who's posting them, and if they're not,
ditto.
On the other hand, the question of whether Brett is actually
Richard Brodie does have some importance to those of us who know one or
the other of them personally, and it also has implications for judgements
on the character of either or both.
Personally, I was extremely irritated when Richard announced that Brett
was really him, because I felt that he'd been not only misleading us, but
wasting massive amounts of time and energy, both his own and others' on a
badly-designed experiment. Then I thought a little longer, and concluded
that the idea of Richard's concocting all of Brett's posts for his own
amusement or other purposes, including the sense of personality and the
elaborately idiosyncratic thought patterns they present, was wildly
implausible. While Richard is a smart and unusual man, he's not the mad
genius it would require to support those two well-established and very
different mailing list personalities, one of whom is extremely
recognizable to people who know him in person, the other with a radically
deviant style and at times insulting to Richard's friends; and besides,
I'm sure he has better things to do with his time.
The "admission" was in itself a kind of interesting experiment, obviously
involving much less work than actually having carried out the claim would
have. But I don't think it holds water.
--Eva,
who wonders whether to apologize to Richard for going into this much
detail about her skepticism, and thus messing with his experiment, but
concludes that it's all part of the effect.