[extropy-chat] Elvis Sightings

[Ben Goertzel]

Yes, but in the case of CF, many of the replicators have been  
respected scientists at decent universities... not just crackpots in  
science fair experiments...

I don't really care about theoretical questions about hypothetical  
situations, I'm more interesting in talking about the details of this  
particular case, which you are not informed about...

Ben



On Feb 3, 2007, at 1:02 PM, John K Clark wrote:

> "Ben Goertzel" <ben at goertzel.org>
>
>> The experiments are simple but hard to get right
>
> One of the greatest understatements of all time! A simple well  
> publicized
> experiment that was true but imposable to confirm for 17 years  
> would be
> unprecedented in Science, at least for the last few centuries; I  
> think you'd
> have to go back to Hero of Alexandria's steam engine or the Baghdad  
> battery,
> and even then they weren't really well publicized.
>
> Ben, let me ask you a purely theoretical question, suppose two  
> fairly well
> respected scientists had performed a simple experiment and claimed a
> revolutionary result, and suppose, just for the sake of argument  
> they were
> wrong. What do you imagine the results would be 17 years later? I  
> would
> think crackpots would still be repeating it in science fair  
> experiments and
> they would still be claiming revolutionary results, and I would  
> imagine real
> scientists would have forgotten about the entire sorry fiasco and  
> moved on
> to more productive things. Does any of this sound familiar?
>
>    John K Clark
>
>
>
>
>
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