This is presumably a response to a note I wrote about a thousand emails ago, in which I claimed for Owen (and me) the right to be interested in star populations and the evolution of sentience just simply because we're interested in it, and I didn't like your challenging us and asking for justification for our interest. He and I have no need to justify our interest to anyone, and as I said then I might as well question your right to be interested in some details of induction which I found really boring. In fact, there are lots of areas in which I have no interest, but it's really important that other people do have interest in them, which includes you being interested in induction.
This is a different issue from what justification I had to make to the National Science Foundation to obtain funding for projects. But even there "interest" certainly plays a role. If I were sufficiently interested in the alien issue, I might well come up with compelling reasons why NSF should fund me to look more deeply into the matter, but I don't think I could ever muster enough interest to convince NSF to fund me to study scientist's attitudes toward induction, whereas you might be able to do so. Bruce On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 1:20 PM, Nicholas Thompson <nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote: > Let’s say you are a phd student. Let’s say you go to your orals committee > and propose a dissertation topic. Let’s say, they ask you, why are you > interested in that? You reply, “it just interests me.” Do you get the > degree? > > > > Or let’s say you apply for a prestigious NSF fellowship. On the line which > asks you to explain the importance of your proposed research you write, “It > just interests me.” > > > > Will you get the money? > > > > Let’s say you are writing a paper for a leading journal in your field. In > the introduction to the article you write, “The question chosen for research > was one of great personal interest to me.” And then you go on to the > Methods section. In the discussion section you write, “And thus my > curiosity was satisfied.” Will it be published? > > > > If so, I wish I had known this all along. What a lot of work it would have > saved. > > > > Nick ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
