I am very self-confident - and for good reason. I have achieved much because I go after what works, and also work with people.
The facts here don't really bear this out. At other times you may have opted for "what works," but here you're going after a predetermined option regardless of whether it has been shown to work. You are resisting doing experiments that would test whether you're relying upon something that is well founded -- something that would otherwise be second nature to pragmatists.
And no, you are not demonstrating a good working relationship with people. You are dismissing people's legitimate knowledge and expertise in favor of your own, which is ostensibly just a regurgitation of advocacy literature you may have read. It's not the product of a carefully adjudicated course of instruction or pertinent occupational experience. You're doing that even to people who are legitimately trying to help you. That is not self-confidence, it's overconfidence. You haven't demonstrated a rational basis here for the degree of assertiveness you're applying.
Most of your critics are fed up with the "I'm so much smarter than everyone" argument, because it's a poor way to persuade people even when the premise is true. So you gain nothing by trying to justify an argument that boils down to repeated bluster and browbeating.
I am self-critical, and will change where change is needed. Not because I am told to.
This, coupled with how you have treated anyone who disputes you, indicates you will never change. You reserve the right to determine when change is necessary. But you've precluded practically every external indicator. You've claimed that your own knowledge and education are superior to everyone else's, or most everyone else's, in this thread. You maintain this even when the evidence shows it patently not to be the case. So this claim to self-criticism is largely empty. You seem to have put it out there to show you have a reasonable rule that operates when the conditions for it are satisfied. Then you create an elaborate delusion to ensure they never are.
It's ironic that you have claimed to be resistant to outside influence, but that you're clearly relying on outside advocates to make your argument. Yes, there is a political component to the debate over telecommunications. You seem to have thrown your lot in with one side of that political debate, and are trusting them to give you a good picture of the science that can hold up in a debate where legitimate expertise might arise. Your critics have shown how easy it is you get you off that script -- whereupon you flounder -- and also shown how desperate you are to stay within that script. You cannot claim to be critical of all outside influences when the evidence shows how easily it is for people you agree with to lead you around by the nose, and how needful it is for you to follow.
I do not put up with being attacked.
You seem to define "being attacked" as being disagreed with. This is not the hallmark of good people skills. As I said, you combine arguments that rely on fact and sound reasoning with arguments that involve emotional manipulation, such as playing the victim and shaming your critics when they don't fall for rhetorical stunts.
You've posted here for several years. You know what this forum is about. You know very well the personalities and habits of the regular posters here. You know very well how your unconventional ideas will be received here. You're not a babe in the woods. Whether you want to call it "being attacked" is irrelevant. You not only put up with it here at ISF, at this point you're deliberately seeking it out. You post your claims here knowing full well what kind of response you will get. It appears to some that you're actually basking in negative attention.
The "poor, poor me!" argument falls so very flat when you consciously seek out the kind of attention that enables it. So you can stop playing that up for rhetorical effect. Nobody is falling for it.
...to me they are the blunt truth.
If you agree you're being blunt, maybe it's not wise to try to blame the acrimony in your debates on everyone else.
Anecdotes. Why are these not seen as precursors to a deeper truth?
By nature, anecdotes lack the depth to see which of possibly several deeper truths is operating. Science doesn't stop when the precourse has been run. That's where it starts. As long as anecdotes are relegated to their proper scientific role as suggesting hypotheses to test later with real evidence, nobody disagrees.
Why such a negative attitude to them? I see that attitude as denial.
Science rightly does not.
The negative attitude is not to anecdotes
per se, but to the common practice among fringe claimants of demanding that an anecdote here or there be more charitably received because it's all the evidence they can bring to the deduction and differentiation stages of scientific inquiry. It's a disguised ploy to lower the standard of proof from what the claimant knows would ordinarily be required, to that which the claimant is prepared to meet. Pleading and browbeating to have the standard lowered for their pet claim is not science. That's what's being viewed negatively.
As you have been plainly instructed, science uses anecdotal evidence to inform what hypothesis will be most productively tested. Since anecdotes lack control, they cannot be the evidence that establishes or falsifies any hypothesis as indicating the general operative principles. You cannot use anecdotes to establish what is generally true because the nature of an anecdote itself precludes it being a statement of general truth. It is a statement of an isolated outcome that denies the experimenter any chance of inspecting its causes and effects in a systematic way.
Demanding that your critics lower the scientific standard of proof is a losing strategy. It is not denialism from your critics if you're the one petitioning to change the status quo.
