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Book publishing advice needed

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Gary Schiltz-4

Re: Book publishing advice needed

I think there is envy within and among most professions. When I was at Bios Group, I felt there was, if not envy, then competition for recognition, between the scientists and software engineers. Being a software guy myself, I can only see it from that side of the fence; I can't speak to how the scientists saw things. I always felt a bit of an inferiority complex, as well as some hero worship toward the scientists. Part of this probably has to do with the supply and demand ratios for complexity scientists and software engineers. Geeks have always been in demand, and so it is easier to be somewhat mediocre and still be gainfully employed and well compensated. I suspect that scientists, particular theoretical physicists and mathematicians, have to really stand out in their field to be in demand.

On Tue, Jul 7, 2020 at 2:41 PM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hm. In these cases, where Firestein talks about quantum mechanics as an exemplar of how we navigate ignorance and my cancer survivor friend as a defense mechanism for avoiding nihilism or depression or whatnot, there is no "I wish I were a physicist". Firestein is a credentialed neuroscientist and my friend is a graphic artist. Neither seem to feel inadequate in their disciplines or wish their disciplines were more like physics. So, I really doubt it's envy. What it sounds more like is captured well by "There are more things in heaven and earth ...". Both Firestein and my friend are using physics to lend some credibility by proxy to their rhetoric. I just can't warp my way to thinking it's physics envy.

Even in this tangent, the clinicians I've worked with don't disregard experimentalists or vice versa. It's simply a practical acceptance. Where large N experiments can be run, GREAT! Where they can't, we use expert experience and heuristics. [†] In fact, gathering "raw", private, data from patients is a common practice and the toolkits used to translate between contexts is diverse. (We had a meeting about just such a thing yesterday.)

So, I remain unconvinced. It's not physics envy. It's appeal to authority.

[†] Now, if you instead argued that by "physics envy", you simply mean "we'd like to have more data, but we don't YET", then *maybe*. But why call that "physics envy"? That would be a misleading moniker for having to work with less data than you'd otherwise prefer.

On 7/7/20 11:53 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Clinicians (therapists, counselors, psychiatrists, etc) use data that is based on private, highly sensitive personal information, it's very difficult and often impossible to apply the methods of experimental psychologists to that data. The clinicians do write papers but by the experimenters standards the sample sizes are so tiny as to merit dismissal of the results.
>
> So, imagine you are a clinician. Every case you have ever seen of a person with paranoid delusions involves significant grandiosity. (Why would the CIA be focusing on you, Marvin) Your colleagues have observed the same with few exceptions. Some clinician writes an article which mentions this. Experimental psychologists read it and say you need to do a double blind study to assert that. You realize that's impossible so you learn to disregard experimentalists just as they disregard you. You both think, "I wish I were a physicist but I hated math".

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gepr

Re: Book publishing advice needed

Yeah, I agree. Personally, I'm very susceptible to imposter syndrome. I'm constantly worried about whether I belong somewhere or what I'm doing is useful. I think of it less as an inferiority complex and more of a general anxiety about whether or not I could be doing something more productive or if the team could be more productive (e.g. with someone else other than me). This is why I never have to turn down a project. I often convince them that they don't want me. They want one of my friends, who actually knows stuff about things. 8^D

On 7/7/20 1:20 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote:
> I think there is envy within and among most professions. When I was at Bios Group, I felt there was, if not envy, then competition for recognition, between the scientists and software engineers. Being a software guy myself, I can only see it from that side of the fence; I can't speak to how the scientists saw things. I always felt a bit of an inferiority complex, as well as some hero worship toward the scientists. Part of this probably has to do with the supply and demand ratios for complexity scientists and software engineers. Geeks have always been in demand, and so it is easier to be somewhat mediocre and still be gainfully employed and well compensated. I suspect that scientists, particular theoretical physicists and mathematicians, have to really stand out in their field to be in demand.

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Joe Spinden

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by Gary Schiltz-4

A mathematician I once knew repeated a second hand quote from a well-known mathematician: "In mathematics, even to be second rate you have to be pretty smart."

On 7/7/20 2:20 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote:

I think there is envy within and among most professions. When I was at Bios Group, I felt there was, if not envy, then competition for recognition, between the scientists and software engineers. Being a software guy myself, I can only see it from that side of the fence; I can't speak to how the scientists saw things. I always felt a bit of an inferiority complex, as well as some hero worship toward the scientists. Part of this probably has to do with the supply and demand ratios for complexity scientists and software engineers. Geeks have always been in demand, and so it is easier to be somewhat mediocre and still be gainfully employed and well compensated. I suspect that scientists, particular theoretical physicists and mathematicians, have to really stand out in their field to be in demand.

On Tue, Jul 7, 2020 at 2:41 PM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hm. In these cases, where Firestein talks about quantum mechanics as an exemplar of how we navigate ignorance and my cancer survivor friend as a defense mechanism for avoiding nihilism or depression or whatnot, there is no "I wish I were a physicist". Firestein is a credentialed neuroscientist and my friend is a graphic artist. Neither seem to feel inadequate in their disciplines or wish their disciplines were more like physics. So, I really doubt it's envy. What it sounds more like is captured well by "There are more things in heaven and earth ...". Both Firestein and my friend are using physics to lend some credibility by proxy to their rhetoric. I just can't warp my way to thinking it's physics envy.

