Not to be a jerk, but "[Copernicus] was forced into it, because it was the only way to make the numbers come out right" just isn't correct.
Tycho Brahe's measurements showed that Ptolemy's model was more accurate than Copernicus's. The point still stands that Copernicus transcended his time, but he was really riding on the coattails of Ptolemy's genius. Ptolemy never gets enough credit...
Really, Copernicus' accomplishment was that his model worked very well yet left out a huge heap of epicycles. Heliocentric = fewer epicycles. That was Copernicus' contribution.
This pales in comparison to Kepler's "Equal areas in equal time." That observation is a very strong hint towards Newtonian mechanics and Calculus.
The reason I forbid my children to use words like "fuck" and "shit" is not that I want them to seem innocent, but because these words are ill-mannered and contribute nothing to communication.
For me that's not why. I don't let my seven year old curse for the same reason I don't let her use power tools (yet). They require skill and can be a bit dangerous if you don't use them properly.
I suppose if I sat down and thought about it I could come up with an appropriate occasion for my seven year old to curse. But then to explain that corner case to her and expect her to manage it isn't worth the effort. And for my four year old it's simply not possible.
My kids will figure out these rules on their own, in due time.
It took me a couple re-readings of the first page or so, because I didn't understand that these were responses to some objections you got.
I spent several minutes trying to decide if French Literary profs might be able to publish physics journal articles in your scenario. I eventually decided they would be able to, since the physics journals would now be run by French Literary theorists.
I'm surprised that noone has mentioned the case of Igor and Grichka Bogdanov here. These were borderline literary theorists that actually did have a complete nonsense physics article published.
As a physics journal editor you could publish articles by French lit. profs which would save their lives, but which any competent physicist would see were clearly bluffs, so wouldn't you be somewhat obliged to do so?
physicists are smarter than professors of French Literature
I would tend to say the opposite. Paul, you're mixing up here what I would call "savantism" with intelligence. We know that there is no true definition of intelligence, but I think whatever the definition ends up being, it has to be based more on understanding than just knowledge and mechanizations within that knowledge. Who would be more afraid, in your scenario, between the physicist and a Cantonese scholar?
if [Finland] seems that much more socialist than the US, it is probably simply because they don't spend so much on their military
Exactly. So it's not about dismissing Socialism (especially since all modern countries operate on both Socialistic and Capitalistic principles), as much as making an argument as to what the upper tax bracket should be. And for that, I would look at companies that have tremendous bonus systems. (I won't exhibit the obvious.) Are they more productive? Do they take more risks? What are the benefits and consequences of those risks? Personally, I'm not as concerned about the marginal incentive between $10 million and $1 billion as I am that a society, as a whole, functions, and doesn't degenerate into something "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".
It's not so much what the upper bracket should be, it's about what the threshold for the bracket needs to be!
In Belgium, the top bracket of 50% starts at about 32,000 euro's. In addition to that, there's a separate flat social security tax of 13%, meaning that my marginal tax rate is about 60% - with a mediocre salary.
> if [Finland] seems that much more socialist than the US, it is probably simply because they don't spend so much on their military
I just have to interject that even if Finland spends relatively little of money for it's defense, when you consider all costs the budget climbs quite high. What I'm obviously talking about is conscription, which Finland still has in use. Just how do you measure the cost of one year of the life of nearly the entire male population?
If you live in Holland, that last point is pretty much a no-brainer. Politicians are constantly accusing each other of saying things that are 'not done'. We have our wannabe-Fortuyn (Geert Wilders) at the moment. Heck, a politician just stepped down for not adhering to 'the code' another sign we're not that tolerant. We're just tolerant about homosexuality and drugs.
" If you doubt that, imagine what people in 1830 would think of our default educated east coast beliefs about, say, premarital sex, homosexuality, or the literal truth of the Bible."
Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson didn't believe the Bible to be literally correct. It's well documented. Jefferson even went as far as to create his own Bible, editing out most miracles, the resurrection, and immaculate conception.
