It may be hard to believe for anyone who follows my writing on this board, but I actually would rather not spend too much time and effort in controversy and argument. Of course, I do, mostly because I feel that the statements of others must be corrected, or at least challenged so that a third party will not accept them uncritically. If people say something with enough authority and confidence some people tend to believe it must be true. Sometimes people will tend to reject an idea no matter how compelling and well supported it is. What's scary is that often they are the same people.

But I know perfectly well I am not completely right about anything, certainly not about everything; I've been wrong too often before to believe that. I also know that my opponents are sometimes right about some things even if I am convinced they are wrong about everything. I also am old enough to realize that some things are just judgement calls, and right or wrong doesn't really apply. I love to discuss, but I dislike debate. I am not by nature a hostile person, and debate is too agressive for me, even under these controlled circumstances. But I do love the idea of discussion of bizarre concepts and explanations, even if I don't subscribe to them. And I love to disagree just to try and defend the untenable.

One of the most interesting and influential books I've ever read is Julian Jaynes', THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND. It's about psychology and the evolution of consiousness, and I'm convinced it is totally wrong, but it is so well put together and extremely well thought out that I know I am watching a fine mind at work here, and there are valid insights to be gained by listening to it. It is like Newtonian Mechanics in physics, we know it is only an approximation, a special case, that the quantum and relativity theories describe the real world better, but we don't discard Newton. And every physics student starts with him.

Sigmund Freud is the same, so is Karl Marx. Neither is science, both are outdated, and in many places, just flat demonstrably wrong. But there is also an insight there, a glimpse of a consistency in the universe that was missing before they came along, just as with Newton. In fact, if I were to be asked to list the most influential and important minds in human history, I would pick Newton, Darwin, Marx and Freud. They didn't get it right, in fact, they got a lot wrong, but they placed physics, biology, political economy and psychology on a scientific basis for the first time. Prior to that they were just mysteries, magic and hand-waving.