Even in this tangent, the clinicians I've worked with don't disregard experimentalists or vice versa. It's simply a practical acceptance. Where large N experiments can be run, GREAT! Where they can't, we use expert experience and heuristics. [†] In fact, gathering "raw", private, data from patients is a common practice and the toolkits used to translate between contexts is diverse. (We had a meeting about just such a thing yesterday.)

So, I remain unconvinced. It's not physics envy. It's appeal to authority.

[†] Now, if you instead argued that by "physics envy", you simply mean "we'd like to have more data, but we don't YET", then *maybe*. But why call that "physics envy"? That would be a misleading moniker for having to work with less data than you'd otherwise prefer.

On 7/7/20 11:53 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Clinicians (therapists, counselors, psychiatrists, etc) use data that is based on private, highly sensitive personal information, it's very difficult and often impossible to apply the methods of experimental psychologists to that data. The clinicians do write papers but by the experimenters standards the sample sizes are so tiny as to merit dismissal of the results.
>
> So, imagine you are a clinician. Every case you have ever seen of a person with paranoid delusions involves significant grandiosity. (Why would the CIA be focusing on you, Marvin) Your colleagues have observed the same with few exceptions. Some clinician writes an article which mentions this. Experimental psychologists read it and say you need to do a double blind study to assert that. You realize that's impossible so you learn to disregard experimentalists just as they disregard you. You both think, "I wish I were a physicist but I hated math".

--
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-- 
Joe

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Eric Charles-2

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by gepr

Glen said: "Both Firestein and my friend are using physics to lend some credibility by proxy to their rhetoric."

So... what is the word we use for the assumption that physics will lend credibility-by-proxy. If you are looking for credibility-by-proxy you must think whatever you are saying needs a boost, or at least feel like your audience will need it to get a boost before they will take you as seriously as you want to be taken. But even then, why not try to get credibility-by-proxy from marine biology, or medieval literary criticism, or food science? Why physics? There is some assumption that physics is the type of thing to reach for if you are looking for credibility-by-proxy, and a worry that you won't be good enough without it. "Envy" might not be the exact right word, but it isn't far off, is it? There is an inferiority complex of some sort, and a wish that you had whatever thing those specific other people seem to have.

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

[hidden email]

On Tue, Jul 7, 2020 at 3:41 PM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hm. In these cases, where Firestein talks about quantum mechanics as an exemplar of how we navigate ignorance and my cancer survivor friend as a defense mechanism for avoiding nihilism or depression or whatnot, there is no "I wish I were a physicist". Firestein is a credentialed neuroscientist and my friend is a graphic artist. Neither seem to feel inadequate in their disciplines or wish their disciplines were more like physics. So, I really doubt it's envy. What it sounds more like is captured well by "There are more things in heaven and earth ...". Both Firestein and my friend are using physics to lend some credibility by proxy to their rhetoric. I just can't warp my way to thinking it's physics envy.

Even in this tangent, the clinicians I've worked with don't disregard experimentalists or vice versa. It's simply a practical acceptance. Where large N experiments can be run, GREAT! Where they can't, we use expert experience and heuristics. [†] In fact, gathering "raw", private, data from patients is a common practice and the toolkits used to translate between contexts is diverse. (We had a meeting about just such a thing yesterday.)

So, I remain unconvinced. It's not physics envy. It's appeal to authority.

[†] Now, if you instead argued that by "physics envy", you simply mean "we'd like to have more data, but we don't YET", then *maybe*. But why call that "physics envy"? That would be a misleading moniker for having to work with less data than you'd otherwise prefer.

On 7/7/20 11:53 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Clinicians (therapists, counselors, psychiatrists, etc) use data that is based on private, highly sensitive personal information, it's very difficult and often impossible to apply the methods of experimental psychologists to that data. The clinicians do write papers but by the experimenters standards the sample sizes are so tiny as to merit dismissal of the results.
>
> So, imagine you are a clinician. Every case you have ever seen of a person with paranoid delusions involves significant grandiosity. (Why would the CIA be focusing on you, Marvin) Your colleagues have observed the same with few exceptions. Some clinician writes an article which mentions this. Experimental psychologists read it and say you need to do a double blind study to assert that. You realize that's impossible so you learn to disregard experimentalists just as they disregard you. You both think, "I wish I were a physicist but I hated math".

--
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Eric Charles-2

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by Frank Wimberly-2

At some point around 2007, some lawyer in Clark Universities IP department got a big muckety muck (I forget if it was Chief Counsel or the Provost, or what) to send out a really overzealous email, informing us that the university policy required profitable ideas that we came up with during our work hours to be reported to the IP office and agreements reached regarding what to do with them. It stupidly broad, and did not include any notion of the ideas having been developed or even being feasible. Any potentially profitable idea had to be reported! Now!

In fact, the email implied that the rubes in the faculty could not be trusted to judge what was potentially profitable, so any idea at all should be reported, to allow the smart and savvy people in the IP office could evaluate potential profitability.

As one would expect, this became the butt of several lunchtime conversations. At some point a few of us sent lists to the IP office, after having sat around the table coming up with as many inane-but-potentially-profitable ideas as we could. "A math textbook that worked through osmosis", "toilet paper rolls that pulled from both sides", "chicken, but it tasted less like chicken", "chicken, but it tasted more like chicken", "chicken, but with the nutrition profile of green beans", "green beans, but actually chicken", "a brand of eyebrow trimmers marketed specifically to academics", "a grab-bar to help people get up from the toilet, but it was better than the one on the second floor of Dana Commons", etc.