We can be more general than that. It wasn't really until the fundamentalist movement that people felt inclined to defend the literal truth of the Bible. Catholics historically (going back to Augustine) have believed that parts of the Bible like the creation account in Genesis are allegorical rather than literal. They wouldn't have gone as far as Jefferson (obviously) but it's sort of a myth that Christians have always felt the need to defend the literal truth of everything in the Bible.
I'm not sure that Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson count as "people in 1830" in the same way that the Salem Witch Trials might constitute "people in 1692". I'm also of the opinion that you should also account for the other two points, even if to say that you don't mean to refute them by refuting the third.
but semiconductors or light bulbs or the plumbing of e-commerce probably have to be developed by entrepreneurs. Life in the Soviet Union would have been even poorer if they hadn't had American technologies to copy.
semiconductors: it wasn't e-commerce plumbing driving it, but fear from Sputnik and its consequences (mobile computing ...in Minutemen). That wasn't entrepreneurship (no risks taken on behalf of "entrepreneurs") at Bell either: state subsidized monopoly which was somewhat acknowledged a little later with the babies. The Valley had its paying customers before anything to "market" (see HP f[o]unding letter).
light bulbs: that's a dead horse kicked around too often.
plumbing of e-commerce: being in the right circle helps (No Such Ancestors). Btw. Minitel "3615" was there way before on scale with the actual plumbing (net and terminal used to sell services from the armchair countrywide [amazon/paypal/etc do not serve every country either]). Also from State Monopoly. The Kahns in the USA never ran any risks.
And life in Afghanistan is as poor as it was, America has copied the Soviet Union.
Specifically, this response is what I wanted to bring up.
The fact that you can't say something doesn't mean it's true.
I believe this is implicit in "So it's likely that visitors from the future would agree with at least some of the statements that get people in trouble today." In an earlier version I made this point explicitly, but it seemed repetitive, so I cut it.
The funny thing about Sokal is not so much that he (supposedly) slipped a bogus paper past the editors, but rather in how so many people react to the event and take it as proof positive that the entire field is bogus or even that publishing that paper was a mistake of the editors.
The editors, by publishing the piece, were not saying "Aha! Brilliant reasoning in this text!" but rather "People in our field should see this submission. People in his field should, as well."
What didn't happen after Sokal's paper was published? Years of earnest, tortured academic work by others commenting on it as if it were serious on its face.
'"People in our field should see this submission. People in his field should, as well."'
This doesn't strike me as a good defense; in fact it seems to me to concede the point you think you're fighting. The editors think that people should see sheer nonsense? What are they doing, again? There's no justification for publishing sheer nonsense; there's an infinite supply of that, and precious few journal pages by comparison.
If they did not see some value in it, they would not have published it. Therefore, they did see some value in utter nonsense. Therefore, I am justified in treating them as people who see value in total nonsense. As a person interested in learning, these are not people I want to emulate or respect.
"Jan Hendrik Schön (born 1970) is a German physicist who briefly rose to prominence after a series of apparent breakthroughs that were later discovered to be fraudulent.[1] Before he was exposed, Schön had received the Otto-Klung-Weberbank Prize for Physics in 2001, the Braunschweig Prize in 2001 and the Outstanding Young Investigator Award of the Materials Research Society in 2002."
Note that this appears to be a scam conference. The people who pulled this prank were proving that the conference had bad reviewing practices, not that the study of physics does:
That's a funny link, but you really, really don't want to open up the "are physics or computer scientists smarter" debate, a lot of people here probably don't want to know the truth.
Smart people might work on sexy projects like fighter planes and space rockets for ordinary wages, but semiconductors or light bulbs or the plumbing of e-commerce probably have to be developed by entrepreneurs.
I don't agree that this is the case. Many smart people don't see the need to be rewarded in a financially appropriate way. (Those that do make their way into finance or startups eventually). Look at institutes such as the CSIRO in Australia for science/technology in general or the BBC for broadcasting technology.
It sure didn't play out that way on my high school cross-country team. We had a gymnast who couldn't even manage a 25min 5k by the end of the season and three swimmers who beat that by a big margin in the very first meet.
