Jihad needs scientists
in [Design]
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From: lucasea on 18 Oct 2006 14:00 Nice snip-job on your own comments that served as the basis for mine. Reinserted here for clarity and honesty. "Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terrell(a)earthlink.net> wrote in message news:45363396.C560073(a)earthlink.net... > lucasea(a)sbcglobal.net wrote: >> "Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terrell(a)earthlink.net> wrote >> > If their acts bother you enough to publicly complain about them, why >> > do you want to be around them? >> >> No, the acts of a lot of people here bother me enough to publicly >> criticize >> them, yet I still want to be "around" them in the context of this >> discussion. >> >> By the way, it is the church leadership of which I am critical. I have >> many >> friends in several of the congregations, and I thoroughly enjoy being >> around >> them, even though I deplore something their church does (that happens to >> be >> illegal.) >> > That is hypocritical. >> >> That may be your view--nice black-and-white worldview you've got there. >> I >> don't have that luxury, I see good and bad in everybody and everything. >> I >> get what I want out of the "relationship", and they appear to as well. >> We >> don't have to love everything each other does, but we can certainly >> appreciate each other for what we and they are worth. > > And your world view that allows you to ignore illegal acts somehow > makes you non hypocritical? I'm sure, in your black-and-whiteness, you've reported every crime you've ever witnessed, and have refused to be around anybody who has ever done anything illegal. Must be a really lonely existence. > It also makes you an accessory after the > fact, and depending on the crime, you could be charged for not reporting > it, when it does come under public scrutiny. Yeah, whatever. Eric Lucas
From: lucasea on 18 Oct 2006 14:03 "John Larkin" <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message news:tidcj2hc7r29unnup0qjddadothkt473q2(a)4ax.com... > On Wed, 18 Oct 06 11:51:42 GMT, jmfbahciv(a)aol.com wrote: > >>In article <e9ednZ8s0K3l2ajYRVnyuA(a)pipex.net>, >> "T Wake" <usenet.es7at(a)gishpuppy.com> wrote: >>> >>>"Eeyore" <rabbitsfriendsandrelations(a)hotmail.com> wrote in message >>>news:4535424A.C08609A3(a)hotmail.com... >>>> >>>> >>>> T Wake wrote: >>>> >>>>> <lucasea(a)sbcglobal.net> wrote in message >>>>> >>>>> > Certainly a lot of the details of Darwin's theories have been >>>>> > subject >>>>> > to >>>>> > question and modification over the years. What has not changed is >>>>> > the >>>>> > basic idea of evolution. >>>>> >>>>> Very true. There is a conflict of terminology and if the people on the >>>>> radio >>>>> show were talking about "Darwin's theories" specifically they are a >>>>> bit >>>>> behind the curve. Modern evolutionary theory has progressed beyond the >>>>> specifics Darwin described. >>>> >>>> I've noticed that there is now a common tendency for those who reckon >>>> they >>>> know >>>> better to dismiss such things as 'just theories' as if that meant they >>>> had >>>> no >>>> vailidity ! >>> >>> >>>I love that phrase "just theories." It really makes me smile when some >>>creationist goes on about how "evolution is just a theory." >>> >>>Like Newtonian Gravity isn't "just" a theory. :-) >> >>Yes. It is just a theory. It is the human race's best >>guess at how nature and its laws work. > > It's a pretty good theory but ignores relativistic effects. It's > quantitatively precise in most practical situations, but not all > situations, so it is indeed flawed, and not a "best guess." Yes, all theories are flawed by definition, and the only measure of a theory is its usefulness--i.e., how well it predicts or explains a certain effect, combined with how easy it is to use (i.e., simple). The trouble is, the Creation Science/Intelligent Design people use that "flawed" to mean "useless", in order to aggrandize their belief system, which provides complete certainty and Truth, despite being nearly useless in explaining and predicting natural phenomena. Eric Lucas
From: Jonathan Kirwan on 18 Oct 2006 14:09 On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 08:59:16 -0700, John Larkin <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: >On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 05:40:55 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan ><jkirwan(a)easystreet.com> wrote: > >>On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 21:52:59 -0700, John Larkin >><jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: >> >>>On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 16:55:17 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan >>><jkirwan(a)easystreet.com> wrote: >>> >>>>>>John, I've never seen a list for liberals to vote towards. Not ever. >>>>>Now you have: >>>>> >>>>>http://www.emilyslist.org/ >>>>> >>>>>There are lots more... just look. >>>> >>>>Please show me the list there. >>> >>>Good grief, do I have to do all your web work for you? >>> >>>https://secure1.emilyslist.org/Donation/index.cfm?event=initiative_showOne&initiativeID=12&mt=146 >> >>No, you just have to do YOUR OWN WORK. It was