Subject: Re: Using C for number-crunching (was: Numerical solution to Schrodinger's Eq)
From: bruns@tetibm2.ee.TU-Berlin.DE (Warner Bruns)
Date: 30 Oct 1996 16:07:59 GMT
In article <555i94$ahb@electra.saaf.se>, pausch@electra.saaf.se (Paul
Schlyter) writes:
> Consider this piece of code:
>
> SUBROUTINE COPY(DOUBLE PRECISION A, DOUBLE PRECISION B, INTEGER N)
> DIMENSION A(N), B(N)
> INTEGER I
> DO 100 I=1,N
> 100 A(I) = B(I)
> END
>
> PROGRAM TEST(INPUT,OUTPUT,TAPE5=INPUT,TAPE6=OUTPUT)
> DOUBLE PRECISION X(100), Y(10), Z(10)
> EQUIVALENCE (X(3),Y(1)), (X(1),Z(1))
> DATA /Z/1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10/
> COPY(Y,Z,10)
> WRITE(*,*) Y
> END
>
> This exhibits exacly the same aliasing problem as in C .....
>
> --
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> Paul Schlyter, Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)
> Grev Turegatan 40, S-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN
> e-mail: pausch@saaf.se psr@home.ausys.se
1.)
This is not Fortran,
2.)
The Fortran equivalent would be:
SUBROUTINE COPY(A, B, N)
DOUBLE PRECISION A, B
INTEGER N
DIMENSION A(N), B(N)
INTEGER I
DO 100 I=1,N
100 A(I) = B(I)
END
PROGRAM TEST
DOUBLE PRECISION X(100), Y(10), Z(10)
EQUIVALENCE (X(3),Y(1)), (X(1),Z(1))
DATA /Z/1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10/
call COPY(Y,Z,10)
WRITE(*,*) Y
END
and this Fortran equivalent is illegal.
It is just ILLEGAL to call a subprogram that modifies its arguments
in this way.
You are just not allowed to do this.
Warner Bruns
Subject: Re: Hermeneutics and the difficulty to count to three...
From: moggin@nando.net (moggin)
Date: 30 Oct 1996 16:27:20 GMT
moggin:
> |> I've deleted your analogies, so I'll substitute one of my own. In
> |> an isolated, mountain-ringed country, a person named Newt notes that all
> |> the cats he sees are black (and not only at night). He concludes that
> |> all cats are black, and produces a law of cats to explain his findings.
> |> Sometime later a person named Stein crosses the mountains and discovers
> |> many different colors of cats; why, even cats of many different colors.
candy@mildred.ph.utexas.edu (Jeff Candy):
> Theory: mountain-ringed (MR) cats are black.
No, as I clearly said, the theory is that all cats are black.
moggin:
> |> Now, what can we say about this?
Jeff:
> MR cats are black.
That's true (given Newt's findings), but it's not an observation
about his theory.
moggin:
> |> Given Stein's findings, Newt's conclusion is wrong, and his law is
> |> false. But his adherents may claim otherwise.
Jeff:
> "adherents" is irrelevant.
No, it isn't.
moggin:
> |> Without denying that there are other colors of cats, they
> |> may say that Newt's thinking can be considered only in its
> |> geographical context.
Jeff:
> Yes. It wasn't a theory of everything (TOE).
It was a theory of cats (TOC). Stein's findings falsify it.
The fact that Newt made his observations in a limited area helps
to explain why he developed a false theory -- not to rescue it.
moggin:
> |> Or they may claim Newt's conclusion is correct, when applied
> |> within certain limits.
Jeff:
> Yes. ditto.
See above.
moggin:
> |> Or they may argue that Stein generalized Newt, instead of refuting
> |> him.
Jeff:
> Yes. Made clear it wasn't a TOE.
No, Stein's findings contradict Newt's theory, since not all cats
are black.
Jeff:
> I'm a physicist and have never been interested in a TOE.
Irrelevant.
moggin:
> |> Do they have a case? Newt's observations are accurate within
> |> his geographical context, but his conclusion is still false.
Jeff:
> Only if it is touted as a TOE. Otherwise it represents a theory
> of MR cats which is very predicitve. I could stop here. This
> is the crux of the argument.
Newt's theory was all cats are black; however, Stein discovered
non-black cats. Thus given Stein's findings, Newt's theory is false.
moggin:
> |> You could say that it's true when applied within a certain, limited
> |> range, but that's no help, since he offered a general conclusion
> |> about cats.
Jeff:
> The MR-cat theory, whether or not you (or Newt) want it to be a TOE,
> describes MR-cats accurately. It is consequently an MR-cat theory.
Newt offered a theory of cats (TOC) which described all cats as
black. Given Stein's findings, Newt's description was inaccurate, and
his theory was false. His observations were fine, as far as they went,
but the conclusions he drew from them were invalid.
[...]
moggin:
> |> And while Stein's work is more general than Newt's, and includes black
> |> cats, it's not a generalization of Newt's law -- in fact, it's a
> |> contradiction.
> |> Ah, but wait, say Newt's defenders. His law may break down under
> |> extreme conditions, for example, if you cross over the mountains, but
> |> it's plenty good enough to predict the color of cats under _ordinary_
> |> circumstances -- so how can you call it wrong? Simple: a false theory
> |> can produce accurate results, as Newt's case shows.