That's not because swimmers aren't physically fit though (physical fitness being the comparison to intelligence) it's because swimming is more specialized than gymnastics.
You really can't say gymnasts are more fit than swimmers, just that gymnastics is a more versatile sport so you learn a wider range of abilities.
They can't dance for shit though. A gymnast moving into breaking stands out by a mile. It's as if they've left their clothes hanger inside their clothes.
What do academic economists actually have to say about the link between entrepreneurship and taxation? My impression is that new tech companies start in response to new technological opportunities and have little to do with marginal tax rates.
Income tax rates are a red herring. In general, entrepreneurial activity is taxed as long term capital gains. You can see those rate are more attractive.
Hewlett Packard 1939 - 63% (1 year holding) to 23% (10 year holding)
Intel 1968 - 25%
Microsoft 1975 - 20%
Adobe 1982 - 20%
Google 1998 - 20%
I'm not sure what pg means with "socialism." (Does this word mean that workplaces are run by the workers, an important concept within socialism? Or is it just something about higher taxes?) In any case, I probably don't agree with his argument that the profit motive is necessary for hard work, though I do believe that people who are their own bosses (self-managing workers) are likely much better for innovation than the alternative.
French Lit is harder. Much harder per Kolmogorov complexity, but even if you're running it on monkeys, getting the right answer out to the limits of evidence would be a huge work of detective and archeological and historical study far beyond the source text. You would be attempting to reconstruct someone's mind from the outside in, with very fragmentary life-logs.
IOW, French lit only seems easy because academics aren't aiming to be right. They just want an informed guess. In physics, this is considered the start of an investigation, not the end product.
Having had some training in classical lit. and [previously] gone out with a girl reading French Lit. at university I cant help but agree.
I expect a Physicist could write enough to fool a French Lit. magazine - but only superficially. I dont think they could write meaningfully on a subject.
I also know a few literary students who I suspect could write a sufficiently obtuse piece of work in, say, a month to fool some physicists. Again only superficially.
I think the fallacy Paul falls into is the thinking that French Lit. professors don't question what they read in the same way Physicists do. Unfortunately it's a stereotype that does bear out in some respects - but the top guys certainly do question everything. Indeed they will almost certainly disagree by default and go out of their way to find proof.
If you think you've seen scientists bitching and arguing you've never hung round with literature scholars :D
In physics, there's at least the illusion that there's a "correct" answer. If your theory predicts that a cubic meter of gold has less mass than a cubic meter of water, you've got a serious problem.
In literature, there is no "gold standard" to use as a referee or to consult in helping to make a decision.
French lit only seems easy because academics aren't aiming to be right.
But that is the whole problem: whether or not the discipline aims to be right. I am very closely acquainted with a relative who has a Ph.D. in French literature, and he literally would rather die than attempt to earn even an undergraduate degree in physics.
It's too bad that the majority takes the moral fashions Paul talks about in these two articles so seriously. So, in the end, one can only discuss these topics with close friends, whose reaction you can be fairly sure about.
Case in point: someone's comment in a thread about suicide last night. Sure, it was offensive. And the karma drop that resulted was frightening. Which is exactly the point: if you state a certain opinion on certain subjects, the outcome is something entirely different from rational discussion.
Dismissing socialism is as silly as dismissing capitalism would be. There is no simple answer to society: The best combination is a mixture of many things. There'll be hints of socialism there.
Similarly, perhaps Paul was criticized for his dismissal of French Literature professors because a lot of people realized what a stupid blanket statement he made. Just because it's easier to bullshit about literature doesn't mean the whole of literature is bullshit. That's like assuming that just because math is about simplistic formulas, the entirety of math is simple to comprehend.
I don't know much about French literature, but what I do know of it tells me that by learning about it, I'd be learning not just about literary theory but about French sociology, French history, and the feelings behind France at various moments in times. There's an incredible amount of information in literature. It's not a bug that it's subjective in nature and prone to debate. That's the feature.
But it wasn't a blanket statement (applying to all french lit profs equally). It was a generalization (a reference to the average intelligence of french lit profs).
