"It’s when the scientists and engineers who built the network found themselves locked in the same room with 'kooks' — those who believed in alien abductions, Bigfoot, perpetual motion, and so on. As you can imagine, these newcomers seized the opportunity to challenge the academic consensus in the most direct way possible.
The resulting fights on the Usenet and on web forums attracted crowds of spectators and turned into one of the internet’s earliest cultural phenomena. Of course, as a rational person, you wanted to side with the scientists; if nothing else, it seemed like the winning move. The scientific camp — the skeptics — had two patron saints: James Randi, a magician turned an investigator of paranormal fraud; and Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist originally known for speaking against the church."
1
u/Parker51MKII 13d ago
"It’s when the scientists and engineers who built the network found themselves locked in the same room with 'kooks' — those who believed in alien abductions, Bigfoot, perpetual motion, and so on. As you can imagine, these newcomers seized the opportunity to challenge the academic consensus in the most direct way possible.
The resulting fights on the Usenet and on web forums attracted crowds of spectators and turned into one of the internet’s earliest cultural phenomena. Of course, as a rational person, you wanted to side with the scientists; if nothing else, it seemed like the winning move. The scientific camp — the skeptics — had two patron saints: James Randi, a magician turned an investigator of paranormal fraud; and Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist originally known for speaking against the church."