Jeff:
> The MR-cat theory produces accurate results because it captures the
> essential blackness of MR-cats.
Nope -- Newt's law of cats states that blackness is one of cats'
essential properties. And given Stein's findings, that's false: cats
are not essentially black. Furthermore, mountain cats don't have the
"essense of blackness" which Newt offered to explain their coloring --
they happen to be black just as other cats happen to be orange or grey
or brown or white or tabby or tortoise-shell. (The Farmer in the Dell
later conducted extensive research in this area.)
Jeff:
> The MR-cat theory is not a TOE. No physical theory is a TOE.
Neither theory is relevant here.
Jeff:
> The sense in which you use the word "theory" is miles away from
> the operational usage in modern physics.
And you're light-years away from my example.
-- moggin
Subject: Re: Sophistry 103 (was: I know that!)
From: weinecks@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck)
Date: 30 Oct 1996 16:08:48 GMT
Michael Zeleny (zeleny@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
: weinecks@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
: >Michael Zeleny (zeleny@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
: >>weinecks@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
: >>>Michael Zeleny (zeleny@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
: >>>>weinecks@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck) writes:
: >>>>>Michael Zeleny (zeleny@oak.math.ucla.edu) wrote:
: >[etc. -- you get the idea]
: >>>>>>>>Here is an argument. A) I have a good idea what Einstein meant, and
: >>>>>>>>an equally good idea that any reasonable interpretation of Derrida's
: >>>>>>>>comment is incompatible with Einstein's meaning.
: >>>>>>>Please share your insight, then.
: >>>>>>It is not insight, but learning, which is not something I can share with
: >>>>>>a passive audience. I recommend the Feynman Lectures as a good starting
: >>>>>>point in this matter.
: >>>>>Feynman explains what Hippolite meant? That's fascinating. Are you sure?
: >>>>Are you suffering from ADD? The point is to address Einstein's meaning.
: >>>The point is that you can only determine whether Derrida's meaning is
: >>>incompatible with Einstein's meaning if you know what Derrida's meaning
: >>>is. Elementary logic. So do you or don't you have an interpretation of
: >>>what either Hippolite or Deridda were saying?
: >>Thank you for answering my question about ADD. What I wrote is that
: >>any reasonable interpretation of Derrida's comment is incompatible
: >>with Einstein's meaning.
: >But you can only prove that you have a point when you list all
: >"reasonable interpretations" of Derrida's reply to Hippolite. Please do
: >so or admit that you don't know whether Derrida's reply makes sense.
: >Hint: you would have to include your understanding of Derrida's concept
: >of center, since Hippolite is asking in reference to "Structure, Sign
: >and Play."
: Your hint is beside the point. I have nothing to add to Richard
: Harter's comments in article <54k6p3$55t@news-central.tiac.net>:
: #Derrida's statement (as translated) appears to be fairly clear about
: #what is meant by a center in this context. "End of a kind of
: #privelege of empiric evidence" may be a reference to an end to
: #intuitive mechanistic models. "Einsteinian constant" may be a
: #reference to the invariance of the observed speed of light or it may
: #be a reference to the concept of space-time as being united rather
: #than as absolutely separable. Then again the speakers may have
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
: #something else in mind entirely. On the face of it the entire
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
: #exchange is, to borrow a term, gibberish with respect to physics.
: #However one must allow that this is a translation; the original may be
^^^^^^^^^^^^
: #clearer. The translator may simply have had no knowledge of physics
: #and translated original clarity into vague mush. Then again, the
: #original may been confused to begin with. Derrida's response does not
: #seem terribly consistent with an understanding of relativity and its
^^^^^^^^
: #implications.
I've highlighted the sentences here that distinguish Richard's approach
from yours. If you are willing to adopt his viewpoint, that's fine.
However, you should acknowledge that it is different from the one you
espoused.
: >> In order to demonstrate that to anyone who
: >>even minimally understands the latter, I need not do any more than
: >>circumscribe the former in accordance with the least constricting
: >>conventions of colloquial speech. But based on what I have seen of
: >>your geometrical understanding, I have no interest in assaying such
: >>demonstration for your sake. Take it or leave it.
: >You're trying to wriggle out. So, no.
: I will not interpret Derrida for you. Do your own thinking.
I have. Nobody says you should interpret Derrida; I asked whether your
attack on him was based on an understanding of what he said. It is not.
: >>>>>>>> B) Since Derrida
: >>>>>>>>aims to debunk Platonism, since the understanding of Platonism depends
: >>>>>>>>on the understanding of geometry, and since Einstein is the wellspring
: >>>>>>>>of modern geometry, Derrida's ignorance automatically condemns his
: >>>>>>>>project to failure.
: >>>>>>>This is fun, but it's not an argument.
: >>>>>>It is an argument, and a logically valid one. Under the circumstances,
: >>>>>>I would be willing to let frêre Jacques off the hook if only he had
: >>>>>>evinced minimal acquaintance with Euclid, never mind Lobachevsky or
: >>>>>>Riemann. Alas, it is not forthcoming.
