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Simon Crase

 Discussion on answer by Jo Wehler: In…

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Simon Crase
Feb 9 12:42
@ShadowRanger "Not a lot of agnostics are admitting to the non-decidability of the Norse, Greek, Hindu or Japanese pantheons..." - I am sure that you can cite data to back up your claim, but forgot to do so...
 

 Discussion on answer by tkruse: Is it…

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Simon Crase
Oct 27, 2024 09:48
@gs "Some predictions do not beat placebo tests, therefore no predictions beat placebo tests." Some writers consider it intellectually dishonest to make up a quote and attribute it to an opponent. Some other consider it dumb to do this when it is easy to check whether the other person actually did this
Simon Crase
Oct 27, 2024 09:48
@PeterRankin "It was likely ...": I had hoped for better, but I expect that this is the best you can do.
Simon Crase
Oct 27, 2024 09:48
@tkruse Your misunderstood my point. IHMO the gentleman who said "I heard of one archaeologist ..." is either making stuff up, or parroting a claim from someone else who MSTU.
Simon Crase
Oct 27, 2024 09:48
@PeterRankin " I heard of one archaeologist ...". He wouldn't happen to have a name, by any chance?
 

 Discussion on question by Von: Fixing…

Imported from a comment discussion on workplace.stackexchange....
Simon Crase
Oct 22, 2024 09:27
Maybe Alice has a good feel for the way the business works. Maybe she doesn't really do more work than anyone else, she just does the right thing. It sounds as if the business will be screwed when she leaves. If I were in your position I'd leave now, before the deathmarch starts.
 

 Discussion on question by Ima: My ins…

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Simon Crase
Oct 6, 2024 21:03
Maybe keep publishing in the same high impact journal until you have enough reputation to get a job at a university with fewer silly rules.
 

 Discussion on answer by SystemTheory:…

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Simon Crase
Oct 5, 2024 07:37
@SystemTheory Agreed. But, may I remind you of your earlier statement: "In college and law school, respectively, I studied electrical engineering and intellectual property law." I do accept that you weren't trying to impress my humble self. I cannot but wonder whose admiration (or disdain) you were seeking? And was it effective? Anyway, have a nice day, and do, for pity's sake, try to loosen up a little.
Simon Crase
Oct 5, 2024 07:37
@SystemTheory "My fifth and sixth grade reading comprehension teacher told me I had a perfect score on the standard aptitude tests." Well done, you;-) Not just an electrical engineer, not just a patent attorney, but a perfect 5th and 6h grade reading comprehender. I am lost in admiration.
Simon Crase
Oct 5, 2024 07:37
@SystemTheory "You are not the first person to misunderestimate my capacity for comprehension." Why am I not surprised;-)
Simon Crase
Oct 5, 2024 07:37
Abraham Pais also cites the remark, which Einstein made in his Kyoto lecture(1922). Pais suggests that the "happiest thought" in November 1907, while Einstein was still working in the patent office (as a Technical Expert 2nd class): that gives you something to aspire to;-)
Simon Crase
Oct 5, 2024 07:37
try Albert Einstein, “Document 31: Ideas and Methods. II. The theory of General Relativity,” in Michel Janssen et al (eds.), The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein. Volume 7: The Berlin Years: Writings, 1918–1921 (Princeton University Press, 2002)--cited in Einstein's Happiest Moment: The Equivalence Principle by Paul Worden and James Overduin.
Simon Crase
Oct 5, 2024 07:37
Einstein (now there was a patent clerk who know what he was talking about) described "the happiest thought of my life" thus: "If a person fell freely from the roof of his house, he would not feel his own weight. While he was falling it would be — at least in his immediate surroundings — as if there were no gravity". It was this thought (not the anomalous precession of Mercury, not the bending of light) that led him to invent General Relativity: the experimental tests, which confirmed the theory, came later. Science doesn't work the way they taught you in law school. Sorry.
Simon Crase
Oct 5, 2024 07:37
Analogy is valid if there is some sort of isomorphism between two systems (e.g. a mechanical system and an electrical circuit that both satisfy the same 2nd order differential equation). No doubt Analogy is also useful if you're trying to convince a jury in the absence of sufficient evidence (to acknowledge the other skill that you have claimed). Which sort of analogy are you invoking here? Isomorphism or rhetoric?
Simon Crase
Oct 5, 2024 07:37
While I accept that my learned friend, aka @SystemTheory , has been to law school, the so-called laws of nature aren't quite the same thing as he studied at law school. The laws of a country can be repealed by Parliament. Typically they are the result of compromises. I have no difficulty accepting that my learned friend understands patent law, but I suspect that Mother Nature doesn't understand it, or accept it.
Simon Crase
Oct 5, 2024 07:37
In a sense Newton's laws were unreasonably effective, in Wigner's sense. When anomalies were observed in the motion of Uranus, many people were inclined to think the Newton's laws were approximations. The experimental techniques available to Newton were limited, and maybe the inverse square law wasn't quite precise. Adams and Le Verrier, however, successfully predicted the orbit of Neptune (then unknown), by assuming that Newton's laws were several orders of magnitude more accurate than the observations warranted. How to justify unreasonably effective models?
 

