Re: Hooking processors together
- From: eugene@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Eugene Miya)
- Date: 3 Jun 2008 14:57:25 -0800
Jokes against simulation, expertise (before being called nerds and
geeks, we were called eggheads), etc. are decades old, back to the late
40s and 50s in grainy old B&W archives. But you also have to be mindful
of American anti-intellectualism. Yes, media is and will be a problem.
You have 2 separate problems here.
"Thirty-eight ... simulated."
--Leo Szilard's last stage of truth:
Finally, they will say, "We knew it all along."
Anti-intellectualism has long been our besetting sin.
With us, hostility to superior intelligence masquerades as belief
in the equality of man and puts forth the false claim that
it is undemocratic to recognize and nurture superior intelligence.
--Hyman G. Rickover
In article <f4b196c9-4b48-406f-aab0-956c11dbfae8@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Robert Myers <rbmyersusa@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Let's see. One of my uncles (a radiologist) worked for Rickover. I
went to MIT. Most people call me names based on where I live (suburb
of Boston). That makes me naturally subject to anti-intellectualism?
Sorry, don't know Boston that well. Is that a Good Will Hunting thing?
That might make you said subject. The fictional improbable case was
Will having a friend (what ever Ben Alfleck's character's name was)
smart enough to see his friend had the "winning ticket" to motivate him
to move onward and upward. Too few of those. Are you like Matt Damon's
character?
In my case, rather the opposite is happening: I'm an uber-snot. I've
isolated too much ridiculousness by ostensibly very smart people in
complicated simulations. It is not, believe me, a way to win friends
and to influence people, but clout can't change physics or
mathematics. I've been through the "We knew it all along," and I'm
still kind of bitter about it.
Don't bother being bitter. It doesn't get you much except higher blood
pressure.
This is most important:
"Perhaps as one of the older generation. I should preach a little
sermon to you, but I do not propose to do so. I shall, instead, give
you a word of advice about how to deal behave toward your elders. When
an old and distinguished person speaks to you, listen to him carefully
and with respect -- *but do not believe him. Never put your trust in
anything but your own intellect.* Your elder no matter whether he has
gray hair or lost his hair, no matter whether he is a Nobel Laureate,
*may be wrong*... So you must always be skeptical --
*always think for yourself.*"
--Linus Pauling
If one can get through an entire discussion of the Atlantic Conveyor
Belt without ever letting the phrase "critical point" fall from one's
lips, how much does one understand, beyond how to turn the computer
on--or the fact that you have a badge at a national lab?
I don't work with oceans much any more. Many phenomena have inflections.
That a badge (as a word) doesn't distinguish between a physicist and a
janitor, one may wonder considering comments by both TJ Watson and
Szilard (much less children [Einstein], the term is neoteny) why
janitors seem to catch on in reader imagination.
However, since the advent of nuclear weapons, physicists have had a lock
on science funding and their influence on other fields of science useful
or not.
Any an example in Patterson's book, he writes:
The approach of this book emphasizes physics, combined where necessary
with mathematics. No apology is made for introducing mathematics.
In the author's opinion, a mere handful of mathematical physicists, who
may seldom set foot on a glacier, have made contributions far more to
the understanding of the subject than a hundred measurers of ablation
stakes or recorders of advances and retreats of glacier termini.
This is not to say that the latter is unimportant; in glaciology, as in
other branches of science, there is a place for the theoretical and the
experimental approach. But the two should be coordinated, the
experiments designed to solve specific problems. Too often in the past,
glaciological measurements have been made on the premise that the mere
acquisition of data is a useful contribution in itself.
This is seldom the case.
Seas of ice.
On the subject of ocean currents, I'm not sure about how far beyond
Hank Stommel computers have taken us--and I will readily admit that I
have not scoured the literature recently. Interesting things happen
near critical points of differential equations. One of the
interesting things is that making detailed predictions is unlikely to
succeed. We have an important ocean circulation pattern that may be
unstable, but we've known (or strongly suspected) that for half a
century.
Whatever other failings I may have, letting other people think for me
isn't one of them. In this case, you and I are reading the PR
landscape differently. I don't agree with your assessment of the
public reaction to science. People are far too awed by it.
Some people are awed by it. I'm not certain you know what my assessment
is. We don't live in a scientific society (the wider culture).
We've both lived through smart people telling the world how to live.
One consequence of all this benevolent smartness is that the African
continent can't even come close to feeding itself, and the food it
needs can't be bought anywhere. Whose model predicted that? Did a
former politician make a movie about it?
We have non-smart people telling the world how to live.
Well I would say if you want to ask modeling and movie questions like
that come to San Francisco and on June 27 you can talk to Paul Ehrlich
himself. Hmmm McCarthy might even come with me for that one, unless
he's tired of confronting Paul.
Many of the problems we're having with energy right now are (in my
analysis) the direct result of overconfident simulation. Prices and
demand were both mispredicted so badly that it's a wonder that anyone
is willing to trust anything.
Remember the Club of Rome? They had a good title: "The Limits to
Growth," but what did their simulations have to do with it?
Sure do. Did you ask for the Fortran?
I think most of the US's energy problems are the result of the
non-scientific populice's refusal to want to come to terms with their
needs for reactors and refineries and thinking they are the market for
the world while Europe and Asia watch on. As James Scheslinger noted:
enjoy the ride. I'm not aware of the full scale energy models for power
distribution. I'd ask my friend Amory.
I'm not (obviously) anti-computer. I'm not anti-simulation. I'm not
anti-intellectual. I'm for getting it right and being careful about
making claims. I don't claim that you think any differently.
Well there will always be slight variances, but I think we basically
violently agree.
--
.
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