Jihad needs scientists
in [Design]
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From: Eeyore on 11 Oct 2006 15:21 T Wake wrote: > <jmfbahciv(a)aol.com> wrote in message > > > You people keep focusing on the buildings. Why don't you spend > > a nanosecond thinking about the people who were killed, the > > trade that was interrupted and the destruction of the > > knowledge of how to do all this stuff? This includes data bases > > such as orders, invoices, names, dates, phone numbers, contacts. > > "Wont anybody think of the Children" > > What about the people who have been killed in the retaliations since? The > trade which has been disrupted? The knowledge lost? > > Everyone thinks of the people, but eventually everyone dies. The scary thing > about "thinking about the people" is that it creates a value judgement on > life. How many Iraqis (or any other nation) must die to save the lives of > one westerner? > > Critically, even the people dying and the knowledge lost has not impacted > "Western Civilization" so this is still a smokescreen. In the global scale of things the deaths in the WTC didn't even register as a blip. Graham
From: John Larkin on 11 Oct 2006 15:24 On Wed, 11 Oct 2006 18:31:13 GMT, <lucasea(a)sbcglobal.net> wrote: > >"John Larkin" <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message >news:820qi252n7609c4ouhrd8n2pj38mtpfe9h(a)4ax.com... >> On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 22:16:58 -0700, JoeBloe >> <joebloe(a)thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org> wrote: >> >>>On Wed, 11 Oct 2006 03:00:25 GMT, <lucasea(a)sbcglobal.net> Gave us: >>> >>>>No, Ockham's Razor suggests >>> >>> Totally retarded. >> >> "Ockham's Razor" is not a law of nature, it's an easy way to avoid >> thinking about things that might hurt your head. > > >It's served the advancement of science and technology well for hundreds of >years. If you remember, it says that "given equal consistency with the >facts, the simplest explanation is almost always the right one." It hasn't "served" science at all. Scientific "explanations" demand proof, not parables. Cite OR in a scintific paper, as proof of a phenomenon, and the peer reviewers will shoot you dead. OR is pop science at best. And if you've done any non-trivial electronic design, you probably appreciate how byzantine things often turn out to be. I wish the actual explanation for, say, a firmware bug or a logic glitch would "almost always" be the simplest one, but it usually ain't, not when the simplest explanation is just one candidate out of thousands. >It's a >good reason for avoiding going off into lala land looking for paranoid >fantasies, when other, simpler explanations work equally well. I don't need "explanations", I need fixes. And consideration of all possible interactions and failure modes is the only way to find the one that's actually happening. Open-mindedness is not paranoia, and discounting ideas, as the Occam thing invites, is not wisdom. John
From: Eeyore on 11 Oct 2006 15:26 lucasea(a)sbcglobal.net wrote: > It's > all the other overreacting that's gone on that I'm talking about. I return > to the issue of wiretapping. FISA sets up a perfectly effective mechanism, > whereby warrants can be gotten after the fact. This provides a mechanism > for accountability and reiew of the process--i.e., at least a modicum of > transparency. So, the only reason not to get a warrant for a wiretap is so > that there is no record of it having happened, and thus no accountability. And yet they talk of democracy ! The USA is moving the direction of a Police State. The very thing they critice(d) communist countries about ! Graham
From: John Fields on 11 Oct 2006 15:29 On 11 Oct 2006 17:25:21 GMT, "Daniel Mandic" <daniel_mandic(a)aon.at> wrote: >Eeyore wrote: > >> > > Yeah, you are a special case Michael. Like many, living in >> > > America. >> > >> > >> > "America" spans two continents, and several countries are >> > contained within "America" >> >> It's perfectly obvious what he means. >> >> Graham > > >Yes? ... I like English. > > >By the way, why have you not packed out yet, the full bandwidth of your >spoken language, honored by me. Don't spare them... ;-) --- As much as he'd like to believe otherwise, Graham's vocabulary encompasses a rather limited subset of the English language, and his use of it and its subtleties is rather like connecting a one-trick-pony 1200 baud modem to a T1 line. -- John Fields Professional Circuit Designer
From: T Wake on 11 Oct 2006 15:31
"John Larkin" <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message news:9lgqi2dkh1p4583a5tp94s6odq0j844p22(a)4ax.com... > On Wed, 11 Oct 2006 18:31:13 GMT, <lucasea(a)sbcglobal.net> wrote: > >> >>"John Larkin" <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in >>message >>news:820qi252n7609c4ouhrd8n2pj38mtpfe9h(a)4ax.com... >>> On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 22:16:58 -0700, JoeBloe >>> <joebloe(a)thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org> wrote: >>> >>>>On Wed, 11 Oct 2006 03:00:25 GMT, <lucasea(a)sbcglobal.net> Gave us: >>>> >>>>>No, Ockham's Razor suggests >>>> >>>> Totally retarded. >>> >>> "Ockham's Razor" is not a law of nature, it's an easy way to avoid >>> thinking about things that might hurt your head. >> >> >>It's served the advancement of science and technology well for hundreds of >>years. If you remember, it says that "given equal consistency with the >>facts, the simplest explanation is almost always the right one." > > It hasn't "served" science at all. Scientific "explanations" demand > proof, not parables. Cite OR in a scintific paper, as proof of a > phenomenon, and the peer reviewers will shoot you dead. OR is pop > science at best. Still simplistic (although with less pun intended this time). There has to be a point at which two otherwise equal theories need to be differentiated. The Razor is the commonly accepted practice for this. Granted, the paper would not state "Ockhams Razor means XYZ" but that doesn't mean it isn't used in theories. I think you have mixed metaphors by bringing in the real world engineering solutions - yes there may be a convoluted answer needed, but that it is still the simplest, working, solution which is used. |