: >>>>>Logical, hm. You would have to prove that
: >>>>>a) an understanding of Platonism does indeed depend on an understanding
: >>>>>of geometry; wild assertion no. 1
: >>>>>b) that Einstein is indeed Platonism for the 20th century -- here, you'd
: >>>>>run into trouble with Russell Turpin and others
: >>>>>c) that Derrida "debunks" Platonism or intends to do so -- here, we'd
: >>>>>only need a quote, so you wouldn't have to think much
: >>>>>d) that all continental philosophy after Kant is cognizant of modern math.
: >>>>In order to prove a), I need do no more than invoke the principle of
: >>>>interpretive charity -- if Plato says that an ageometretos must be
: >>>>disqualified, he is to be taken at his word, so long as your aim is to
: >>>>understand Plato. To address b) independently of your predictably
: >>>>inaccurate reading, I need not do any more than restate the point:
: >>>>Einstein's work on the geometry of the space-time manifold yields the
: >>>>basis of present-day understanding of physical geometry. Curiously
: >>>>enough, I have already satisfied c) in my conversation with Brian
: >>>>Artese by quoting Derrida and citing Plato to the contrary. As
: >>>>regards d), to adapt your own idiom, you are confusing an intellectual
: >>>>enterprise with its institutionalized idiots.
: >>>a) qualifications for philosophers vary greatly within Plato's oeuvre. I
: >>>can understand that you would pick the one agreeable with your
: >>>Erkenntnisinteresse. However, if you were to direct your attention to the
: >>>Phaedrus, you will see a different definition of philosopher emerge.
: >>I think you are making feeble excuses for your ignorance of Plato's
: >>prerequisites.
: >How boring. Please engage the argument, namely: Plato's offers different
: >definitions of "philosophy," some of them, like the one in the Phaedrus,
: >devoid of all references to "geometry." If you can't engage it, I will
: >assume that your knowledge of Plato is restricted.
: The Phaedrus was written by the head of the Academy.
? I have no idea what you are trying to say. The dating of the Phaedrus
is still contested, as you know. If you are trying to suggest that the
Phaedrus is a piece of institutional politics, good luck; as the only
dialogue set outside the city, it does not easily lend itself to such
reading. You might try, of course.
: >>>b) is irrelevant
: >>Only if your feeble excuses could be rationally sustained.
: >It could only be made relevant if you were to address the points above.
: Your points completely depend on your feeble excuses.
You are repetitive. YOu failed to establish your first assumption;
therefore, all conclusions drawn on the basis of it are unestablished as
well.
: >>>c) a disagreement does not constitute a debunking
: >>But a disagreement on a fundamental issue does.
: >No.
: So you say.
So most of us say. "Debunking" implies condescension and hostility.
: >>>d) on the contrary, that is your domain. Are you disqualifying all
: >>>philosophers from philosophy who have not proven to you that they know
: >>>all they could about geometry, yes or no?
: >>I am disqualifying anyone who fails the trivium from consideration as
: >>an intellectual authority in any field of knowledge. Additionally, I
: >>am disqualifying anyone incapable of understanding the mathematical
: >>foundations of any discipline from consideration as an intellectual
: >>authority in that discipline or its philosophical implications.
: >>Derrida's comments purportedly belong to the philosophy of physics.
: >>Draw your own conclusions.
: >Since Derrida does not claim to be an "authority" on the
: >"philosophical implications" of special relativity, your point is quite
: >vapid.
: Thus spake Jacques Derrida:
: #The Einsteinian constant is not a constant, is not a center.
: #
: #It is the very concept of variability -- it is, finally, the
: #concept of the game. In other words, it is not the concept of
: #something -- of a center starting from which an observer could
: #master the field -- but the very concept of the game ...
: Sounds like arrogation of authority to me.
I realize that; I'm still baffled by it, though. Again, he is referring
to the concept of center (and play [not game]) that emerges in his talk.
: >>>>>>Do you think it is a coincidence that the best portrayal of postmodern
: >>>>>>criticism to date was presented by Nabokov as early as 1962?
: >>>>>I would find it highly surprising, yes. I never thought Nabokov was a
: >>>>>good critic, btw, even though he's a great writer. Like Kleist or
: >>>>>Buechner in that regard.
: >>>>Excellence of portrayal is a matter of strength and precision in
: >>>>observation and representation, rather than of the critical virtues
: >>>>of analytic meticulousness in interpretation and explanation.
: >>>That is hardly a response. You have yet to bolster your claim as to what
: >>>Nabokov achieved.
: >>If the shoe fits, wear it.
: >The shoe doesn't fit; you're a terrible cobbler. Good thing you've never
: >claimed to be an authority on shoemaking.
: Good thing you are not a Nabokov scholar.
Indeed.
: >>>>>The image
: >>>>>>of a logorrhetic, vituperative, frustrated uranist, equally ignorant of
: >>>>>>Euclid and Shakespeare, may fit Barthes a little bit better than it does
: >>>>>>Derrida. Then again -- I know not what really turns on the eminent
: >>>>>>grand-daddy of decon.
: >>>>>How odd. Barthes of all people, "vituperative," "frustrated"? That most
: >>>>>loving of critics?
: >>>>As loving as Charles Kinbote, and equally preoccupied with conspiring
: >>>>against the author. As regards his frustration, it is my understanding
: >>>>that fulfillment does not conduce to throwing oneself under a truck.
