Re: A typical scientist? (Re: Evidence . . . .
Gil Hardwick (gil@landmark.iinet.net.au)
Wed, 17 May 1995 03:53:17 GMT
In article <3p8jdi$n52@miwok.nbn.com>, Dan Drake (dandrake@nbn.com) writes:
>Of course it does. You don't get a PhD in the social sciences by writing a
>short dissertation. It was great fun for me to hear my sociologist friend
>(dissertation of about 700 pages) comparing notes with my
>astronomer friend (dissertation of almost 30 pages, and she said she had to
>justify being so wordy).
Plainly if your astronomers have nothing much to write about, one
would indeed wonder how it would take up almost 30 pages to do it.
>Some people will think there's a relation between having something
>substantial to say and being able to say it without massive verbiage to cover
>up lack of content; but that's just us tools of John McCarthy. (Say, who is
>this John McCarthy, anyway? Does he LISP in his postings?)
Well, no. Some branches of science back here on earth simply find
themselves having to cope with a massive volume of available data.
Perhaps that it might concern you so, please do make some method
available allowing any of us to reduce it all to your few symbolic
representations, and then expand the same information back up to its
original size without losing any of it.
I personally prefer to see the information kept intact, and here find
myself bemused that you would dismiss it so. Oh well, it is your own
business entirely that you chose such a poverty-stricken intellectual
life. Maybe goes some way to explaining why you go chasing after so
much money as you people do, as if to compensate somehow.
In the meantime, are you really a tool of John McCarthy? Republican
Party hack wannabe scientist through learning to do arithmetic, are
you?
The very best of luck to you, mate! If you behave Correctly here and
build a reputation for exposing closet communists and rooting pretty
teenage boys while you are doing it, why, you just might be invited to
join the Hoover Institute and assist in perpetuating the memory of J.
Edgar the Paedophyle himself.
Not that it has anything to do with science, or the topic at hand, but
since you invoke The Name . . .
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