 Discussion on answer by Simon Crase: …

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Simon Crase
Sep 26, 2024 09:28
@Madhatter I suggest that you try to understand the difference between "some protection", which were the words I used, and "being protected". And, please, if you persist in misreading what I wrote, don't attribute the mistake to me. I agree that "no particularly perverse reading is required", but you seem to manage without being required.
Simon Crase
Sep 26, 2024 09:28
@BartvanIngenSchenau "By accepting the license, I accepted that ..." A court might agree with you, or it might not. It depends on the jurisdiction.
Simon Crase
Sep 26, 2024 09:28
@MadHatter I'm glad you don't think that, because I never made any such claim. You are arguing against a perverse reading of my comments.
Simon Crase
Sep 26, 2024 09:28
@BartvanIngenSchenau "...the license has a stronger method in it: The disclaimer of all warranties and liabilities...". The licence means what a court says it means, not what the author thinks it means.
Simon Crase
Sep 26, 2024 09:28
@apsillers I see from your profile that you live in the USA, which still has the Mann Act on its books. This originally "...made it a felony to engage in interstate or foreign commerce transport of 'any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose'". It has since been amended because of ambiguity of "immoral". IMHO the licence condition is reasonable: it provides some protection in the case that one of your users offends "the morality police" in certain countries that I needn't name.
 

 Discussion on question by user77058: …

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Simon Crase
Aug 23, 2024 12:51
What if the being that you take to be G-d is actually the Demiurge? How would that affect objective morality?
 

 Discussion on question by gaazkam: Wh…

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Simon Crase
Aug 16, 2024 08:12
@Chris It's a real nuisance having to wake up every 2 hours to slap on some more sunscreen;-)
 

 Discussion on question by www: If hum…

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Simon Crase
Jun 16, 2024 03:35
@LorenPechtel So your aliens outdid Noah bigtime? Not just people, elephants, unaccountable species of beetles, E. coli, Covid (and bats), dinosaurs, trilobites, Lokiarchaeota,...
Simon Crase
Jun 16, 2024 03:35
@ACV "Unless the settlers brought all animals with them..." Interesting. I wonder whether it would be possible for an alien to live on terrestrial plants and animals, since the amino acids and sugars are likely to be different? [I know Peter Jackson had ](youtube.com/watch?v=7IHwKJOZZ6U) some thoughts on the subject.
Simon Crase
Jun 16, 2024 03:35
Here is an idea. You said "cities in central Africa". In the past most cites were built in areas with good transport, either on rivers (Babylon, Rome, London) or near harbours (Athens, New York, Copenhagen). If your aliens have some other form of transport (flying saucers, teleporters), they might choose the sites for their cities using other criteria,so they aren't in the sorts of places where archaeologists normally look. (This doesn't help with any of the other problems, however). Hmm, what if your aliens weren't in Africa? Proto-neanderthals? Proto-Denisovans, from the planet Dennis?
Simon Crase
Jun 16, 2024 03:35
@RonJohn Reminds me of Xenu "the extraterrestrial ruler of a 'Galactic Confederacy' who brought billions of his people to Earth (then known as 'Teegeeack') in DC-8-like spacecraft 75 million years ago, stacked them around volcanoes, and killed them with hydrogen bombs";-)
 

