but you're trying to tell me the math majors lust after a dictionary?
Maybe, or maybe he's trying to say that the maths majors lust after them. I'll have to check my dictionary.
So while I agree that many may be overestimating their abilities,
I think it's more likely to work the other way, actually. Manipulating material and tools all day would probably hone one's spatial reasoning far more than dealing with abstract or logical problems. I just got back from a 600 mile solo kayak trip in NW Manitoba a couple of weeks ago, and I only looked at my compass 6 times, twice to set magnetic north, and four times to double check what I already knew. I think growing up on a farm fixing engines, welding broken machinery, or inventing machinery modifications probably did a lot more for my sense of direction and spatial reasoning than calculus, PERL programming, or any other strictly rational activity.
Honestly... I think people who know a lot of science are probably the biggest problem with science education.
I can't remember the exact quote, but in "Down and Out..." Orwell says something like:
"Socialists, like Christians, are generally the worst advertisements for their beliefs"
It's probably true for most people who primarily identify themselves by a shared group belief, really.
Is someone trying to get page hits here? What's the "direct hits to my blog" form of Slashvertisement?
How about "bladding"?
I looked it up, and from the few results I clicked, I like it even more.
Alice only has access to the information she *brought* with her when they separated.
it makes sense, and is essentially determinism, AFAICT. I don't really understand how this is possible:
And after she sees the half-coin, if she polishes the tail image off and inscribes another image
Okay, she wipes out the state (or rather non-state?) of the particle by the interaction of viewing. It's not my field at all, but it looks pretty much identical to Schroedinger's Cat. But I'd say that's the point that gets viewed as weird/possibly mystical. I could be completely off base, but it seems to me that the simplest example is the problem of knowing an electron's position vs. its velocity. That seems pretty straight forward to me. The physics and math between that and "a quantum way of thinking" are either non-existent (AKA I'm completely off base) or generally esoteric enough that they come across as nonsense to a layman.
Looking at it, my interpretation is: a particle which is not acted upon behaves deterministically (but this is not possible to know), a particle that is acted upon was indeterminate until acted upon. You know she has "tails", logically, but it can't be proven until its checked, at which point its original state becomes uncheckable. Anyhow, that's the rampant conjecture that happens with me, and where it gets mysterious. Spooky, no. Nor capable of miracles of Star Trek teleportation etc, but still mysterious and open to my own ridiculous speculation.
"Don't drop acid, take it pass-fail!" -- Bryan Michael Wendt