[FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

[Joe Spinden]

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 <gepropella at gmail.com 
> <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>> 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".
>
>
>     -- 
>     ☣ uǝlƃ
>
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-- 
Joe

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