 Discussion on question by Allure: If …

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Simon Crase
May 1, 2024 20:31
You can sue anybody for anything, and you can almost always find a lawyer who will take your money. Suing isn't what matters: the Court's decision is what matters. It's also worthwhile to consider the saying: "a verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on".
 

 Discussion on answer by Hold To The R…

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Simon Crase
Mar 2, 2024 17:48
@EvilSnack "Up front they verbally assent to the idea of an omniscient and omnipotent God..." That one of the premises of Last Thursdayism. It could be argued that YECs are saying "but not omnipotent enough to create all those consistent false memories".
 

 Discussion on question by Baby_philos…

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Simon Crase
Feb 2, 2024 10:29
If you consider that the comments here miss the obvious point of the question, perhaps you failed to communicate something which was obvious to your good self. Perhaps people are trying to help you clarify your question? Have you considered this possibility?
Simon Crase
Feb 2, 2024 10:29
"no intelligent, physical life form that could possibly have been evolved elsewhere on another planet designed this": and we know this because...?
Simon Crase
Feb 2, 2024 10:29
Assuming that the message is in English, it would suggest that God is not only real, but also that She wrote the King James Bible...
 

 Discussion on question by MonocleRB: …

Imported from a comment discussion on retrocomputing.stackexch...
Simon Crase
Dec 16, 2023 20:38
@chepner Teletypes were originally used to send messages, just like telegrams, which were also written in uppercase. I think uppercase is easer to read.
Simon Crase
Dec 16, 2023 20:38
@KenShirriff But the Santa Claus story has been around much longer...
 

 Discussion on question by Gordon: Can…

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Simon Crase
Dec 9, 2023 03:46
@Gordon. "Boss, I have resigned. I have given the statutory amount of notice, so you have x weeks to find my replacement and bring him up to speed. I will, or course, provide as much assistance as I am required to by my contract. It is entirely your choice whether you spend this time constructively or not. If you choose not to, I trust that you can live with the consequences".
 

 Discussion on question by tryingtobea…

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Simon Crase
Sep 25, 2023 21:09
@tryingtobeastoic "There might be a God who only admits atheists to heaven." I like that: "Youse guys don't believe in Me, so you'll have to spend Eternity playing the harp: make sure it's tuned properly, or you can spend Eternity outside with the Evangelicals and the Westboro Baptist Church".
Simon Crase
Sep 25, 2023 21:09
Douglas Adams has an interesting argument here
Simon Crase
Sep 25, 2023 21:09
What if some God exists, but you believe in the wrong one? What if He's a mean son of a bitch, and considers believing in the wrong god is worse than being an atheist? Then you're really screwed...
 