: >>>As far as I know, he didn't "throw himself under a truck," but was hit by
: >>>a truck.
: >>Amazing how much information can get lost in shifting to passive voice.
: >In this case, your misinformation was corrected. A truck hit Barthes.
: >What again follows as to his frustration? You may take your point back.
: More logical incompetence. How does your saying that a truck hit
: Barthes vitiate my claim that he threw himself under a truck?
It shifts agency; Barthes did not throw himself under a truck, he had an
accident. I'm sorry for relying on common usage to make my point.
: >>> Loving literature is not the same as loving the 18th century
: >>>conception of authorship.
: >>"Love the sin, hate the sinner."
: >In other words, you accept my claim or you are unable to refute it.
: In other words, I am comparing your intellectual integrity to that of
: John Paul II. You may feel flattered or insulted, depending on your
: personal standards.
But you still don't understand anything about Barthes, which is more
important in the context of this discussion.
: >>>>>>>> C) The copyright laws imply that any critical
: >>>>>>>>comments appearing in print of symposium proceedings are subject to
: >>>>>>>>the speaker's release of publication rights and hence carry the
: >>>>>>>>presumption of ex cathedra pronouncements.
: >>>>>>>Perhaps they do; that such is enforced, is, however, amply disproven.
: >>>>>>>Just witness Wolin's mistranslation of Derrida and subsequent
: >>>>>>>publication.
: >>>>>>On the basis of personal experience with intellectual property laws, I
: >>>>>>assure you that such enforcement by the owner is always possible among
: >>>>>>the signatories to the Berne convention.
: >>>>>For someone harping on logic, this is quite below par. It might be
: >>>>>possible to enforce; that does not imply that it has been enforced. So?
: >>>>So if Derrida had been cognizant of revealing that he was full of shit,
: >>>>he would not have allowed published dissemination of this revelation.
: >>>He might give his readers more credit than they deserve. Then again, he
: >>>might only be interested in those readers who do deserve minimal credit.
: >>Then yet again, he might only be interested in readers willing to
: >>swallow all the shit he feeds them. Evidently, in your case, his
: >>hopes are richly realized.
: >You are shifting from subjunctive to indicative; cheap move. But
: >independently of Derrida's vanity, which might be considerable, I
: >disagree with him on a number of points. So you are once again wrong.
: I stand corrected: evidently, in your case, such hopes would be
: overwhelmingly realized.
But since you don't know what his claims are, you don't really know
whether that is good or bad.
: >>>>>>>>>>As you know, I have done my work and need not rely on Sokal to do it.
: >>>>>>>>>>Nonetheless, if I wanted to cite a professional opinion that Derrida
: >>>>>>>>>>was a charlatan, I would have brought up Chomsky.
: >>>>>>>>>I don't know this at all. I'm still waiting for you to exhibit a
: >>>>>>>>>rudimentary understanding of Derrida's argument in "Cogito." As
: >>>>>>>>>long as you can't tell us what it is you object to, your
: >>>>>>>>>objections won't be taken seriously.
: >>>>>>>>In the beginning of our exchange I told you the rules of engagement --
: >>>>>>>>each thrust is to be followed by a parry and vice versa. By continuing
: >>>>>>>>to argue, you implicitly accepted the conventional rules. If you wish
: >>>>>>>>to make a request, I will consider it after you reply to my last
: >>>>>>>>article point by point.
: >>>>>>>The last exchange failed. A reasonable reaction to failure is to try
: >>>>>>>something else.
: >>>>>>I will reasonably consider trying something else after you reply to my
: >>>>>>last article point by point.
: >>>>>In other words, you're wimping out?
: >>>>In my opinion, true wimpery is exemplified by the party who excused
: >>>>herself from following the rules she had accepted from the start.
: >>>You are, of course, entitled to your opinions. Let us all agree to note,
: >>>though, that you refused to exhibit understanding of an essay you claim
: >>>to have read and you claim to object to on philosophical grounds; your
: >>>reasons may be what you say they are.
: >>Let us also agree to note that I have explicitly and repeatedly avowed
: >>a failure to extract a coherent thesis out of Derrida's essay, objecting
: >>solely to isolated claims that roughly approximated intelligibility.
: >Absolutely. You have failed to understand Derrida's essay on Foucault and
: >Descartes, and you are convinced that this already constitutes a valid
: >objection against Derrida.
: I am convinced of having successfully identified logical absurdities
: and textual misreadings in the essay in question.
I'd like to hear about that.
Silke
Subject: Re: faster than light travel
From: bcadle@helium.gas.uug.arizona.edu (Brad J Cadle)
Date: 30 Oct 1996 16:43:04 GMT
In article <01bbc62c$da817b00$7ec4abcf@default>,
Kevin Thomas wrote:
>The "grandfather paradoxes" are actaully just erros of logic. There really
>is no paradox when the logic errors are weeded out. As Kip Thorn pointed
>out, if you are planning to go back in time tomorrow to kill you
>grandfather 50 years ago, although you haven't experience the journey yet
>yourself, as far as the universe is concerned, you have already completed
>you actions in the past. So although you yourself do not know what is
>going to happen when you get into the past, you may infer by the fact that
>you are alive, as well as your grandfather, that for some reason on your
>journey to the past you fail to kill him.