I don't think any of us ever heard back from them, and the email was not repeated in subsequent years.

On Tue, Jul 7, 2020 at 9:39 AM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:

Carnegie Mellon's intellectual property policy was described in a ~50 page summary document when I worked there. But it was apparently more complicated than that. I had to testify in Federal Court regarding software that had been developed by chemistry professor and Nobel Laureate John People and his students. A company named Gaussian Inc was selling the software and one of my tasks was to keep the version made available by the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center current. PSC is jointly operated by CMU and Pitt and it makes supercomputers and software available to researchers. The simplified understanding was that any artifact created by CMU researchers could be sold commercially but that the University could not be charged for its use. When I asked for Gaussian 94 (a new version was released every two years) the company stalled for weeks and eventually said we had to buy it. To shorten the story, after months of litigation and just before the judge was to issue his ruling, an out-of-court settlement was reached which was confidential. IP is a complex area.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Tue, Jul 7, 2020, 7:05 AM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:
Continuing down the open access thread and the ethics of Schwartz' JSTOR theft, libgen, and sci-hub:

Retractions and controversies over coronavirus research show that the process of science is working as it should
https://theconversation.com/retractions-and-controversies-over-coronavirus-research-show-that-the-process-of-science-is-working-as-it-should-140326

From the article: "The database provided by the tiny company Surgisphere – whose website is no longer accessible – was unavailable during peer review of the paper or to scientists and the public afterwards, preventing anyone from evaluating the data."

The point I made in response to EricS's worry that emphasizing paper consumption over book consumption was that the paper publishing process is more agile and, I argue, can stick more closely to the referent(s). With that agility comes some of the criticisms of Science™ (as well-expressed by Dave recently). To my mind, those criticisms target the wrong thing. They're failures of us to understand that there is no unified scientific method [†] and, along with *openness* comes an understanding that the whole process is messy and intensely social. I think it was Randy Burge who used to repeat a mantra like "Not being right, but getting it right." That journals (as well as newspapers) don't *require* open source and open data at the outset boggles me.

Coincidentally, this popped up in my queue the other day:

Let's talk about why people are moving left....
https://youtu.be/2g0qUxgwHmo

Ed's story about authors seeing very little compensation for their work, Nick's plea for a way to harvest the minds of non-academics, the ethics of Schwartz' theft, are all *old* issues targeting the same problems with late stage capitalism now being targeted by BLM and antifa. Perhaps the incentive and motive systems are the causes; and outcomes like libgen are the symptoms.

[†] I'm currently (slowly, as usual) reading a nice little book called "Ignorance" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13574594-ignorance that makes this point nicely. I put the book down in disgust when he started yapping about quantum mechanics. Why does everyone always do that even if they admit upfront they don't know what they're talking about? [sigh] Anyway, I got over it and have started again.

On 7/7/20 4:59 AM, Edward Angel wrote:
> I have to negotiate the terms with the university, I can, however, make anything I develop open source. It took a while for universities to agree that that that decision is totally up to the faculty member.
--
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gepr

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by Eric Charles-2

Yes, "physics envy" is VERY far off. 1) As I tried to claim before, physicists don't speak with authority in that way. The way these people speak is very different from the way physicists speak. 2) While Firestein knows some physics, my graphic artist friend has NO idea what quantum mechanics actually is, probably doesn't even know classical mechanics. So, even if they're envious of something, it's neither physicists' ways of being, nor the physics that physicists do.

But I'd go even further that they're not *envious* of anything. What they want is something, anything, to justify their rhetoric, which is basically that there's stuff we don't know (explicitly in Firestein's book on "Ignorance" and implicitly in my friend's claim that a good attitude mysteriously helps one recover from cancer). That's not envy. It's justificationism.

Now, when Nick and Frank talk about psychologists having physics envy (neither Firestein nor my friend fit that bill), *envy* does seem to come close. But I'd argue the same way with (1) and (2) above. They're not envious of physicists or physics. But they might be envious of ready access to plentiful DATA. And you can get that from some types of biology. In any case, that's not what I was talking about when I complained about everyone pulling woowoo quantum mechanics out of their hat everytime they want to say something about stuff we don't know.

Many people accused Penrose of the same thing, conflating quantum theory with consciousness merely BECAUSE they're both mysterious. And I sincerely doubt Penrose has "physics envy".

On 7/7/20 7:00 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> "Envy" might not be the exact right word, but it isn't far off, is it? There is an inferiority complex of some sort, and a wish that you had whatever thing those specific other people /seem /to have.

--
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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

thompnickson2

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by Eric Charles-2

I have never heard that story before! I love it.

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2020 8:21 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

At some point around 2007, some lawyer in Clark Universities IP department got a big muckety muck (I forget if it was Chief Counsel or the Provost, or what) to send out a really overzealous email, informing us that the university policy required profitable ideas that we came up with during our work hours to be reported to the IP office and agreements reached regarding what to do with them. It stupidly broad, and did not include any notion of the ideas having been developed or even being feasible. Any potentially profitable idea had to be reported! Now!

I don't think any of us ever heard back from them, and the email was not repeated in subsequent years.