your point, after all. >> >>I am beginning to put two and two together over this discussion to >>gradually wonder that you may be the kind of boss who overly depends >>upon people smarter than you to make good on your hand waving ideas. >>I'm sure it isn't the case, but sometimes it seems that way. > >I'm plenty smart about some things, less so about others. I'm rotten >at "business" stuff, the financial side of things, so I do have much >better people run that for me. And my serious math skills, in the >sense of doing calculus and heavy circuit analysis, are rusty from >disuse, and weren't stellar to start with, so if I need that sort of >analysis done, I have one of the kids do it. But I have a lot of >ideas, good ideas, and implement them well... about half the products >on my web site were designed by me, all the way from concept to >firmware and parts lists; I do get help with PCB layout and driving >the FPGA software. I have ideas because I like ideas and am bored by >routine, and because I give even outlandish concepts a chance before >rejecting them. I've designed about $200 million worth of electronics >so far, and I'm just getting good at it. I want to teach other people >to be good at it too. > >My particular interest is understanding where ideas come from, and why >some of them get squashed. When Townes was trying to get his first >maser to work, his department head was convinced it was a waste of >time. Townes broke the idea to a Nobel laureat who promptly told him >that the maser couldn't work because it violated the rules of >thermodynamics. He later reconsidered. John, I really am impressed by your response. And it is especially wonderful to me when I hear that good people are able to be brought together into a great team that enhances their strengths and where each person has each others' backs on their weaknesses. It sounds as though you understand that. My wife has probably the quickest and facile imagination I've been exposed to -- ever. She has no real technical depth, but her mind is constantly active on imagining and putting things together in new ways. I stop her at places and ask, "How in the heck did you get from what you just said to this new thing here?" because, quite frankly, I know that there was some means but I can't fathom the connections. So she explains and when she does, there IS a connection from what she had just said to the new thing. But I didn't see the path, there were at least a dozen steps to it, and it happened in her mind is less time than a second. We have known each other since ... since before I can remember existing. We grew up together. She's two years older and on occasion actually baby sat me for my parents! But in all these years of knowing her, each day I am around her is new to me. I never stop listening. I am never bored. Her imagination is THAT GOOD. Okay. So yes, I _am_ impressed by imagination and attracted to it, obviously. I respect it. I value it. (My imagination space is in mathematics. I enjoy seeing bosons become fermions through a reflection space or realizing that packing spheres can be used as a visualization of the error correction schemes of Hamming.) One thing you might want to consider reading about is General Atomic, which was a division of General Dynamics Corporation, in the mid to late 1950's. Edward Teller, Freeman Dyson, and many others were involved in developing several kinds of nuclear reactors for power generation, including a fundamentally safe reactor that children could operate and a terrorist could not cause to overheat, granted access and using explosives. The interactions of scientists and scientists, and engineers and scientists there is a real education about successful harnessing of ideas into practicality. Teller was full of ideas, but needed Dyson to demolish them often or to cast them into mathematical form for deduction to specifics. Fierce disagreements would gradually resolve into practical ideas. And engineers, with perhaps one of the more important ones being an Iranian named Massoud Simnad, absorbed the physics and were able to develop the necessary materials and designs as a result. John, ideas come from a lot of sources and some of them cannot be intentional, but instead a matter of accident. The discovery of radioactivity is itself a lesson in this. I'm sure that many times before that event, people noticed fogged film but instead just assumed it was bad and sent it back for new film. It took an accident of imagination, not an intentional and directed one set to a path, for Becquerel to question that assumption and to actually see if there was a proximate cause, instead. My own imagination has had its small successes, too, where better trained physicists were stumped over a problem. So I understand and appreciate some of what you are saying. But there is only so much time and effort available and so many more ideas to be considered -- especially when those coming up with the ideas don't have to actually _know_ anything broadly about the facts. It is so very much easier for us to grab some analogy from here and paste it over there, when we don't really understand much of the details and figure on leaving it to others to "work it out." There just isn't much time for that. This is one of the reasons for the practical rule in science that "the first burden of evidence" belongs to the person proposing the idea. It's simply the only practical way to go. One of the things that has very much impressed me about the