>
>The logic error is putting "cause" before "effect" in a journey to the
>past. In this situation, "effect" comes before "cause". In other words,
>you actions have already been carried out before your decision to perform
>them. So in the so-called "grandfather paradox" you know that regardless
>of your intentions to kill your grandfather, for whatever reason, you will
>fail to do so in your journey to the past.
>
I think the reason many people have a problem with it is not so much
they didn't consider the scenario, but more that it implies that free will
is an illusion. For instance, let's say a video recorder records the actions
of a man from the future. IF at some future date the man views this recording
he knows that he will have to show up and perform those actions. The
information he just got cannot possible change that fact. in your scenario.
Hence we would be unable to commit suicide, or any other action he might
want to do to ensure that he does not go back in time. To take it one step
further, any time machine that is constructed could not freely allow
time travel to any point in the past at any place. If you had a stable
low gravity wormhole that send objects back in time five minutes into
the past, and you have been around it for 15 minutes, you cannot send
a bomb through to blow yourself up in the past. According to the scenario
described above something would prevent it from making it. Even if you
had a bomb that was timed based on the known rates of radioactive decay
it could not go off. yet if you suddenly recieved a deactivated bomb come
through the wormhole, it is still possible, and indeed must occur, that in five
minutes some action will happen that causes a deactivated bomb to be sent
through it. The worm hole is starting to sound rather selective.
If you had a worm hole such as this an you constantly tried to
throught things into it that would alter the past, something would happen
to prevent that from occuring everytime. It starts sounding as if
extremely improbable events would have to start occuring with a high
frequency. Now this may not be the case, but I think this is the source
of people's complaints with the resolution of the grandfather paradox
above. Granted, the scenarios I proposed are likely unrealistic, by it
is the implications of that scenario people have problems with.
-Brad
Subject: Re: "Essential" reality (was: When did Nietzsche wimp out?)
From: bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce Scott TOK )
Date: 30 Oct 1996 16:46:58 GMT
Steven Hines (shines@sdd.hp.com) wrote:
: For my part, I can't see how it is possible. If the decay is
: spontaneous and uncaused, then no law can describe it. I suppose you
: could try: "Decay is spontaneous and uncaused", but how are you going
: to prove or disprove it through experimentation? And if no law can
: describe it, the hypothesis that the universe is lawful must be
: discarded.
This is why quantum physics (QM) is only any good when done in terms of
statistics. There is no way to write an equation which will tell you
the moment at which a state-change will occur. Nevertheless, it is
quite possible (and done) to write one for the number of particles per
unit volume which will decay in a unit time, measure the decay of a
finite sample, and see that the equation is a correct description of
what has been observed.
Physics can never be any better than this. We do not deal with "truth".
: Once again I find myself holding the position that holding the notion that
: "all events have causes" is the same as working with the hypothesis that
: "the universe is lawful." If you discard the first, how can you keep
: the second?
That's what QM does, and it's why many physicists (me included) simply
put our heads down and ignore it, and deal with finite samples through
classical physics, except that we take our rate coefficients from QM
experiments (and sometimes -- especially for people who study planetary
and stellar interiors -- from QM theory).
: In the end, of course, there are those other physicists who believe
: that the decay does have a cause, despite the lack of evidence. They are
: continuing their search because their job demands that they search for
: the law that describes the phenomenon.
Most people who search for causes to that level do it because they
believe in it (see Einstein). The majority, however, do physics without
regard to these philosophical questions (John Gribbin discusses this
well in _In Search of Schroedinger's Cat_). There is a lot of
fundamental value still to be understood which has nothing to do with QM
(eg, turbulence).
Now, maybe we get the obligatory discussion by particle physicists about
how they are the only "true" physicists :-) (and we plasma physicists
are declared "engineers" as happens in certain Universities).
--
Mach's gut!
Bruce Scott, Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik, bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de
Remember John Hron: http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hron-john/
Subject: Re: Hermeneutics and the difficulty to count to three...
From: moggin@nando.net (moggin)
Date: 30 Oct 1996 17:02:58 GMT
matts2@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein):
> My point about Indy cars was that, at low speed, it is impossible,
> even "theoretically" to distinguish between Classical Mechanics and
> GR. Not they are close, not good enough for government work, not
> approximately correct. You can't measure the difference. You can't
> design an experiment to tell you which is right, because the
> difference is smaller than any possible measurement error.
Wait a minute. That shows you can't _practically_ distinguish
them.
> So in that domain both models explain the same data and you can't pick
> one right and one wrong.
If you take Einstein as given, it follows that Newton will be off
by some amount, no matter how small, right down the line. Now, if you
want to begin with another premise, fine. Perhaps you want to suggest
that the universe contains different and conflicting sets of principles,
such that it follows Newton here and Einstein there. If _that_ was the
given, your conclusion would follow.
> Now, as it turns out, you can build on Classical
> Mechanics and get to GR. Or, to put it another way, you can get CM as
> a special case from GR. And, while you make many wordy responses to
> this, you do not have the language and understanding to follow the
> steps involved.
Or perhaps you lack the language and understanding to follow my
answers.
-- moggin
Subject: Re: Hermeneutics and the difficulty to count to three...