On Tue, Jul 7, 2020 at 9:39 AM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:

Carnegie Mellon's intellectual property policy was described in a ~50 page summary document when I worked there. But it was apparently more complicated than that. I had to testify in Federal Court regarding software that had been developed by chemistry professor and Nobel Laureate John People and his students. A company named Gaussian Inc was selling the software and one of my tasks was to keep the version made available by the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center current. PSC is jointly operated by CMU and Pitt and it makes supercomputers and software available to researchers. The simplified understanding was that any artifact created by CMU researchers could be sold commercially but that the University could not be charged for its use. When I asked for Gaussian 94 (a new version was released every two years) the company stalled for weeks and eventually said we had to buy it. To shorten the story, after months of litigation and just before the judge was to issue his ruling, an out-of-court settlement was reached which was confidential. IP is a complex area.
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Tue, Jul 7, 2020, 7:05 AM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:
Continuing down the open access thread and the ethics of Schwartz' JSTOR theft, libgen, and sci-hub:

Retractions and controversies over coronavirus research show that the process of science is working as it should
https://theconversation.com/retractions-and-controversies-over-coronavirus-research-show-that-the-process-of-science-is-working-as-it-should-140326

From the article: "The database provided by the tiny company Surgisphere – whose website is no longer accessible – was unavailable during peer review of the paper or to scientists and the public afterwards, preventing anyone from evaluating the data."

The point I made in response to EricS's worry that emphasizing paper consumption over book consumption was that the paper publishing process is more agile and, I argue, can stick more closely to the referent(s). With that agility comes some of the criticisms of Science™ (as well-expressed by Dave recently). To my mind, those criticisms target the wrong thing. They're failures of us to understand that there is no unified scientific method [†] and, along with *openness* comes an understanding that the whole process is messy and intensely social. I think it was Randy Burge who used to repeat a mantra like "Not being right, but getting it right." That journals (as well as newspapers) don't *require* open source and open data at the outset boggles me.

Coincidentally, this popped up in my queue the other day:

Let's talk about why people are moving left....
https://youtu.be/2g0qUxgwHmo

Ed's story about authors seeing very little compensation for their work, Nick's plea for a way to harvest the minds of non-academics, the ethics of Schwartz' theft, are all *old* issues targeting the same problems with late stage capitalism now being targeted by BLM and antifa. Perhaps the incentive and motive systems are the causes; and outcomes like libgen are the symptoms.

[†] I'm currently (slowly, as usual) reading a nice little book called "Ignorance" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13574594-ignorance that makes this point nicely. I put the book down in disgust when he started yapping about quantum mechanics. Why does everyone always do that even if they admit upfront they don't know what they're talking about? [sigh] Anyway, I got over it and have started again.

On 7/7/20 4:59 AM, Edward Angel wrote:
> I have to negotiate the terms with the university, I can, however, make anything I develop open source. It took a while for universities to agree that that that decision is totally up to the faculty member.
--
☣ uǝlƃ

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David Eric Smith

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by gepr

I wonder If some part of this is a wish for methods that allowed one to put things to rest, so that a subject can “build”.

When people I run across talk about how they wish their work were more like the work they think goes on in physics, they often invoke work that has been settled for so long that we take it as very reliable, but that was still unknown recently enough that we can remember the difference. That is the subset selected by survival. But I never hear them saying they wish their work were more like string theory. I imagine that, if they knew what the endless churning around string theory were like for the people involved (the string theorists, and against them people like Peter Woit (sp?), Smolin (though less seriously), Sabine Hossenfelder, or other critics who try to address substance), they would say that their work is already much too much the same as all that, and they wish it were less so.

I am also aware of this from the reputation of linguistics, or the various communities of it I saw in action over the decade+ that it was active at SFI. The less reliable the methods are, the more scope there is for just ugly power competitions, and the kinds of ugly people who succeed in those games. You wind up with fields distorted by cults, as linguistics was in large measure by Chomsky for decades. That too is probably something many academics didn’t mean to sign up for, and find disappointing when they find that it is responsible for a large part of their daily situation.

??

What I just wrote above sounds like I didn’t hear (or totally missed) Glen’s point, but I actually did hear, and I agree with it. There are also the people who _like_ the power competitions, and just wish they had some kind of magic wand that enabled them to win more of those competitions. The styles of presentation Gen describes sound to me more like that second kind of people. I also imagine they contribute to irritating DaveW out of proportion to their significance in other respects.

Eric

> On Jul 8, 2020, at 11:49 AM, ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Yes, "physics envy" is VERY far off. 1) As I tried to claim before, physicists don't speak with authority in that way. The way these people speak is very different from the way physicists speak. 2) While Firestein knows some physics, my graphic artist friend has NO idea what quantum mechanics actually is, probably doesn't even know classical mechanics. So, even if they're envious of something, it's neither physicists' ways of being, nor the physics that physicists do.
>
> But I'd go even further that they're not *envious* of anything. What they want is something, anything, to justify their rhetoric, which is basically that there's stuff we don't know (explicitly in Firestein's book on "Ignorance" and implicitly in my friend's claim that a good attitude mysteriously helps one recover from cancer). That's not envy. It's justificationism.
>
> Now, when Nick and Frank talk about psychologists having physics envy (neither Firestein nor my friend fit that bill), *envy* does seem to come close. But I'd argue the same way with (1) and (2) above. They're not envious of physicists or physics. But they might be envious of ready access to plentiful DATA. And you can get that from some types of biology. In any case, that's not what I was talking about when I complained about everyone pulling woowoo quantum mechanics out of their hat everytime they want to say something about stuff we don't know.
>
> Many people accused Penrose of the same thing, conflating quantum theory with consciousness merely BECAUSE they're both mysterious. And I sincerely doubt Penrose has "physics envy".
>
>
> On 7/7/20 7:00 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
>> "Envy" might not be the exact right word, but it isn't far off, is it? There is an inferiority complex of some sort, and a wish that you had whatever thing those specific other people /seem /to have.
>
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jon zingale

