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Re: SSM Plebiscite

Reply #645
Wow, a real maths and physics whiz, and just to add a little mayo in there, also whipping up a few simulations in your spare time. Very impressive.

I'm not sure why you can't see any similarities - they're plain as day to me.

No Paul just a worker bee, there are thousands of people around the burbs in every city doing exactly the same as myself day after day after day. Probably many dozen on this site alone.

You know when the kids at school asked why should they learn something they'll never use, the premise is not true, they may actually need it! Even car mechanics need an oscilloscope these days.

I'm not sure why you are so defensive, you seem to have some issues with modernity?
The Force Awakens!

Re: SSM Plebiscite

Reply #646
..........

I'm not sure why you are so defensive, you seem to have some issues with modernity?

Do I ? So you think I'm a defensive anti-modernist ? That's pretty funny. I guess when you can extricate yourself from performing virtuoso calculations and simulations and being the forum know-it-all, you also moonlight as a psychoanalyst.

You Renaissance man, you. 


Re: SSM Plebiscite

Reply #647
Do I ? So you think I'm a defensive anti-modernist ? That's pretty funny. I guess when you can extricate yourself from performing virtuoso calculations and simulations and being the forum know-it-all, you also moonlight as a psychoanalyst.

You Renaissance man, you.

We have 806 members, there are probably 50 to 100 people on that list at least who would use something like trigonometry everyday, and I bet they would be able to read and understand a portion of many scientific papers.

They do not need to be anything special, they just have to keep and open mind.

That is the real difference between scientists and the dogmatic, one lives in a bubble bound by belief, while the other is free to explore everything with an open mind!
The Force Awakens!

Re: SSM Plebiscite

Reply #648
We have 806 members, there are probably 50 to 100 people on that list at least who would use something like trigonometry everyday, and I bet they would be able to read and understand a portion of many scientific papers.

They do not need to be anything special, they just have to keep and open mind.

That is the real difference between scientists and the dogmatic, one lives in a bubble bound by belief, while the other is free to explore everything with an open mind!

I imagine that scientific papers come in a range of complexities, and some may be intelligible, and others would not.

You try and pin me down with labels - dogmatic, New Age, Religious, defensive, all of which are wrong. And your last sentence is the height of arrogance and self delusion. You reckon I'm stuck in the dark ages. I'm not the one peddling laughable junk about the free spirit of scientists, which was ridiculous decades ago . If science was open minded, it would have no issue with people like Sheldrake and their ideas. Science is a conservative, powerful institution with enormous power and prestige. It is not and does not need to be open minded. It has the eyes and ears and wallets of governments and common folks alike, and pretty much does as it pleases. As any dominant paradigm would do I suppose.


 

Re: SSM Plebiscite

Reply #649
Permission to dive in! Thank you.

Wow, this is good reading. I’m actually finding much info that is educational, if not somewhat bamboozling resulting in feeling a little uninformed or even dense at times, thank the gods for Google (gods... Google... is there a little correlation there?). There are some highbrow words and expressions going down here that sound so impressive, a little alienating perhaps but none-the-less impressive. Although I wouldn’t call myself a scientist I do find myself, in the main, admiring of their work and efforts.

Mrs Baggers sometimes expresses serious frustration at one area of her job… she is the HR Chief at a major (can’t reveal the nature of the foundation as it may give it away which will result in Mrs Baggers beating me with the blunt end of the dog) research foundation which funds the work of many, many scientists. This organisation is the biggest of his kind in the Southern Hemisphere. She says that working with scientists is difficult, eye-opening and very rewarding.

The difficulty is in the perceived arrogance/stubbornness and at times down right rudeness of the scientists (and they come from all ‘round the world, so little cultural bias) BUT it takes a certain kind of individual who can research and experiment for years with little ‘material’ success, so their problematic attitude/bedside manner has to be understood, not tolerated but understood. Years of being confined to labs etc and running very disciplined, repetitive tasks/tests takes a rare personality type. It’d be easy to see these folks as dogmatic and arrogant (and hence dismiss them on behaviour alone) when they insist on another squillion bucks to continue a research which is yielding little if any tangible results to date, yet, when and if successful the impact on humanity can be significant and profound – this is why they attract huge and consistent grants.