From: moggin@nando.net (moggin)
Date: 30 Oct 1996 17:12:31 GMT
talk.origins moggin@nando.net (moggin):
> > I've deleted your analogies, so I'll substitute one of my own. In
> >an isolated, mountain-ringed country, a person named Newt notes that all
> >the cats he sees are black (and not only at night).
matts2@ix.netcom.com (Matt Silberstein):
> Sorry, but cats are gray at night.
Not in mountain valleys. At any rate, not according to Newt.
moggin:
> >He concludes that
> >all cats are black, and produces a law of cats to explain his findings.
> >Sometime later a person named Stein crosses the mountains and discovers
> >many different colors of cats; why, even cats of many different colors.
Matt:
> Now I thought it was horses and coats that came in different colors.
Them, too.
moggin:
> > Now, what can we say about this? Given Stein's findings, Newt's
> >conclusion is wrong, and his law is false. But his adherents may claim
> >otherwise. Without denying that there are other colors of cats, they
> >may say that Newt's thinking can be considered only in its geographical
> >context. Or they may claim Newt's conclusion is correct, when applied
> >within certain limits. Or they may argue that Stein generalized Newt,
> >instead of refuting him.
> > Do they have a case? Newt's observations are accurate within his
> >geographical context, but his conclusion is still false. You could say
> >that it's true when applied within a certain, limited range, but that's
> >no help, since he offered a general conclusion about cats. And while
> >Stein's work is more general than Newt's, and includes black cats, it's
> >not a generalization of Newt's law -- in fact, it's a contradiction.
Matt:
> If the facts fit your analogy then you would be right. However
> suppose, instead of going over the mountains, Stein had built some
> kind of cool looking gadget (with sparks and everything) that could
> detect non-visable light. And when he turned his device on the cats
> (all in the name of science, no actual cats were hurt in modifying
> this analogy) Stein discovered that the cats were different shades of
> ultra-violet. I think this fits the case better.
I gave Newt a break, since in my example, his observations are
dead-on (that is, the cats he sees are in fact black), while taking
Einstein as given, Newton produces approximations, at best.
moggin:
> > Ah, but wait, say Newt's defenders. His law may break down under
> >extreme conditions, for example, if you cross over the mountains, but
> >it's plenty good enough to predict the color of cats under _ordinary_
> >circumstances -- so how can you call it wrong? Simple: a false theory
> >can produce accurate results, as Newt's case shows.
Matt:
> No, a better theory can produce better results. You use the word false
> as though Classical Mechanics does not describe Reality but GR does.
> Neither theory describes Reality (in the sense Gordon uses the word).
> They explain and predict the data. And GR predicts a wider range of
> observation and so is considered the better theory.
Note, however, that the predictions of GR differ, and in some ways
differ considerably, from those of Classical Mechanics. So if you take
GR as "the better theory," Classical Mechanics is something worse than
just the worse.
-- moggin
Subject: Re: s e c (was: How much to invest in such a writer?)
From: vpiercy@ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu (Van Piercy)
Date: 30 Oct 1996 17:39:35 GMT
In article <54roi3$j9h@bessel.nando.net>,
moggin wrote:
> It's now been a solid week since Russell got up on his hind
>legs to announce that he had read Derrida's "Signature Event Context"
>(twice!) and offer his conclusion that it was silly and shallow. Now,
>Russell's been tossing names at Derrida's work ("dreck," "gibberish")
>for literally years without ever offering any substantial criticism.
>But this time it seemed as if things might be different -- after all,
>he admitted to reading a specific essay, and even directed himself to
>that, particular text. Yet just as in the past, he never got beyond
>the name-calling stage: labelling "Signature Event Context" "silly"
>and "shallow" turned out to be the sum total of his critique.
Robert Scholes wrote the best "critique" of SEC that I've seen. I'd have
to run down the cite. It was in _Critical Inquiry_ some years back and
was titled "Deconstruction and Communication," I think. Scholes is not my
favorite critic or anything but he does discuss SEC at length and provides
an interesting and clear headed account of his problems with it.
There are issues to discuss with Derrida's account of communication
modeled on infinite quotation, and with his reading of Austen. I don't
know why anyone would have to just name-call to pose those issues. On the
other hand, some people seem to get so freaked out at the mention of
Derrida, or seem to be on some sort of mission to defame, demoralize and
demolish (what? on USENET? For shame!) any and all substantive discussion
of his ideas, that it's not surprising that that resistance itself more
often than not becomes the topic and motor of conversation (witness 90% of
what gets posted on a.p.).
I haven't read SEC in a while. I thought "Limited, Inc." was fun and
hilarious, and maybe it would be useful to revisit that SARL v. Reb
Derrisa debate--it might do much to illuminate the Analytic/Continental,
Sokal and science studies conundra underlying many threads from recent
months. Hey, I'm an optimist.
> That's a terrible performance from a person who proclaims, "I
>am here as a critic of postmodernism." "Appalling" and "pathetic" --
>the terms Chomsky applies to Derrida -- also come to mind, along with
>"charlatan," Chomsky's description of Lacan. Russell has shown, here
>more clearly than ever before, that his claim is empty -- as a "critic
>of postmodernism," he's a fraud. And while Chomsky credits Lacan with
>self-consciousness, Russell appears to believe sincerely in his own
>pose.