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by gepr

While following this thread, I keep reaching for and not finding an essay
written by Adorno (or Horkheimer or another Frankfurt intellectual), where
the essayist writes about a transition that happens in the western
description of *genius*. The transition is from that of the romantic period
*rhapsodic poet consumed by madness* to the modernist *mad scientist*, a
*mad and evil genius* that is ultimately identified with the privileged role
of *truth bringer* in western culture. What strikes me as being consistent
through this paradigm shift, from an emphasis on the romantic poet to the
quantum physicist, is that this *truth bringing* is interpreted as
clairvoyance from beyond *the shroud*. Whether physics *envy* or
*authority*, the phenomenon may be a vestige or redirection of a
long-lingering cultural pattern.

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Russell Standish-2

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by Frank Wimberly-2

My own experience of IP policy by a university was when my institution
decided in the early noughties to require all staff to sign an IP
legal agreement. I had been working there some 8 years by this
point. I looked over the legal agreement, objected to a couple of
clauses, and proposed amendments back to the uni IP lawyer, just like
I've done with IP agreements in subsequent roles I've had. I never
heard a thing back from the lawyer - result was I never signed the
damned thing, so wasn't bound by its provisions. I ended up with a
much more rights than if the uni had agreed to my amendments in the
first place!

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Frank Wimberly-2

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by David Eric Smith

Eric,

I think a difference between psychology, for example, and physics is that a much larger number of people have opinions about psychology. Most people don't venture opinions about string theory but if a psychologist tells a "layman" a psychological finding the response is often "that's obvious" or "that's not true".

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505 670-9918
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On Tue, Jul 7, 2020, 10:40 PM David Eric Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

I wonder If some part of this is a wish for methods that allowed one to put things to rest, so that a subject can “build”.

When people I run across talk about how they wish their work were more like the work they think goes on in physics, they often invoke work that has been settled for so long that we take it as very reliable, but that was still unknown recently enough that we can remember the difference. That is the subset selected by survival. But I never hear them saying they wish their work were more like string theory. I imagine that, if they knew what the endless churning around string theory were like for the people involved (the string theorists, and against them people like Peter Woit (sp?), Smolin (though less seriously), Sabine Hossenfelder, or other critics who try to address substance), they would say that their work is already much too much the same as all that, and they wish it were less so.

I am also aware of this from the reputation of linguistics, or the various communities of it I saw in action over the decade+ that it was active at SFI. The less reliable the methods are, the more scope there is for just ugly power competitions, and the kinds of ugly people who succeed in those games. You wind up with fields distorted by cults, as linguistics was in large measure by Chomsky for decades. That too is probably something many academics didn’t mean to sign up for, and find disappointing when they find that it is responsible for a large part of their daily situation.

??

What I just wrote above sounds like I didn’t hear (or totally missed) Glen’s point, but I actually did hear, and I agree with it. There are also the people who _like_ the power competitions, and just wish they had some kind of magic wand that enabled them to win more of those competitions. The styles of presentation Gen describes sound to me more like that second kind of people. I also imagine they contribute to irritating DaveW out of proportion to their significance in other respects.

Eric

> On Jul 8, 2020, at 11:49 AM, ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Yes, "physics envy" is VERY far off. 1) As I tried to claim before, physicists don't speak with authority in that way. The way these people speak is very different from the way physicists speak. 2) While Firestein knows some physics, my graphic artist friend has NO idea what quantum mechanics actually is, probably doesn't even know classical mechanics. So, even if they're envious of something, it's neither physicists' ways of being, nor the physics that physicists do.
>
> But I'd go even further that they're not *envious* of anything. What they want is something, anything, to justify their rhetoric, which is basically that there's stuff we don't know (explicitly in Firestein's book on "Ignorance" and implicitly in my friend's claim that a good attitude mysteriously helps one recover from cancer). That's not envy. It's justificationism.
>
> Now, when Nick and Frank talk about psychologists having physics envy (neither Firestein nor my friend fit that bill), *envy* does seem to come close. But I'd argue the same way with (1) and (2) above. They're not envious of physicists or physics. But they might be envious of ready access to plentiful DATA. And you can get that from some types of biology. In any case, that's not what I was talking about when I complained about everyone pulling woowoo quantum mechanics out of their hat everytime they want to say something about stuff we don't know.
>
> Many people accused Penrose of the same thing, conflating quantum theory with consciousness merely BECAUSE they're both mysterious. And I sincerely doubt Penrose has "physics envy".
>
>
> On 7/7/20 7:00 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
>> "Envy" might not be the exact right word, but it isn't far off, is it? There is an inferiority complex of some sort, and a wish that you had whatever thing those specific other people /seem /to have.
>
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Eric Charles-2

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by gepr

Glen,

I've definitely read and processed your prior posts.

The reality of a someone else's situation does not limit whether or not a third party can be envious, or jealous, or any of those other related concepts. You can be envious of someone's wonderful life, even when that other person's life is absolutely horrible.

But to return to my point, the question is still open: When grasping for something with which to fake adding-depth to their writing, why do people so often grasp at physics? If we agree that "envy" is the wrong term, what is closer? What do you call the relationship between person A and person B, in which person A thinks person B is in inherent possession of something they need, so much that they are willing to play dress ups with a shoddy version of person B's schtick?

