Wouldn't Smoke start arguments with people equal or more knowledgeable than him? And then him bringing in his politics out of the blue from the Karaoke Bar because he was sour?
Together with cryptic and confusing replies to beginners?
Education is a skill.
Feels a bit weird talking about him like this as if he never visits anymore, because he does and he might be reading all of this and laughing his ass off.
I don't recall him deliberately starting fights with other high level people. I do recall him asking pointed questions of them on things but I don't feel it was just to start a fight. I also don't recall him being overly political in the bonsai threads. There have been others that couldn't leave the politics out of the bonsai threads that I do remember clearly.
I generally avoided the karaoke bar when it became toxic.
There are different methods of educating. One is to spoon feed everything to the student and coddle them along, another is to try and get them to think for themselves. His method is more the latter. While some would disagree, I feel the latter method results in better learning and retention than the former. But that said, in most cases, there does need to a least some basic knowledge instilled before critical thinking can be most effective. However spend any amount of time here and you should start to get a lot of that basic knowledge.
I was subjected to Smokes teaching method when I was new and yes I was a rebellious student until I started to understand that he was trying to get me to think about what I was doing