You weren't expecting something different were you? It seems people are
going to be rigid in their epistemologies, especially when they think
those epistemologies represent the zenith of human capacity to perceive
truth--all other approaches and modes of knowledge must fail. As soon as
you get such people to make the moves necessary to judge work in a given
tradition by other work in that tradition, you've already accomplished
something essential to your case: you have gotten them to admit a
potential limit, a sense of their own parochialism and relative
epistemological position. And that's why these folks will always refuse
to make that move with you.
Maybe there's something Freudian--unconscious, displaced, repressed--in
the Tantalus-like maneuver or masochism involved when such people keep
circling Derrida's text, promising final solutions, the definitive
reading, feigning but intensifying interest, proposing to remove the final
veil of their extended disputations, and all the while this object of
desire, this supposedly failed text of Derrida's remains at the center of
their deepest public concerns. His text fails for them--they keep
repeating that; but there is a success in sustained, even apparently
negative attention, yes?
Van
--
"The scientist has no unique right to ignore the likely consequences of
what he does." --Noam Chomsky. _The Chomsky Reader_. Ed. James Peck. New
York: Pantheon, 1987. 201.
Subject: Re: Hermeneutics and the difficulty to count to three...
From: turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin)
Date: 30 Oct 1996 11:57:03 -0600
-*--------
Anton Hutticher (Anton.Hutticher@sbg.ac.at) wrote:
>>> Because THIS SHIT KILLS. Rhetoric in the mogginesian, ogdenian,
>>> swansonian style is used to create distrust to science.
In article <557jaj$f30@panix2.panix.com>, G*rd*n <+@+.+> wrote:
> The idea that moggin's or Ogden's rhetoric will kill anyone
> is ludicrous _unless_ you believe that perfect, unsullied
> faith is also required -- according to Anton, their
> rhetoric is bad because it's used to "create distrust." But
> then one would have to explain why Hume's _Inquiry_ didn't
> bring down Western Civilization the day it was published. ...
It isn't hard, of course, to imagine what Hutticher has in mind.
Pop culture is full of bad ideas from snake oil remedies to
psychobabble self-improvement that pose significant potential for
harm, and that use a postmodern rhetoric to justify themselves.
But Hutticher has far too much expectation of what science can do
if he thinks it limits the popularity of such things. Pomo
rhetoric has been useful to the snake-oil peddlers, not merely
because it creates a distrust in science, but because it provides
a particularly slick foundation for such things in its own right.
Pace Fitch, people do not use or not use something merely because
it works, but for all sorts of perceptual biases that others help
create and manipulate. This is why marketing is important, no?
I am amazed that Fitch, who is usually savvy about these things,
ignores this aspect of the issue, as he does when he suggests
that Hutticher's comment only makes sense in terms of some
required dose of faith.
> ... I don't know how the theology of Scientism works these
> things out ...
I forget: Fitch is still hunting for a religion. He should
exercise caution. Those who hunt too hard sometimes create their
own to fill the gap.
> It's very odd. When I was a boy, back in the Middle Ages,
> distrust was the lifeblood of science ...
People forget history. Perhaps just never learn it. When Fitch
was a boy, and even before, snake oil and mediums and much other
hocus pocus was popular (just as it is now, and will be again in
fifty years), and then as now scientists criticized it and its
philosophies. As the saying goes, open minds are good as long as
they are not so open that one's brain falls out.
weinecks@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Silke-Maria Weineck):
>> Are you _honestly_ suggesting that moggin's remarks about
>> Newton on Usenet pose a threat to physics? ...
Did anyone mention a threat to physics?
>> ... I'd say that Sokal's shit is more likely to cost the
>> humanities dearly, and unjustly. ...
Right. Just as fires seem to burst out wherever fire trucks
gather.
The suspicion that Silke rightly fears had grown quite a bit
before Sokal submitted his hoax article, which served only to
confirm the suspicion and to provide a handy example. What hurts
the humanities is not the handy example, but the substance of
their practice. People read famous literary theorists and think:
Is this *really* as bad as it seems to be? In middle-brow
magazines, the defenders of these theorists write stupidly. On
the net, the adherents of these theorists, from Moggin to Silke
herself confirm the worst. All this occurred for years before
Sokal published his hoax. The hoax was a result of what will
harm, not its cause. Without its own writers, there would have
been no suspicion, and without the suspicion, there would have
been no purpose for the hoax, and no reason to think it would
work. When this "costs the humanities dearly," and it very well
might, it will NOT be Sokal's fault.
Russell
--
The difference between life and a movie script is that the script has
to make sense. -- Humphrey Bogart
Subject: Re: "Cold Fuson" is reproducible at Los Alamos?
From: bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce Scott TOK )
Date: 30 Oct 1996 18:03:02 GMT
Alan \"Uncle Al\" Schwartz (uncleal0@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: Science 274(5287)481 (1996) [Genome issue, just out)
: "Briefly, very small palladium wires (with diameters of 150 to 200
: micrometers) are subjected to 2000 volts and 2.5 amperres in an
: atmosphere of deuterium a about 2000 Torr (commonly refereed to as glow
: or plasma discharge)." http://wwwde esa.lanl.gov/tritweb.html
This sounds like a "Z-pinch". A Z-pinch is a column of material that is
both current-carrying and made of fusible nuclei. The most common
example is a plasma, but recently people have explored using cold
deuterium fibers (eg, Magpie in the UK). What happens is that you zap
the wire with current such that the magnetic field rises very rapidly
with time. Due to the effect of that on a current-carrying conductor
(magnetohydrodynamics, or the "J-cross-B force"), you compress and heat
the material such that its nuclei can fuse.