Like, I get that a child who puts on their Spiderman underoos before they go into surgery is probably not perfectly described as being "envious" of Spiderman's bravery... but that's not too far off... and I'm not sure what the better term would be. He didn't pick a random set of underwear, he didn't pick Scooby Do underwear, even if he loves Scooby and Spidey evenly. The kid reaches for Spiderman because (from his point of view) Spiderman has something that the kid thinks he needs in that moment. And he'll tell others too, because then others will know that he has what he needs, because (from his point of view) others will understand that an association with Spiderman bolsters him.

And yes, most (but certainly not all) of the time I see people reach for physics, in a situation where they are not trying to do physics, but trying to use physics to bolster some totally unrelated stuff they are working on, it seems like some intellectual-elitist version of being earnestly told that everything is going to turn out alright, because they are wearing Spiderman underoos.

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

[hidden email]

On Tue, Jul 7, 2020 at 10:49 PM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yes, "physics envy" is VERY far off. 1) As I tried to claim before, physicists don't speak with authority in that way. The way these people speak is very different from the way physicists speak. 2) While Firestein knows some physics, my graphic artist friend has NO idea what quantum mechanics actually is, probably doesn't even know classical mechanics. So, even if they're envious of something, it's neither physicists' ways of being, nor the physics that physicists do.

But I'd go even further that they're not *envious* of anything. What they want is something, anything, to justify their rhetoric, which is basically that there's stuff we don't know (explicitly in Firestein's book on "Ignorance" and implicitly in my friend's claim that a good attitude mysteriously helps one recover from cancer). That's not envy. It's justificationism.

Now, when Nick and Frank talk about psychologists having physics envy (neither Firestein nor my friend fit that bill), *envy* does seem to come close. But I'd argue the same way with (1) and (2) above. They're not envious of physicists or physics. But they might be envious of ready access to plentiful DATA. And you can get that from some types of biology. In any case, that's not what I was talking about when I complained about everyone pulling woowoo quantum mechanics out of their hat everytime they want to say something about stuff we don't know.

Many people accused Penrose of the same thing, conflating quantum theory with consciousness merely BECAUSE they're both mysterious. And I sincerely doubt Penrose has "physics envy".

On 7/7/20 7:00 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> "Envy" might not be the exact right word, but it isn't far off, is it? There is an inferiority complex of some sort, and a wish that you had whatever thing those specific other people /seem /to have.

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Gary Schiltz-4

Re: Book publishing advice needed

Eric Charles> "But to return to my point, the question is still open: When grasping for something with which to fake adding-depth to their writing, why do people so often grasp at physics?"

My take as a layman, i.e. not a physicist: Most people think of "physics" in terms of Newtonian physics, which is both intuitive and easily measurable and repeatable. Physics at the quantum level is both non-intuitive and very difficult to do experiments on, but that's mostly irrelevant to the layperson destined to work in non-physics scientific fields anyway. Even biology (at least above the cellular and simple organism level) is difficult to quantify (e.g. behavior of organisms, communities, ecosystems) and often impractical/unethical to provide controls for. So the biologist, the evolutionary ecologist, the psychologist, the medical researcher... may all *wish* their fields were as easy to experiment with as the good old fashioned Newtonian physics domains they learned about in Physics 101.

On Wed, Jul 8, 2020 at 8:19 AM Eric Charles <[hidden email]> wrote:

Glen,
I've definitely read and processed your prior posts.

The reality of a someone else's situation does not limit whether or not a third party can be envious, or jealous, or any of those other related concepts. You can be envious of someone's wonderful life, even when that other person's life is absolutely horrible.

But to return to my point, the question is still open: When grasping for something with which to fake adding-depth to their writing, why do people so often grasp at physics? If we agree that "envy" is the wrong term, what is closer? What do you call the relationship between person A and person B, in which person A thinks person B is in inherent possession of something they need, so much that they are willing to play dress ups with a shoddy version of person B's schtick?

Like, I get that a child who puts on their Spiderman underoos before they go into surgery is probably not perfectly described as being "envious" of Spiderman's bravery... but that's not too far off... and I'm not sure what the better term would be. He didn't pick a random set of underwear, he didn't pick Scooby Do underwear, even if he loves Scooby and Spidey evenly. The kid reaches for Spiderman because (from his point of view) Spiderman has something that the kid thinks he needs in that moment. And he'll tell others too, because then others will know that he has what he needs, because (from his point of view) others will understand that an association with Spiderman bolsters him.

And yes, most (but certainly not all) of the time I see people reach for physics, in a situation where they are not trying to do physics, but trying to use physics to bolster some totally unrelated stuff they are working on, it seems like some intellectual-elitist version of being earnestly told that everything is going to turn out alright, because they are wearing Spiderman underoos.

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
American University - Adjunct Instructor
[hidden email]

On Tue, Jul 7, 2020 at 10:49 PM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:
Yes, "physics envy" is VERY far off. 1) As I tried to claim before, physicists don't speak with authority in that way. The way these people speak is very different from the way physicists speak. 2) While Firestein knows some physics, my graphic artist friend has NO idea what quantum mechanics actually is, probably doesn't even know classical mechanics. So, even if they're envious of something, it's neither physicists' ways of being, nor the physics that physicists do.

