The writer must have purred for an entire evening after sleuthing the Chesterton quotation. Racker and Spector, he reports, were charlatans who had fabricated their data and hidden this clue to their mischief. An inventory of my possessions did give that answer. Notice how quickly the amateur gives away his authority by the false humility in the second sentence. He never owns the project as his own and therefore cannot package it as a discovery.
Amateurs also like initial truisms.
Eighty-five percent of my present sample of amateurs begin with truisms. Usually they do not clarify what is at issue in them. That may not seem so astonishing at first. Amateur Muddles Professionals usually have a clear control of their strategies as strategy. Knowledge and activity stimulates legislation benificial to the popular favor.