In this case the palladium wire would simply be a way to collect a lot
of deuterons in the shape of a wire without having to use the cryogenics
needed to make a solid deuterium fiber.
Now, let me look at the web site to see if I guessed right...
The URL http://wwwde esa.lanl.gov/tritweb.html was incorrect. I tried
to rummage below http://www.esa.lanl.gov/ and search for tr
The correct URL was http://wwwnde.esa.lanl.gov/cf/tritweb.html
(fortunately, there were only 5 hits for "tritweb" on Altavista).
Here is the abstract:
|> TRITIUM PRODUCTION FROM A LOW VOLTAGE DEUTERIUM DISCHARGE ON
|> PALLADIUM AND OTHER METALS
|>
|> T. N. Claytor, D. D. Jackson and D. G. Tuggle
|>
|> Los Alamos National Laboratory
|> Los Alamos, NM 87545
|>
|> Over the past year we have been able to demonstrate that a plasma
|> loading method produces an exciting and unexpected amount of tritium
|> from small palladium wires. In contrast to electrochemical hydrogen or
|> deuterium loading of palladium, this method yields a reproducible
|> tritium generation rate when various electrical and physical conditions
|> are met. Small diameter wires (100 - 250 microns) have been used with
|> gas pressures above 200 torr at voltages and currents of about 2000 V at
|> 3-5 A. By carefully controlling the sputtering rate of the wire, runs
|> have been extended to hundreds of hours allowing a significant amount
|> (> 10's nCi) of tritium to accumulate. We will show tritium generation
|> rates for deuterium-palladium foreground runs that are up to 25 times
|> larger than hydrogen-palladium control experiments using materials from
|> the same batch. We will illustrate the difference between batches of
|> annealed palladium and as received palladium from several batches as
|> well as the effect of other metals (Pt, Ni, Nb, Zr, V, W, Hf) to
|> demonstrate that the tritium generation rate can vary greatly from batch
|> to batch.
Note the second sentence... this is not cf as usually understood.
I got a little lost in the details, but it does look to me that
(1) the tritium is produced in the wire and not elsewhere in the cell,
and (2) the tritium is sputtered along with some Pd material from the
wire onto a Pd plate, where it is stored.
In my mind, the production of tritium in the wire does look like a
Z-pinch effect, with the Pd used essentially to hold the deuterons in
place.
Thomas Claytor's web page has a link to sci.physics.fusion... Thomas,
are you available for comment? Am I totally wrong?
[posted & mailed]
--
Mach's gut!
Bruce Scott, Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik, bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de
Remember John Hron: http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hron-john/
Subject: Re: When did Nietzsche wimp out? (was: Sophistry 103)
From: moggin@nando.net (moggin)
Date: 30 Oct 1996 18:30:01 GMT
Mark O'Leary :
>>>Silke, there seem to be two options here: either you are the *only* clear
>>>thinking poster on this newsgroup, and therefore your wisdom leaves you
>>>isolated, or there really is substance to the choruses of objection some of
>>>the things you say raise. Wouldn't it be prudent just to pay some minimal
>>>heed to the majorities objections, to entertain the possibility that in fact
>>>you had feet of clay like the rest of us? [...]
moggin@bessel.nando.net (moggin):
>> The compact majority is always wrong.
patrick@gryphon.psych.ox.ac.uk (Patrick Juola)
>And thus we demonstrate the utter closedness of moggin's "mind."
moggin:
: Ibsen's, too -- you're on a roll.
* * *
patrick@gryphon.psych.ox.ac.uk (Patrick Juola):
>>>>>Physical events rarely if ever make moral judgements. They simply
>>>>>*are*.
Andrew_Perry@Brown.edu (Andy Perry):
>>>>Kinda like poems...
Patrick:
>>>I'm not sure I agree with this analogy. Poems don't just happen,
>>>they're *written* -- so the poem-as-printed-text isn't a viable
>>>and meaningful chunk of the universe in its own right. And the
>>>system of poem-plus-writer very often is deliberately making moral
>>>judgements; e.g. the Psalms, Tennyson's _Charge of the Light Brigade_,
>>>what's-his-name's _In Flanders Field_, &c.;
moggin:
>> Andy was alluding to "Ars Poetica," by Archibald MacLeish.
>>(You're now down to your last strike.)
Patrick:
> Moggin, do you think I give a flying fuck whether or not you're keeping
> score?
I do now.
>I call bullshit as I see it, regardless of its pedigree.
And I'm sure you're proud of yourself. But that's not what you
were doing. In the first case, you just wanted to hand out an insult:
nothing more or less. And I was happy to agree that my mind was just
as closed as Ibsen's. In the second case, you thoroughly missed Andy's
point, which was contained in his allusion. (Possibly he should have
been more clear.)
> Bad poetry -- and bad thoughts expressed as poetry -- neither makes
> incorrect thoughts relevant nor appropriate, nor correct, for that matter.
My God, it's the thought-police!
-- moggin