Another reason to be charitable: these “poor advocates”, by virtue of being marginalized/unpopular/cranks may have fewer disincentives to say “the emperor has no clothes”, because their standing is already low. Once they put an idea out there, it may gain traction with a greater chunk of the population. Unfortunately, this dynamic leads to “autism is caused by vaccines” movements too.
If you’re interested in the topic I highly recommend this BloggingHeads episode:
http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/30467
specifically the “emperor has no clothes” and “tokenism” sections (there are links to those segments under the video.
Interesting post!
Another reason to be charitable: these “poor advocates”, by virtue of being marginalized/unpopular/cranks may have fewer disincentives to say “the emperor has no clothes”, because their standing is already low. Once they put an idea out there, it may gain traction with a greater chunk of the population. Unfortunately, this dynamic leads to “autism is caused by vaccines” movements too.
If you’re interested in the topic I highly recommend this BloggingHeads episode: http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/30467 specifically the “emperor has no clothes” and “tokenism” sections (there are links to those segments under the video.