From: Jonathan Kirwan on 18 Oct 2006 14:21 On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 10:58:46 -0700, John Larkin <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: >Geez, it's just a newsgroup. It doesn't really matter. I see. My time doesn't matter, either, I suppose. Got it. Jon
From: lucasea on 18 Oct 2006 14:24
"John Larkin" <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message news:0sdcj2p4j5juqv9ug5al7f0bder9pf0ott(a)4ax.com... > On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 05:13:06 GMT, <lucasea(a)sbcglobal.net> wrote: > >>"John Larkin" <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in >>message >>news:r84bj29ks79pg0usm3m1gckgv430imkd0d(a)4ax.com... >>> >>> It's surprising to me, in this newsgroup, how hard it is to get people >>> to brainstorm, to riff on ideas. Rigidity rules. >> >>I agree. I think the problem (at least on sci.chem) is that people will >>present a new idea as a fact, rather than as a speculation. A post that >>says "here's how I say it is" garners a very different response than one >>that says "hey, guys, I had this new idea, and I'd like your thought on >>how >>to refine it". People need to find better ways to get a brainstorm like >>that going. I've also found, through years of using it as a tool in my >>science, that to do brainstorming well and productively takes a phenomenal >>amount of discipline, and people do have to agree to abide by rules (for >>example, the main rule is "you can only present new ideas, not >>criticize/critique what someone else has presented".) Refinement of the >>ideas generated in a brainstorm also takes discipline, but not quite as >>much. That sort of discipline just ain't possible in a free-form forum >>like >>Usenet, particularly in unmoderated newsgroups. >> > My apologies for not being more aware of the crosspost... No problem, this entire thread was massive crossposted from the beginning. I'm actually kind of glad, it gets a broader perspective and a new bunch of personalities. Sci.chem is kinda boring these days. > I'm writing > from the s.e.d. perspective. Scientists are trying to discover the > rules of nature, and engineers are usually annoyed by them. Actual > recent exchange: "Nice circuit, but it violates conservation of > energy." ... "Ooh, I really hate that one." Well, that would be the "rigid inflexibility" that you decried. I'm just joking--I agree with you on that issue, but the one thing that people need to be extremely wary of being flexible about is the laws of nature. It's unbelievably rare that one of them is truly found wanting. > But the problem is the same, in that we both need new ideas, and most > of the easy ones were found a long time ago. If you get a bunch of > people together, groupthink lowers their mean IQ, with mob violence, > or maybe politics, being the extreme expression. Brainstorming is a > mechanism to increase mean IQ, but as you say, it's fragile and not > easy to arrange. One bad player can poison a brainstorming session, > and on usenet there are plenty of bad players available. There are effective mechansims for dealing with that one bad player, and that's one situation where the discipline really comes in. > One on my brainstorming "rules" (and all brainstorming rules are > better kept hidden, enforced by stealth) is that no ideas be supressed > until they've been exposed and considered. Yep, that's the most important one (actually, in the first, most creative phase, ideas are not even to be considered, just written down for consideration and building on in a later, less creative phase), but I don't necessarily agree about the stealth. One of the best brainstorming sessions I've ever been to had an explicit rule that anybody who critiques or evaluates an idea during the idea generation phase itself had to pay a quarter into the pot. Some of the younger fresh-out-of-college-and-know-everything folks just didn't get it, and ended up owing several dollars at the end of a 2 hour session. > The way to make that happen > is to substitute the enabling rule that there's no difference between > presenting an idea and making a joke. A good brainstorm is > recognizable by the laughter it generates. Lots of the jokes turn out > to be excellent ideas, after a little kicking around. Yep, most new ideas are pretty silly on the face of it. Nice way to think about it--I'll have to remember that. > Brainstorming is magical when it works. It's always been one of my favorite parts of science. > It could be done on usenet if > the players had the guts to keep it up and not be intimidated by the > wedge-heads. Maybe. It's very difficult to keep from getting sucked into the minutiae, as witnessed by this thread. Of course, here, nobody is really trying. The one advantage of a non-immediate medium like this is that you have more time to simply consider the implications of your post, rather than just feeling like you need to blurt things out in real time. Eric Lucas |