[ExI] Interesting book

William Flynn Wallace foozler83 at gmail.com
Sun Nov 18 16:44:12 UTC 2018


I am a physics junky from way back and like to know stuff.  I like any
field of science where a question is asked and there is exactly one right
answer, expressed as a number.  Those fields of science feel so fair and
equal to me, the only places in our creaky old species where equality and
justice always prevail, where everyone has a perfectly equal shot at
getting the right answer.   spike

Here's a little story a chemist told me once:  in his class there was a
student problem which produced various answers.  So he did that experiment
four times and came up with a different answer each time, none of which
were the same as the one in the textbook lab manual.  Maybe the chemicals
were polluted in some way, or the lab instruments were old, or the chemist
was sloppy, but the fact remained that there WAS no one answer to that
problem.

I know that deep in your hearts, you physics people hate psychology and any
other science wannabe area whose errors are to the left of the decimal
place, while yours are way to the right.  But you are not exactly that pure
either, OK?  It is good that you are obsessed with getting the right
numbers, a trait psychologists should follow, rather than jumping to
publication with one result.

I ran my Master's experiment ten times and got the same thing every time
before my mentor was satisfied.  We try.

bill w

On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 9:19 AM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

>
>
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> *From:* extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> *On Behalf
> Of *John Clark
> *Sent:* Sunday, November 18, 2018 6:40 AM
> *To:* ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Interesting book
>
>
>
> SR Ballard sen.otaku at gmail.com Wrote:
>
>
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> > *In his spare time, a lay person researches the most accurate
> publically-available book on the bombs dropped on Japan. *
>
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> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/12/15/atomic-john
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> *The book’s simply called “Atomic Bombs”.*
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> That really does look like an interesting book, I just ordered it from
> Amazon. Thanks for the tip, I'd never heard of it before.
>
>
>
> John K Clark
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> #Me Too!
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> Thanks SR!  I hadn’t heard of this book, but I am a physics junky from way
> back and like to know stuff.  I like any field of science where a question
> is asked and there is exactly one right answer, expressed as a number.
> Those fields of science feel so fair and equal to me, the only places in
> our creaky old species where equality and justice always prevail, where
> everyone has a perfectly equal shot at getting the right answer.
>
>
>
> spike
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
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