Well, I can see from all the responses from my fellow RPF teammates that the sniffing was, in fact, noticed by some.
See, this is the risk of telling people what
they saw, what
they noticed, and what was obvious to
them. My own ridiculous and arrogant statement was intentional -- my sense is that the arrogance of some of the rest of you is more sincere.
No, Phil, I am not joking. Did it seem funny? Did you think I was that poor a comedian?
No, Ender, I am not a parrot. Who, pray tell, would I be parroting? Some sort of anti-sniffing conspiracy theorists?
No, moostraks, I am not trying to "pin" the Great Sniffing Scandal (
SCANDAL!!1!) on "any one agency". What the hey are you talking about?
And that's great, otherone, that is was so obvious. To
you!
And that is the moral of my little demonstration here. Just because
you see an event a certain way, it is natural to think that
everyone cannot help but see it that way. To notice what you noticed. It was so obvious, after all! And so anyone with a differing point of view is clearly horrible, or dishonest, or boobish, or whatever other story you have to make up in your head about how they could come to such a wildly irrational conclusion after seeing the exact same thing you did, taking in the exact same data that you did.
Here's the secret: They didn't!
In 1990, a Stanford University graduate student illustrated this phenomenon by doing a scientific study. Participants played a simple game in which they were assigned to one of two roles: “tapper” or “listener.” Each tapper was asked to pick a well-known song, such as
Happy Birthday to You, and tap out the rhythm on a table. The listener’s job was to guess the song.
Over the course of the experiment, 120 songs were tapped out. Listeners guessed only three of the songs correctly: a success ratio of 2.5%. But before they guessed, Newton asked the tappers to predict the probability that listeners would guess correctly. They predicted 50%. The tappers got their message across one time in 40, but they thought they would get it across one time in two. Why?
When a tapper taps, it is impossible for him to avoid hearing the tune playing along to his taps. Meanwhile, all the listener can hear is a kind of bizarre Morse code. Yet the tappers were flabbergasted by how hard the listeners had to work to pick up the tune.
The problem is that once we know something—say, the melody of a song—we find it hard to imagine not knowing it. Our knowledge has "cursed" us. We have difficulty sharing it with others, because we can’t readily re-create their state of mind. We have become locked in to our perception.
And so when the listeners you're sitting across from are sure that you're tapping out
The Star-Spangled Banner, when of course the obvious truth is that you're tapping out
Happy Birthday to You, well, there's only one explanation for that. They're stupider than you. Much, much stupider. Or they're being dishonest with themselves, or with you, or perhaps are just generally dishonest. Or they're experiencing cognitive dissonance. Or they don't understand the ideals The Star-Spangled Banner truly stands for. They hate liberty. Or they're Boobus Americanus. Or maybe they're out-and-out evil.
So this is a perfect example. I chose it because, presumably, no one actually has super-super strong feelings and emotions about whether someone was sniffing during the debate. Hopefully!

So maybe, maybe!, you can see how ridiculous it is for you to claim that "Oh, come on, Helmuth, you had to have noticed that. Don't give me that. After all, it was obvious." Just as ridiculous as it would be for me to presume to know what you had and had not noticed. Eh?
I hope that this truth is valuable to someone here. It has wide application and consequences. I hope that someone can soak it in and appreciate it. I just get tired, and sad, to read day after day so much bitterness, so much hate, so much negativity, here on this board from my RPF teammates. You hate so-and-so,
and so you also hate all your fellow Americans who kind of like or support so-and-so. That second part is your mistake. They're all just loons and kooks and whatever other nasty thing you want to call them. No, no they're not. They are your fellow Americans. They are your teammates and your shipmates on this Great Ship America. They're pretty good people, many of them.