Various things this evening !

As Hawking recently points out, Philosophy is dead, it is not keeping up with itself.

So, keeping a pace with science, in itself, is a matter of great deal of exercise, its the unwillingness of a bunch of chaps who are prepared to hear rather than listen, to reason, rather than word. I can compare them with a bunch of chaps, who are well-meaning grass cutters.

Boy, pay attention to the grasshopper and write a poem or a country music and win for yourself more pleasure and fame than an association with scientific principles and falsities does. Be a Hero. Try. 1, 2, 3. Run.

But to philosophize faults of nature as failures of science, is like saying the best sliding door “you” have is a whack.

I do that, I think nature’s fault are whack, I am tired with finding reason, why would “you” believe I have gotten to that level.

Its another matter, the great scientists and engineers and design people, they all tried, all the other ways they could and found over strenuous deals of decades that the ones that are precisely respectful, of the faults of nature, are the ones that survived reason; to produce the best. The ones that followed a fault-finding mechanism of the philosophers, are the ones that were very successful, because the philosophers were absent; they appeared 100 years later, after success was obtained, so the mechanisms did not exist, in other words there was a great deal of effort to avoid technical mistakes that could be held as a fault of science rather than a fault of nature.

My friend-philosopher has sent me a lecture, on the character of science, which I will append here and without any philosophical rationale, describe what I see here; (I will italicize and “quote-excerpt” my responses). 

My Response; When I come up with (thinking) an elaborate description, about what’s troublesome in one research problem, it sheds light on how difficult this one problem is. Most people get that idea. To say it does not hold necessarily in another research problem is fine. There may not even be a research problem; they may not even be solving a god-damn problem. They may be drinking a lot of coffee and beer on taxpayer’s money.

Corollary; <<So government must slice the research budget by 0.001% not by say 10% or 15% without going into details of the problem. That is if one research problem was found to be fraudulent, it does not automatically make other problems the same, as regards above. Its the researchers that must get the benefit of doubt, which again has a disadvantage. But then, Government must scrutinize each case by its merit, rather than a vague generalized correlation with another problem. That said it must also take enough prior appointment of over viewing the actual merit of each research-problem it funds. This is perhaps ideal, that we get funding by lobbying rather than by study of merit, to its most idealized horizons. >> 

If the problem is really difficult, eg the problems on which George Smoot worked, the government may enhance his research budget and make it unprecedentedly large. If one has demonstrated to solve a complex problem he deserves funding more than anybody does. That hints towards a contentious situation because everyone wants to convey that he or she is making a dent in our knowledge base.

It’s easy to see reason. I propose Government must constitute of locals and those that do not necessarily have advance degrees, because that way they will train themselves in the details of scientific peer review system and advise the same to governments. It works by contrast. This way also the government ensures that optimal usage of resources of a community is in place.

If we have one Harvard returnee, ( supposing ) he is getting a huge salary, so why he must not produce at the top of his brand name. If he colludes with big names and produces big papers to show that he is producing outstanding work then this must be considered canvassing, as long as his contribution and independence isn’t reflected in the work.

Government must never allow wastage of citizen’s resources and hard money and counter the suave design of the scientists, to attract funding for fictitious programs. Make everything discussed threadbare. State the problems you are facing more precisely, so more light can be shed and what seems to be the real issue. Have open online platforms to bring transformation and transparency.

Quest; As a methodological principle, you cannot help toward a rational decision between competing explanations of the same empirical facts. One problem in formulating an explicit general principle is that complexity and simplicity are perspective notions whose meaning depends on the context of application and the user’s prior understanding. In the absence of an objective criterion, for simplicity and complexity, a principle does not support an objective epistemology.

Quest; However, while it is useful as a heuristic in developing models of reaction mechanisms, it has been shown to fail as a criterion for selecting among published models. In this context, Einstein himself expressed a certain caution when he formulated Einstein’s Constraint: “Everything should be kept as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

Elsewhere, Einstein harks back to the theological roots with his famous put-down: ‘The Good Lord may be subtle, but he is not malicious.’ Newtonian, Hamiltonian, and Lagrangian classical mechanics are equivalent. Likewise, Newton’s idea of light particles seemed simpler than Young’s idea of waves, so, many favored it; however in this case, as it turned out, neither the wave- nor the particle-explanation alone suffices, since light behaves like waves as well as like particles. There is no demand for simplicity principles to arbitrate between wave and matrix formulations of quantum mechanics. Science often does not demand arbitration or selection criteria between models, which make the same testable predictions.

Good understanding. We need to discuss more on our TV about science. But I am afraid; TV is not a directly accessible media to science since most present day science action can Not really be captured on TV without producing age old prejudices about science and scientists at the same time. Internet is a fair practice. But look how swift, institutions and organizations have become to subvert the challenge of transparent media. Right to information isn’t alone a successful approach to such malice. We need more powerful scrutiny from Government and citizen without compromise. Who checks the compromised is another aspect we need to be immediately careful. Let a debate ensue. Science often passes the tests of democracy. Let well meaning and honest people change our lives for better. Just a while ago I was talking to another of our dear high school friend who I told this following idea, most organizations in India have come to terms with understanding the value of corporatization and brand creation. What they need is brand value creation rather than just a brand name. Most organizations that are enjoying Government generosity in this country are actually superficial in their value. This needs to change.

There is little empirical evidence that the world is actually simple or that simple accounts are more likely than complex ones to be true. So my dear friend simplicity principles are useful philosophical preferences for choosing a more likely theory from among several possibilities that are each consistent with available data. Many scientists generally do not accept these arguments, and prefer to rely on explanations that deal with the same phenomena within the confines of existing scientific models. So I conclude with one Ayn Rand’s words: “Concepts are not to be multiplied beyond necessity—the corollary of which is: nor are they to be integrated in disregard of necessity.”