Good point.

Interestingly enough, the man whose craziness prompted the thread won the custody of his only daughter (who is now in her late 20s) when she was a small child.

That victory appears to have been the main victory of his life and the main source of his pride as he mentions the fact that an independent unbiased court-ordered psych eval extolled his rational abilities and he, per him, won custody on the strength of his being normal in a superior way (an oxymoron but I am just relating what I heard) and THE most rational person around.

OK, so after I stopped communicating in the course of this unusual encounter, he changed his tune and became super polite etc. and expressed hopes that maybe he will find me in a different station in my life at some later point because "a guy who always have hopes". With that, he attached a scan of a very old Polish birth certificate written in cursive. From the early 1800s. I responded that I could not read it (half of the letters have been smudged anyway). He then wrote that he would collect many more Polish documents in his genealogical excavations and that would give me a reason to recontact me again in the future as he still had hopes.

So in general, a rational person would realize that if I could not read one birth certificate, it would be highly unlikely that I would then be able to read many birth certificates.

But I did not point it out to him because I did not want to be argumentative, nor cared.

He also at some point, before he changed his tune, wondered if I THOUGHT that he was a complete moron.

Again, I did not comment, though I did have things to say, and what I wanted to say was that THOUGHT (which implies a degree of doubt and hesitation) was a misnomer - I was SURE that he was a complete moron.

So instead I went no comment.