But I'd go even further that they're not *envious* of anything. What they want is something, anything, to justify their rhetoric, which is basically that there's stuff we don't know (explicitly in Firestein's book on "Ignorance" and implicitly in my friend's claim that a good attitude mysteriously helps one recover from cancer). That's not envy. It's justificationism.

Now, when Nick and Frank talk about psychologists having physics envy (neither Firestein nor my friend fit that bill), *envy* does seem to come close. But I'd argue the same way with (1) and (2) above. They're not envious of physicists or physics. But they might be envious of ready access to plentiful DATA. And you can get that from some types of biology. In any case, that's not what I was talking about when I complained about everyone pulling woowoo quantum mechanics out of their hat everytime they want to say something about stuff we don't know.

Many people accused Penrose of the same thing, conflating quantum theory with consciousness merely BECAUSE they're both mysterious. And I sincerely doubt Penrose has "physics envy".

On 7/7/20 7:00 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> "Envy" might not be the exact right word, but it isn't far off, is it? There is an inferiority complex of some sort, and a wish that you had whatever thing those specific other people /seem /to have.

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gepr

invoking quantum woo (was Book publishing advice needed)

In reply to this post by gepr

OK. So, maybe y'all have collectively provided an answer. The reason(s) people invoke quantum woo so *often* is because it serves several (perhaps conflatable and ambiguous) purposes.

In order of appearance in the thread:
1) justificationist appeals to authority
2) donning attributes others (seem to) have but you don't
3) hearkening to paradigm shifts and longing for solid foundations
4) power (both social and individual)
5) evocation of the shaman/oracle archetype

Note, I'm not including ordinary physics, only woo, because that's what irritated me enough to stop reading "Ignorance" for so long. Firestein has lots of other riffs and hooks and it was childish of me to react that way ... but I can't help it. The woo is killing me. By contrast, imagining (and ruling out) an "airfoil" around pond scum in relation to the Purcell paper was NOT irritating at all. Invocations of actual physics are fine. Invocations of mysterious stuff just because it's mysterious flips my triggers.

Speaking of the Purcell paper, this popped off the queue this morning:

New Clues To ALS And Alzheimer's From Physics
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/07/08/888687912/new-clues-to-als-and-alzheimers-from-physics

I'm embarrassed that I didn't notice it sooner.

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Roger Critchlow-2

Re: invoking quantum woo (was Book publishing advice needed)

I actually find most of those explanations weak, given that, according to Feynmann, no one understands quantum mechanics. How does an appeal to authority work when you appeal to an authority that does not understand and cannot explain? How does one don the attributes of experts who do not understand or explain their expertise? Where are the solid foundations of quantum mechanics?

I suppose it could all be pro forma in that none of the participants understand that there is no there there to which one could appeal, so the appeal becomes nothing but a ritual motion with "quantum woo" taking the place of whichever holiest holy worked last week.

But maybe it's exactly the inexplicability which is the secret sauce, that there is something ineffable about the quantum physics.

-- rec --

On Wed, Jul 8, 2020 at 9:51 AM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:

OK. So, maybe y'all have collectively provided an answer. The reason(s) people invoke quantum woo so *often* is because it serves several (perhaps conflatable and ambiguous) purposes.

In order of appearance in the thread:
1) justificationist appeals to authority
2) donning attributes others (seem to) have but you don't
3) hearkening to paradigm shifts and longing for solid foundations
4) power (both social and individual)
5) evocation of the shaman/oracle archetype

Note, I'm not including ordinary physics, only woo, because that's what irritated me enough to stop reading "Ignorance" for so long. Firestein has lots of other riffs and hooks and it was childish of me to react that way ... but I can't help it. The woo is killing me. By contrast, imagining (and ruling out) an "airfoil" around pond scum in relation to the Purcell paper was NOT irritating at all. Invocations of actual physics are fine. Invocations of mysterious stuff just because it's mysterious flips my triggers.

Speaking of the Purcell paper, this popped off the queue this morning:

New Clues To ALS And Alzheimer's From Physics
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/07/08/888687912/new-clues-to-als-and-alzheimers-from-physics

I'm embarrassed that I didn't notice it sooner.

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Gary Schiltz-4

Re: invoking quantum woo (was Book publishing advice needed)

Roger, I've become rather suspicious of the field of quantum computing for much the same reasons. Surely *someone* can write an easily understood basic explanation of how it is supposed to work in principle. Maybe I just haven't dug deep enough, but everything seems to be either too hand-wavy, too focused on how that's going to make Google or Microsoft or whoever even more uber rich, or dismissive of the possibility that the general computing community could understand it. I would be willing to suspend disbelief long enough to take it as a given that a qbit could take on two states at the same time, but then I'd like to see how this fact can be put to practical use *at an algorithmic level* to solve some problem.

On Wed, Jul 8, 2020 at 9:13 AM Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> wrote:

I actually find most of those explanations weak, given that, according to Feynmann, no one understands quantum mechanics. How does an appeal to authority work when you appeal to an authority that does not understand and cannot explain? How does one don the attributes of experts who do not understand or explain their expertise? Where are the solid foundations of quantum mechanics?

I suppose it could all be pro forma in that none of the participants understand that there is no there there to which one could appeal, so the appeal becomes nothing but a ritual motion with "quantum woo" taking the place of whichever holiest holy worked last week.

But maybe it's exactly the inexplicability which is the secret sauce, that there is something ineffable about the quantum physics.

-- rec --

On Wed, Jul 8, 2020 at 9:51 AM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:
OK. So, maybe y'all have collectively provided an answer. The reason(s) people invoke quantum woo so *often* is because it serves several (perhaps conflatable and ambiguous) purposes.