It's meant to be understood in the same way that "men are taller than women" is meant to be understood; a counter-example will get you nowhere here.
Socialism has killed hundreds of millions of people in the 20th century. I think it's fair to put it into the "doubtfully useful techniques" bin, where a higher standard of proof for usefulness is required to make use of anything that seems socialist.
Unfortunately, exactly the opposite is the case today. Free enterprise and competition is looked on skeptically, while socialism (multiply disproved and damned by the experience of history) is gleefully embraced and readily adopted with insufficient skepticism.
There is no simple answer to society: The best combination is a mixture of many things. There'll be hints of socialism there.
Why would that be true? Aside from being the mid-point between two mutually contradictory opinions, what specifically makes you think that being a little bit of both is better than either? In the US, at least, the half-socialized sectors of the economy have been responsible for the biggest disasters -- S&Ls, Enron, and Lehman were all the result of smart capitalists exploiting dumb price controls.
Also! If you'd been writing this 80 years ago, would you have said "Dismissing democracy is as silly as dismissing fascism would be.... the best combination is a mixture of many things. There'll be hints of National Socialism there."
[+] [-] haon99|16 years ago|reply
Tycho Brahe's measurements showed that Ptolemy's model was more accurate than Copernicus's. The point still stands that Copernicus transcended his time, but he was really riding on the coattails of Ptolemy's genius. Ptolemy never gets enough credit...
[+] [-] stcredzero|16 years ago|reply
This pales in comparison to Kepler's "Equal areas in equal time." That observation is a very strong hint towards Newtonian mechanics and Calculus.
[+] [-] seanc|16 years ago|reply
For me that's not why. I don't let my seven year old curse for the same reason I don't let her use power tools (yet). They require skill and can be a bit dangerous if you don't use them properly.
I suppose if I sat down and thought about it I could come up with an appropriate occasion for my seven year old to curse. But then to explain that corner case to her and expect her to manage it isn't worth the effort. And for my four year old it's simply not possible.
My kids will figure out these rules on their own, in due time.
[+] [-] warwick|16 years ago|reply
I spent several minutes trying to decide if French Literary profs might be able to publish physics journal articles in your scenario. I eventually decided they would be able to, since the physics journals would now be run by French Literary theorists.
[+] [-] kurtosis|16 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_Affair
[+] [-] jodrellblank|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dennisgorelik|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] david927|16 years ago|reply
I would tend to say the opposite. Paul, you're mixing up here what I would call "savantism" with intelligence. We know that there is no true definition of intelligence, but I think whatever the definition ends up being, it has to be based more on understanding than just knowledge and mechanizations within that knowledge. Who would be more afraid, in your scenario, between the physicist and a Cantonese scholar?
if [Finland] seems that much more socialist than the US, it is probably simply because they don't spend so much on their military
Exactly. So it's not about dismissing Socialism (especially since all modern countries operate on both Socialistic and Capitalistic principles), as much as making an argument as to what the upper tax bracket should be. And for that, I would look at companies that have tremendous bonus systems. (I won't exhibit the obvious.) Are they more productive? Do they take more risks? What are the benefits and consequences of those risks? Personally, I'm not as concerned about the marginal incentive between $10 million and $1 billion as I am that a society, as a whole, functions, and doesn't degenerate into something "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".
[+] [-] wlievens|16 years ago|reply
In Belgium, the top bracket of 50% starts at about 32,000 euro's. In addition to that, there's a separate flat social security tax of 13%, meaning that my marginal tax rate is about 60% - with a mediocre salary.
[+] [-] Tuna-Fish|16 years ago|reply
I just have to interject that even if Finland spends relatively little of money for it's defense, when you consider all costs the budget climbs quite high. What I'm obviously talking about is conscription, which Finland still has in use. Just how do you measure the cost of one year of the life of nearly the entire male population?
[+] [-] spazmaster|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] euroclydon|16 years ago|reply
Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson didn't believe the Bible to be literally correct. It's well documented. Jefferson even went as far as to create his own Bible, editing out most miracles, the resurrection, and immaculate conception.
