On Saturday, January 11, 2003, at 03:11 PM, John M wrote:
This list - several years ago - took a free approach, alas lately more andGiven that there is no moderation, no censorship, it is clear that talk about "this list...took" is missing the point. "This list" is really "the comments of those subscribed and contributing."
more conventional opinions slip in, regrettable for me, because I hold that
the conventional "science establishment" holds feverishly to old addages,
acquired in times when the epistemic cognitive inventory was much less than
available today (which is much less than that of tomorrow). Even the "topics
of the future" build on ancient observations and their explanations
(formalism), in order to conform with the scientists' earlier books,
teachings, pupils, discussions.
As always, if you believe people are talking about the wrong things, your best approach to is to persuasively make your own points which you believe fit your conception of what subscribers to the list "should" be talking about.
I have no understanding of what you mean by saying "alas lately more and more conventional opinions slip in."
If you think my views are too conventional, for example, or that I should not be posting to this list, I suppose you can ask Wei Dai to remove me. I believe nearly all of my posts are in the spirit of the list's charter, discussing as I do MWI, Tegmark/Egan, possible worlds, modal logic, etc.
(I seldom if ever discuss the Schmidhuber thesis, and the "COMP" thesis, as these are not currently interesting to me. I notice plenty of other people discussing them, and I read their comments with _some_ interest, anticipating the eventual day when the COMP stuff is more germane to me.)
In MOST cases the methodology works in practical ways, builds technology, upI cannot understand your point here. But if the "several" who were once here are no longer posting, I am not stopping them.
to the point when "understanding" comes in. This is a many negated term,
many so called scientists satisfy themselves with practical results (for
tenure, awards, etc.)
Few researchers take the stance to "free" their mind from learned prejudice
and check the 'well composed' edifice of the scientific doctrines for
sustainability under the newly evolved vistas. There were several on this
list.
The new ideas were quickly absorbed into the existing formalistic mill -
calculative obsolescence and semantic impropriety, which confused many.
New science is like Tao: who says "I developed a theory within it" does not
know what he talks about. Science is on the crossroad: (I wold not say
bifurcation, because I have negative arguments against this concept) and we
know only that something 'new' is in the dreams, we need more thinking
before we can identify "what".
Again, I have no idea what you are talking about here.
Speaking of "science" usually means "old science". This list started out to
serve the "new science".
It woulod be a shame to slip back into the conventionalities.
Talk to Wei Dai. I write what I think is true and important. --Tim May
