[FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Wed Jul 8 08:48:26 EDT 2020

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".

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Tue, Jul 7, 2020, 10:40 PM David Eric Smith <desmith at santafe.edu> 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 <gepropella at gmail.com> 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.
> >
> > --
> > ☣ uǝlƃ
> >
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