[+] [-] jswinghammer|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericb|16 years ago|reply
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/age_...
[+] [-] crystalis|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Create|16 years ago|reply
semiconductors: it wasn't e-commerce plumbing driving it, but fear from Sputnik and its consequences (mobile computing ...in Minutemen). That wasn't entrepreneurship (no risks taken on behalf of "entrepreneurs") at Bell either: state subsidized monopoly which was somewhat acknowledged a little later with the babies. The Valley had its paying customers before anything to "market" (see HP f[o]unding letter).
light bulbs: that's a dead horse kicked around too often.
plumbing of e-commerce: being in the right circle helps (No Such Ancestors). Btw. Minitel "3615" was there way before on scale with the actual plumbing (net and terminal used to sell services from the armchair countrywide [amazon/paypal/etc do not serve every country either]). Also from State Monopoly. The Kahns in the USA never ran any risks.
And life in Afghanistan is as poor as it was, America has copied the Soviet Union.
[+] [-] rms|16 years ago|reply
Specifically, this response is what I wanted to bring up.
The fact that you can't say something doesn't mean it's true.
I believe this is implicit in "So it's likely that visitors from the future would agree with at least some of the statements that get people in trouble today." In an earlier version I made this point explicitly, but it seemed repetitive, so I cut it.
[+] [-] blasdel|16 years ago|reply
Prurience: http://www.asstr.org/files/Collections/Alt.Sex.Stories.Moder...
Politics: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/
[+] [-] vsync|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dasht|16 years ago|reply
The editors, by publishing the piece, were not saying "Aha! Brilliant reasoning in this text!" but rather "People in our field should see this submission. People in his field should, as well."
What didn't happen after Sokal's paper was published? Years of earnest, tortured academic work by others commenting on it as if it were serious on its face.
The Wikipedia article on it gives some balance.
-t
[+] [-] jerf|16 years ago|reply
This doesn't strike me as a good defense; in fact it seems to me to concede the point you think you're fighting. The editors think that people should see sheer nonsense? What are they doing, again? There's no justification for publishing sheer nonsense; there's an infinite supply of that, and precious few journal pages by comparison.
If they did not see some value in it, they would not have published it. Therefore, they did see some value in utter nonsense. Therefore, I am justified in treating them as people who see value in total nonsense. As a person interested in learning, these are not people I want to emulate or respect.
[+] [-] alex_c|16 years ago|reply
Well, actually...
http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/
[+] [-] m0nty|16 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Hendrik_Sch%C3%B6n
"Jan Hendrik Schön (born 1970) is a German physicist who briefly rose to prominence after a series of apparent breakthroughs that were later discovered to be fraudulent.[1] Before he was exposed, Schön had received the Otto-Klung-Weberbank Prize for Physics in 2001, the Braunschweig Prize in 2001 and the Outstanding Young Investigator Award of the Materials Research Society in 2002."
[+] [-] byrneseyeview|16 years ago|reply
http://goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au/~jz/sci/
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bartl|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kierank|16 years ago|reply
I don't agree that this is the case. Many smart people don't see the need to be rewarded in a financially appropriate way. (Those that do make their way into finance or startups eventually). Look at institutes such as the CSIRO in Australia for science/technology in general or the BBC for broadcasting technology.
[+] [-] trapper|16 years ago|reply
Gymnasts are the physicists of movement.
[+] [-] xiaoma|16 years ago|reply
A lot of gymnasts made good cheerleaders, though.
[+] [-] forensic|16 years ago|reply
You really can't say gymnasts are more fit than swimmers, just that gymnastics is a more versatile sport so you learn a wider range of abilities.
[+] [-] Quarrelsome|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jstevens85|16 years ago|reply
Hewlett Packard 1939 - Top Income Tax Rate 79%
Intel 1968 - 75%
Microsoft 1975 - 50%
Adobe 1982 - 50%
Google 1998 - 40%
[+] [-] falsestprophet|16 years ago|reply
If at any point I experienced a tax rate of 98%, I imagine I would not be highly motivated to earn more money.
