From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sun Aug 03 2003 - 11:04:26 MDT
Randy wrote
> Slashdot discussion on this:
> http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/03/029213&mode=thread&tid=134¼«
but Randy also quoted Damien's perception that this is
only a *hoax*:
> > I see that this poorly written and somewhat Sokal-like
> > piece of fluff is attributed to a PR agent:
> >
> > Brooke.Jones@australia.edu
> > Independent Communications Consultant
and Damien quotes what may prove to be the most damaging
or to cynics and skeptics the most self-evident BS:
> > "Naturally the parameter and boundary of their respective position and
> > magnitude are naturally determinable up to the limits of possible
> > measurement as stated by the general quantum hypothesis and Heisenberg's
> > uncertainty principle, but this indeterminacy in precise value is not a
> > consequence of quantum uncertainty. What this illustrates is that in
> > relation to indeterminacy in precise physical magnitude, the micro and
> > macroscopic are inextricably linked, both being a part of the same parcel,
> > rather than just a case of the former underlying and contributing to the
> > latter." >
> >
> > Naturally. Yeep.
Guilio adds
> When this was announced a few days ago I was curious, so I downloaded both
> papers of Lynds are read them. Perhaps I did not understand anything of what
> he is trying to say,
Well, I will suggest that Damien is right and that there
is a VERY GOOD REASON that you did not understand anything.
It is a joke. And a poster to slashdot didn't get it either.
Moreover, it demonstrates again just how dependent all of
us really are on the scientific community. It would be easy
to collect a stack of the most impressive looking books and
documents, all of which would defy any of the contributors
to this list in the sense that (unless we depended on the
scientific community as a whole) we would have no way of
refuting, but which, nonetheless would have been written
by crackpots.
> but I was not impressed.
Good for you.
> It seems to me that he is assuming from the very beginning
> what he wants to prove, and that he is not explaining why
> the standard view of these things (that we learn in first
> year calculus) is wrong.
Well, who can blame most of us for being taken in? One reads
so many incredible things, say by Hawking or David Deutsch,
which, though eminently respectable in the long run, produce
the same feelings at first of incomprehension.
(It's also important not to overreact in the other direction,
and to assume that any new theory seemingly at odds with what
we know must automatically be wrong, of course.)
Lee
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Aug 03 2003 - 11:13:53 MDT