In order of appearance in the thread:
1) justificationist appeals to authority
2) donning attributes others (seem to) have but you don't
3) hearkening to paradigm shifts and longing for solid foundations
4) power (both social and individual)
5) evocation of the shaman/oracle archetype

Note, I'm not including ordinary physics, only woo, because that's what irritated me enough to stop reading "Ignorance" for so long. Firestein has lots of other riffs and hooks and it was childish of me to react that way ... but I can't help it. The woo is killing me. By contrast, imagining (and ruling out) an "airfoil" around pond scum in relation to the Purcell paper was NOT irritating at all. Invocations of actual physics are fine. Invocations of mysterious stuff just because it's mysterious flips my triggers.

Speaking of the Purcell paper, this popped off the queue this morning:

New Clues To ALS And Alzheimer's From Physics
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/07/08/888687912/new-clues-to-als-and-alzheimers-from-physics

I'm embarrassed that I didn't notice it sooner.

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gepr

Re: invoking quantum woo (was Book publishing advice needed)

I feel the same way. But my brief thrashing in this rabbit hole was interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography

In particular:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic-curve_cryptography#Quantum_computing_attacks

I only mention that because it seems to imply a real impact on everyday yahoos. I do think there are domain-specific applications, particularly optimization and search. But others will have more direct answers.

On 7/8/20 7:22 AM, Gary Schiltz wrote:
> Roger, I've become rather suspicious of the field of quantum computing for much the same reasons. Surely *someone* can write an easily understood basic explanation of how it is supposed to work in principle. Maybe I just haven't dug deep enough, but everything seems to be either too hand-wavy, too focused on how that's going to make Google or Microsoft or whoever even more uber rich, or dismissive of the possibility that the general computing community could understand it. I would be willing to suspend disbelief long enough to take it as a given that a qbit could take on two states at the same time, but then I'd like to see how this fact can be put to practical use *at an algorithmic level* to solve some problem.

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gepr

Re: invoking quantum woo (was Book publishing advice needed)

In reply to this post by Roger Critchlow-2

I think that's the essence of Jon's idea. But there is a refinement we could make. Oracles don't have to be embodied in a person(ality). In some ways, Gisin's idea of distant digits in real numbers or a random process are non-personal oracles by some definition. Deterministic sensitivity to initial conditions and fractal dimension might be other members of the same class.

On 7/8/20 7:12 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> But maybe it's exactly the inexplicability which is the secret sauce, that there is something ineffable about the quantum physics.
>
> -- rec --
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 8, 2020 at 9:51 AM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
>
> 5) evocation of the shaman/oracle archetype

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jon zingale

Re: invoking quantum woo (was Book publishing advice needed)

In reply to this post by Gary Schiltz-4

Gary writes: "I'd like to see how this fact can be put to practical use *at
an algorithmic level* to solve some problem"

Shor's algorithm[Ͽ] has long been one of my favorite concrete examples. Here
is an algorithm that has a classical counterpart wrt the techniques common
to elliptic curve factorization and pollard's rho, namely period finding.
The majority of Shor's algorithm can actually be seen to be classical, well
up and till the use of superposition is exploited to get a *calculable*
speed up on period finding. From my perspective, quantum theory _is_
founded, and Feynmann's quip (like Einstein's dice) seems to persist for the
sake of contributing to the woo[†]. To a profound extent, every time we ask
whether or not a photon is a wave or a particle we are contributing to the
woo. The phenomenon is, at best, understood in terms of the theory we
construct. It is no different here than it is for our other investigations.

Though it might take some digging to find, there was an entertaining lecture
given by Hans Bethe (in what looks like a nursing home) on quantum
mechanics. He departs from the main thread of the lecture at one point to go
on a diatribe about how bad-faith actors continue to mystify what he sees to
be directly calculable[ϡ]. It seems important to me to not confuse an
inability to understand some phenomena for a lack of imagination.

Ͽ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithm

†) Many of us grew up working with transistors, treating them analogous to
triodes and not necessarily understanding what was happening to electrons on
the surface of the doped silicon sandwich. The story need not be so
mystically removed for the case of quantum gates. We understand how to
calculate with them, even if in an abstracted form. There are clearly open
engineering problems, that will undoubtedly contribute to our physical
understanding of ideas like locality, to be solved by IBM and others along
the way.

ϡ) The video once lived here: http://bethe.cornell.edu/video1_small.html but
alas I cannot find another source. Here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oggC_xhkdJA Bethe talks briefly about the
wave-particle controversy and he talks about the controversy in terms of
power and authority.

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Stephen Guerin-5

Re: invoking quantum woo (was Book publishing advice needed)

In reply to this post by gepr

Of the 5, I think I align with reason #3. Can you unpack a little more what you mean by it?

* Extra points if you explain with a steelman of my paradigm shift :-)

On Wed, Jul 8, 2020 at 7:51 AM ∄ uǝlƃ <[hidden email]> wrote:

OK. So, maybe y'all have collectively provided an answer. The reason(s) people invoke quantum woo so *often* is because it serves several (perhaps conflatable and ambiguous) purposes.

In order of appearance in the thread:
1) justificationist appeals to authority
2) donning attributes others (seem to) have but you don't
3) hearkening to paradigm shifts and longing for solid foundations
4) power (both social and individual)
5) evocation of the shaman/oracle archetype

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