[time-nuts] A philosophy of science view on the tight pll discussion

Steve Rooke sar10538 at gmail.com
Fri Jun 4 16:03:30 UTC 2010


So a tree is a physical object, its workings can be understood by
botanical analysis, but just how do you quantify its beauty in numbers
or equations then? And before you try to wriggle out of this, the
beauty of a tree is a physical artefact because it imbues a reaction
in the viewer.

2+3*6=20
3^3^3=?

Steve

On 5 June 2010 03:48, Mark Kahrs <mark.kahrs at gmail.com> wrote:
> I for one, have grown tired of the ad-hominem anti-intellectual attacks.
> This is supposed to be about science and engineering, not words.  Therefore,
> I'd like to see analysis.  As Lord Kelvin put it:
>
> "In physical science the first essential step in the direction of learning
> any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable
> methods for measuring some quality connected with it. I often say that when
> you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you
> know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot
> express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory
> kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your
> thoughts advanced to the state of Science, whatever the matter may be."
>
> What I want to see in the future are equations.  Please use LaTex notation
> so we all can see what's going on.  Until that happens, it's all just fuzzy
> semantics --- neither science nor engineering.  If you make a claim, support
> it with equations.  If you can't, then don't make the claim.  It's that
> simple.
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 11:15 AM, Steve Rooke <sar10538 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 4 June 2010 07:11, Didier Juges <didier at cox.net> wrote:
>> >
>> > ---- WarrenS <warrensjmail-one at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> >> Ulrich posted a bunch of logic stuff, some of which I did not
>> understand.
>> >>
>> >> but  I do think he missed the main point
>> >>
>> >
>> > I personally think Warren missed the point entirely, but it's just my
>> opinion. This statement is a good summary of what has been going on. You
>> cannot dismiss something that you do not understand, yet that's what you
>> have been trying to do for a long time now.
>>
>> I'm not sure that that the point was made clear or if even there was a
>> point to this unless you are taking a specific side.
>>
>> Examining things:-
>>
>> The physicist obviously had a a good general education which included
>> biology, genealogy, logic and nursery rhymes. He deduced correctly
>> that the likelihood of a black sheep occurring naturally via a second
>> occurrence of natural selection and that the black coat was due to a
>> genetic anomaly which indicated that it was very likely that the gene
>> for a black coat was in the sheep that were close to the this place
>> which meant that it was most likely that black sheep were in Germany.
>> He dismissed the idea that the farmer had just shipped the black sheep
>> into Germany because his daughter liked nursery rhymes as he logically
>> knew that farmers never do anything that costs them anything only
>> things that make them money. He remembered the age old saying, you'll
>> never see a farmer on a bike. He therefore deduced that this was proof
>> that there are black sheep in Germany.
>>
>> The mathematician was obviously deeply engrossed in his complex
>> mathematics education which took up most of his time and didn't care
>> to much for other subjects. He was a romantic and remembered his
>> mother saying all the nursery rhymes to him when he was young. Being
>> that he spent so much of his time in his own head, he had no real idea
>> of life outside that and really had a childlike attitude to things in
>> the outside World. When he saw the farm and the black sheep he
>> obviously thought of a happy farming family and deduced that the
>> really nice farmer had gone out of his way to find the only black
>> sheep in Europe so that he could make his daughter happy. It did not
>> cross his mind that a black sheep had anything to do with genetics but
>> he had enough sense to know that animals had the same colours on each
>> side, after all the zebra in his little farm set he had as a child had
>> stripes on both sides. That was logical to him so he deduced that
>> there was at least one black sheep in Germany.
>>
>> The logician ate, drank and slept pure logic all his life. As far as
>> he was concerned, the World was all binary, true and false, black and
>> white. To him everything in the World could be explained by logic and
>> everything was logical. As logic explained everything he had no time
>> for any other disciplines as they were superfluous, after all,
>> everything could be explained by logic. Having never ventured from his
>> deep dark dungeon with black and white walls he was intrigued to see
>> the World outside. He made no assumptions on what he saw and always
>> understood that everything could be explained by logic. It was
>> therefore completely logical for him to deduce that what he was
>> looking at was the black side of a sheep whereas he could not make a
>> deduction on the other sheep as they were all facing the other way. So
>> his deduction that there was at least one sheep with one black sheep
>> was perfectly logical to him and he went back to enjoying his train
>> journey.
>>
>> And the moral of the story is, you only see the World with eyes that
>> are open and been trained to see what you have experience in. To step
