I honestly have no idea what he is doing in those threads. My best guess is that he doesn't either.
It is possible he is being conciliatory/playing both sides of the fence because the nature of his mission is fact-gathering. Oh, not in the way we mean it. I mean getting other people to hand him technical-sounding terms and the titles of documents he won't bother to read and the names of people he can pretend to be in contact with, so he can take it somewhere else and look all impressive and stuffs with his leet research skills.
That someplace else might even be a book, but I'm pretty sure the book is more an inchoate idea than something he's actually made an outline for, much less researched publishers for.
More likely is that he just wants to be part of the argument, and better yet, be accepted/appreciated for his wit and knowledge. So he doesn't really care which way he argues at any one moment, as long as he can stay in the room and look good doing it.