 Discussion on question by Serg Z.: Wh…

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Simon Crase
Jul 24, 2023 09:53
@Rusi yes, the Oracle _told_ him. Does that make it true, do you think? Or, more to the point: did Sophocles expect us to believe the Oracle? Delphi was notoriously pro-Spartan; it had a track record of issuing prophecies that favoured Sparta over Athens. (I have been to Delphi, BTW, it still has a magical feel). If Sophocles believed the Oracle, why does he give us hints that something else was happening? You might read the Andromache of Euripides; ask yourself what Euripides thought of the Oracle. Hint-the chronology is suspect. either Euripides made a clumsy blunder with the timing, or h…
Simon Crase
Jul 24, 2023 09:06
@armand You _can_read Oedipus the King that way if you are in a hurry, and don't notice the way he interacts with other characters. E.F. Watling's introduction to his translation (Penguin classics) speaks of "Oedipus,...too confident of his sufficiency, too ready to take offence, or to impute blame when 'rattled' by the approach of trouble...". Oedipus did have a run of bad luck (as Aristophanes said, he married a woman old enough to be his mother, then found out that she was), but he wittingly killed a stranger (who he found out was his dad). That is recognizably a sin.
Simon Crase
Jul 24, 2023 09:06
@Rushi That is a misreading of Sophocles: he isn't fated to fulfill the prophecy; nobody made him lose his temper and kill the traveler he met on the road. In the tragedy he jumps to the conclusion that Teiresias is concealing vital information, that Creon is conspiring with Teiresias to replace him. He is destroyed by his own character flaw: a tendency to act too fast, because he knew he was smarter than anyone. Sophocles was a teenager when Athens defeated the Persians, the mightiest nation on Earth, at Salamis. His generation knew that man made his fate.
Simon Crase
Jul 24, 2023 09:06
@armand I don't pretend to know where you found your little paean to moral relativism, but I base my views on reading Sophocles and Aeschylus. If you take the time to read the Oresteia and the Theban Plays, you will find plenty of actual sin. You won't find Hera or Aphrodite condoning Oedipus murdering his dad and killing his mum; you won't find the gods condoning Creon's impiety. Yes, the gods could be petty sometimes, but these two trilogies dealt with matters that grossly offended Zeus (God, rather than a god), in short with sin.
Simon Crase
Jul 24, 2023 09:06
@armand Ancient Greek? Sin is fundamental to Oedipus the King, and to the Oresteia. Yes, there is a family curse, but, in each tragedy, there is a human choice--"then he put on the harness of necessity", as The Agamemnon puts it; that choice that the protagonist made (e.g . Agamemnon sacrificing his own daughter) was a sin, not just in Christian terms but in the Ancient Greek world.
 

 Discussion on question by thinkingman…

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Simon Crase
Jul 11, 2023 14:01
@thinkingman "The goal of philosophy is to figure out truth, not assign things arbitrarily without evidence." But isn't Bayesian reasoning with priors a means towards an end? The goal isn't to assign things arbitrarily without evidence, but to determine whether something is likely to be true, with whatever accuracy is appropriate to the problem in hand. "If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end with doubts, but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties". –Francis Bacon
 

 Discussion on question by R. Romero: …

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Simon Crase
Jul 8, 2023 06:26
@MichaelHall The OP said he kept hearing claims from his roommate. I'll leave you to decide how much credibility to attach to his premise. Ordinarily I don't care to much about woo, but people can die if they believe this sort of nonsense and act on their beliefs.
Simon Crase
Jul 8, 2023 06:26
@MichaelHall If I didn't "skewer" people ("skewerees"), I'd be denying you your constitutional right to be offended. I accept your word that you know something about aeroplanes. They aren't the same as medical devices or drugs. Here is one key difference. If somebody knocks up a "flying machine" in a shed, powered by magical woo, the FAA doesn't necessarily need to get involved unless the machine can actually fly. The FDA does have to deal with peddlers of woo. Meds that don't work are easier to sell than planes that can't get off the ground; and the latter don't kill people.
Simon Crase
Jul 8, 2023 06:26
@MichaelHall "It is common knowledge that...". Are you referring to the Orphan Drug Program. If so, please explain which section allows the developers to dispense with rigorous clinical trials. BTW, can you figure out why I suspect that you have never developed a product that require FDA approval?
Simon Crase
Jul 8, 2023 06:26
Your roommate. Who watches late night TV so we don't have to. What would we do without selfless people like him?
 

 Discussion on question by Mark: Is th…

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Simon Crase
Jun 9, 2023 22:29
@Joshua But you can make tools out of two rocks
Simon Crase
Jun 9, 2023 22:29
@ScottRowe "99% of all animal species have gone extinct, often for good reason", and often for a dumb reason, such as the Chicxulub event. Evolution then got on, and did the best she could to repopulate the planet.