>> out of the square you are standing in can be very hard but the best
>> approach to life is to adopt that of a child and enjoy all the
>> wonderment around you.
>>
>> > Warren, you probably would be a more effective communicator if you did
>> not see everything as a personal attack. Unfortunately, the value of your
>> messages is lost in pointless arguments about who is right.
>>
>> Well, I do think that there have certainly been quite a number of
>> personal attacks and i believe that Warren had kept his cool under
>> such abuse for quite a while but there are limits to this.
>>
>> > It is too bad that a lot of good information has to be dug up through
>> mountains of "less valuable stuff".
>>
>> I guess we have to make the environment conducive to such sharing with
>> positive feedback.
>>
>> > Bruce has been trying to help you and you dismissed him. You were
>> convinced from the first second that your method was the best there was, and
>> absolutely refused to admit that it could be improved in any way, and you
>> could not even be bothered to explain the limits of that method. Now, Ulrich
>> tries to help you and you dismiss him the same way.
>>
>> Now I disagree with you entirely here. Warren has presented something
>> that he wanted others to look at and try. Bruce was not interested in
>> even looking at it without changing it with his entrenched opinions.
>> Before you can criticise something you should evaluate it properly
>> without making comment until you are finished that process otherwise
>> it is what we call being rude.
>>
>> Bruce was convinced that it could be improved without even evaluating
>> it and Warren has been saying all along lets try it this way before we
>> all get to criticise it. Sadly it is in the nature of man to think
>> that they all know better than any other man, it takes a great deal of
>> maturity to accept what others may say or even to accept that there
>> may be two differing opinions as it's mostely a case of each oponent
>> trying to make the other say what they believe. We have caused this
>> problem due to the way that we have structured society to be highly
>> competitive.  In that way society raises as high as the highest person
>> can reach. Other societies have a different approach, take the bee for
>> instance, there is no inter-bee competition with the worker bees there
>> (yes there are other factors between the drones and any new queens,
>> yes I'm a trained apiarists). Bees work together in collective
>> competition so the value of the hive is worth more than the sum of the
>> bees. It's like the bee society supports each and every other bee
>> reaching its highest potential just like bees standing on the
>> shoulders of each and every other bee to reach far higher than any
>> single bee to reach.
>>
>> > If I recall correctly, the argument started because Bruce faulted you for
>> stating that your method was "good enough" without characterizing the limits
>> of that statement, not because Bruce criticized the method by itself. Then
>> you quickly refused to accept that there might be merit to such
>> characterization.
>>
>> I think the boot was on the other foot. I think that Warren said it
>> was "good enough" and Bruce said that it could never be.
>>
>> > Every method has limitations. If you do not know the limits, how do you
>> know an experiment is within the capabilities of that method? Simply
>> achieving the same results (under some conditions) as an expensive piece of
>> test equipment only has anecdotal value if you do not know the limits. More
>> testing certainly improves the confidence, but it is not a replacement for a
>> sound analysis of the errors. Otherwise, it is nothing more than an
>> interesting gadget.
>>
>> I think we already know by now that this is not the results of a
>> single "test" so it makes this comment academic.
>>
>> > I think I have heard enough about the tight PLL method for a while, and I
>> am ready for another thread.
>>
>> It is sad that it has come down to statements like this when people
>> have tried to give something of value to the community but have been
>> denigrated because they have not done it the way that some entrenched
>> member sees as the only way to do it and will not move on. All of this
>> could have been avoided if some curtsey had been applied earlier on
>> and so the environment would have been open for such things to
>> progress. Sadly we all have ourselves to blame for this, any of us,
>> all of us could have shouted out and said lets make this space a place
>> to share and respect each other, then our passion as time-nuts would
>> have been satisfied.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Steve
>>
>> > Didier
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
>> > To unsubscribe, go to
>> https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
>> > and follow the instructions there.
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Steve Rooke - ZL3TUV & G8KVD
>> The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
>> - Einstein
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
>> To unsubscribe, go to
>> https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
>> and follow the instructions there.
>>
> _______________________________________________
> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
> To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
> and follow the instructions there.
>



-- 
Steve Rooke - ZL3TUV & G8KVD
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
- Einstein



More information about the time-nuts mailing list