History is littered with mongrel persistent scientists who’ve laboured with myopic passion on an idea, alienated all around them and then come up with something that alters human history – Edison, Testla, Pasteur, Einstein, Dirac, Freud, Maslow… how many times did each fail or whose progress was painfully slow before the 100th or 1000th or 10000th monkey fell in place?

Think of any discovery/invention and it is likely there was an obsessed scientist (or team of scientists and assistants) hardly sleeping seeing it through. Scientists often experience greater scrutiny than any other profession, and if they fail then their funding is withdrawn and they’re in trouble (unlike politicians who can fail daily yet keep their jobs). So any wonder scientists become defensive, annoyed and obstropolous at anything else that claims instant success or unscientific criticism of their field of endeavour or claims to have all the answers!

However, without doubt, there are some who take the arrogance too far and become worlds unto themselves where anything that dares differ or not be supportive will be rejected out-of-hand. But to judge all for the errors of a few would be unfair or even stupid.
Only our ruthless best, from Board to bootstudders will get us no. 17

Re: SSM Plebiscite

Reply #650
Yes, it's interesting Baggers. I'll get keelhauled for using inclusive language about scientists because as you point out they are not all the same. But I periodically work with them at perhaps the very same organisation as Mrs Baggers, and to say they are focus and single minded is a tad understated. This will get a laugh on here but I'm a freaking moderate compared to some of "them"!

But geez it's a good environment for "them", even the tea lady is required to conduct some form of study, you find receptionists with a PhD in industrial design or a office assistant with a degree in economics. Unfortunately as an institution it is continually under attack from the conservatives, I've just never understood why Australia continually goes through this cycle of tearing down institutions then re-building them. Abbott has a lot to answer for from his little stint in the big chair, he did decades of damaged, some of it might never be recovered. Maybe you can confirm but I have heard figures of up to 500 staff being made redundant at a certain SE location. Just an easy target.

For me it's a problem, as a small company we've poured millions into R&D over the last decade, and the people we worked with at those institutions keep leaving because of cuts. The Feds want industry and research to work together, they actively promote the idea and in some cases fund us dollar for dollar, then shoot the whole thing in the foot by having the researchers made redundant who often go OS. The public and media will finger this as scientists wasting money, but it's not the scientists fault it's the politicians, tens years is too long for a politician they can't wait.

I had a project a few years ago that the Feds and State knocked back for funding despite another major Fed Institution wanting to go ahead, they didn't give us a real reason then one day I'm in the CBD talking to a bureaucrat and they gave me the explanation. The money we asked for wasn't enough to get the politicians picture in the paper, if we'd asked for 10x as much they would have approved it! This year the Feds are rolling out joint funding with a foreign government and get this, they told applicants you must take at least $10M. For a small company that is untenable because the Tax Department will want a huge chunk of that at some stage in the near future and you have to pay that bill, the funding is really circular which most of the public don't get, the public think it's a hand out! It's all about profile not purpose for the politicians.

Another big problem we have is most of the IP heads OS, our Government won't support commercialisation of IP in Australia as required. They only offer partial support, and it's a huge problem because they basically bait a hook and the foreigners bite. Short term it's a win on the books but industries worth billions head offshore. I had a senator tell me it's because we are no good at making stuff, we did up the ore but China makes the steel, he didn't see the connection between their policy and our shortfall. OS much of this is Tax Free, recently after years of effort we had to drop an onshore commercialisation project because we couldn't get funding to scale the plant, then EU handed Poland 150% funding for a new facility and the whole thing left our shores under licence. It was very short sighted because Australia is one of the world's richest locations for the resource concerned, which will now be sent unprocessed no value added offshore and we will buy it back as required!
The Force Awakens!