[+] [-] tayssir|16 years ago|reply
(The accompanying article is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/technology/02darpa.html )
For more on how the system works, you can find a readable overview from sources ranging from Bill Gates Sr. to Noam Chomsky: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/url.cfm?ID=90058... http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticlePrint/8114
I'm not sure what pg means with "socialism." (Does this word mean that workplaces are run by the workers, an important concept within socialism? Or is it just something about higher taxes?) In any case, I probably don't agree with his argument that the profit motive is necessary for hard work, though I do believe that people who are their own bosses (self-managing workers) are likely much better for innovation than the alternative.
[+] [-] dennisgorelik|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ynniv|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JulianMorrison|16 years ago|reply
IOW, French lit only seems easy because academics aren't aiming to be right. They just want an informed guess. In physics, this is considered the start of an investigation, not the end product.
[+] [-] ErrantX|16 years ago|reply
I expect a Physicist could write enough to fool a French Lit. magazine - but only superficially. I dont think they could write meaningfully on a subject.
I also know a few literary students who I suspect could write a sufficiently obtuse piece of work in, say, a month to fool some physicists. Again only superficially.
I think the fallacy Paul falls into is the thinking that French Lit. professors don't question what they read in the same way Physicists do. Unfortunately it's a stereotype that does bear out in some respects - but the top guys certainly do question everything. Indeed they will almost certainly disagree by default and go out of their way to find proof.
If you think you've seen scientists bitching and arguing you've never hung round with literature scholars :D
[+] [-] anamax|16 years ago|reply
What definition of "harder" are we using?
In physics, there's at least the illusion that there's a "correct" answer. If your theory predicts that a cubic meter of gold has less mass than a cubic meter of water, you've got a serious problem.
In literature, there is no "gold standard" to use as a referee or to consult in helping to make a decision.
[+] [-] tokenadult|16 years ago|reply
But that is the whole problem: whether or not the discipline aims to be right. I am very closely acquainted with a relative who has a Ph.D. in French literature, and he literally would rather die than attempt to earn even an undergraduate degree in physics.
[+] [-] nzmsv|16 years ago|reply
Case in point: someone's comment in a thread about suicide last night. Sure, it was offensive. And the karma drop that resulted was frightening. Which is exactly the point: if you state a certain opinion on certain subjects, the outcome is something entirely different from rational discussion.
[+] [-] diego|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thras|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unalone|16 years ago|reply
Similarly, perhaps Paul was criticized for his dismissal of French Literature professors because a lot of people realized what a stupid blanket statement he made. Just because it's easier to bullshit about literature doesn't mean the whole of literature is bullshit. That's like assuming that just because math is about simplistic formulas, the entirety of math is simple to comprehend.
I don't know much about French literature, but what I do know of it tells me that by learning about it, I'd be learning not just about literary theory but about French sociology, French history, and the feelings behind France at various moments in times. There's an incredible amount of information in literature. It's not a bug that it's subjective in nature and prone to debate. That's the feature.
[+] [-] chrispine|16 years ago|reply
It's meant to be understood in the same way that "men are taller than women" is meant to be understood; a counter-example will get you nowhere here.
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|16 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, exactly the opposite is the case today. Free enterprise and competition is looked on skeptically, while socialism (multiply disproved and damned by the experience of history) is gleefully embraced and readily adopted with insufficient skepticism.
[+] [-] byrneseyeview|16 years ago|reply
Why would that be true? Aside from being the mid-point between two mutually contradictory opinions, what specifically makes you think that being a little bit of both is better than either? In the US, at least, the half-socialized sectors of the economy have been responsible for the biggest disasters -- S&Ls, Enron, and Lehman were all the result of smart capitalists exploiting dumb price controls.
Also! If you'd been writing this 80 years ago, would you have said "Dismissing democracy is as silly as dismissing fascism would be.... the best combination is a mixture of many things. There'll be hints of National Socialism there."
[+] [-] joss82|16 years ago|reply
The best example would be the roads. Who paid for it ? Tax payers. End everyone is happier for it.