13 Apr
2010
13 Apr
'10
5:43 p.m.
On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 03:07:07PM +0100, Gwenhwyfaer wrote:
On 13/04/2010, fons(a)kokkinizita.net
<fons(a)kokkinizita.net> wrote:
I've been re-trained over the last few years by a German mechanical-engineer friend to
think in a very reductionist, non-magickal, deterministic, cold-hard-reality kind of way.
I've been working with computers and technology for four decades, and I know I've
always been a musician first and a geek second or third. Still, I was surprised to find
how much voodoo and magickal thinking had remained in my thinking about technical
subjects.
After having been properly smacked upside the head enough times, nowadays I get very
impatient and annoyed with any kind of "secret sauce" nonsense, black boxes, and
other types of voodoo that Richard Feynman called "Cargo Cult Science".
It's all ones and zeroes. Given the same inputs, the same output should be obtained.
Acoustics is physics. And if I can't measure it, it doesn't exist.
-ken
That is true. But if some activity is less
dangerous
than surgery or flying aircraft that doesn't justify
spreading crappy information about it.
Only in the sense that disinformation is never justified. Still, it's
arguably more tolerable in a field that isn't concerned with cutting
into people (etc), however much it sets experts' teeth on edge.
Especially when, as you suggest yourself, it's in a pub setting rather
than a lecture hall.
And since that was pretty much the only thing I was trying to say, and
it perhaps didn't come over with the intended levity, I'll shut up
now.