Monday, December 21, 2009
JSH: Chasing perspective
What a difference a decade makes. It's weird looking back to arguing on Usenet over 10 years ago, to considering posting here now, and interesting to consider the shifts. Like sci.physics was a bigger newsgroup than sci.math, a LOT bigger, now sci.math is the much bigger newsgroup. And most of the people have changed. At least the ones I notice as they reply in my threads as, um, I rarely read anyone else's! (I know, maybe not so good, but I try, and then I just, stop.)
I am chasing perspective so the subject title is what this post regards as I'm trying to get a handle on a lot of data that now pours in for me from all over the world (daily), while other things haven't changed, in a decade. As there are still posters who make it their job to obsessively reply to me, and supposedly I am still just some "crackpot" mouthing off on the fringe—at least according to them!!!
Reality of course is that much of the realization of a shift is because of Google.
Wow, who was really talking about Google ten years ago (were they really around or is that a myth?)?
The ranting of posters against Google search result rankings is proof in and of itself of the value they see in them, as why else attack Google itself? While for me it is just so bizarre as in, why do people drive up my ideas in search rankings, but otherwise seem intent on pretending that they do not exist?
What a crazy world.
But the simplest explanation I think—going to Occam's Razor—is academic reality: top ranked academics in prestigious institutions around the world are realized to be antagonistic to my research, so people step around the danger areas, FEAR these academics, and quietly use my research anyway. Hiding. Isn't that amazing.
(So yeah if you're some academic who prides yourself on people too afraid to acknowledge better research, why?)
I emphasize ten years ago as I WAS posting for years before that because that's when I started talking about what I call tautological spaces. Little did I know then that pulling the thread with results of that research would unravel Galois Theory and Group Theory, along with "String Theory" (was it around ten years ago?). Or, GGS—Gone, Gone Strings.
So a lot of academics are walking around naked now. What a difference a decade makes…
As 2009 heads to a close and thinking about the Winter Solstice now, it occurs to me that what truly defines us is not what we expect, or what we think we know, but what happens along the way.
We are defined not by what we think but by what happens.
Descartes may have thought therefore he was, but he died anyway.
What we live in is not the age of thought, but the age of Shit Happens.
Reality doesn't need our opinion. It kind of just drags us along whether we like it or not… (Cue in debate about global warming aka climate change aka 7th mass extinction wave, but I digress—)
So here's hoping there is another decade of arguing on sci.physics for who knows whom and after that another decade and another and another—tired of typing "and another".
But who knows? Considering what happened the last ten years, one wonders, who really wants to know?
It will all happen regardless. Like it or not, here comes the next decade.
Happy Winter Solstice World!!!
I am chasing perspective so the subject title is what this post regards as I'm trying to get a handle on a lot of data that now pours in for me from all over the world (daily), while other things haven't changed, in a decade. As there are still posters who make it their job to obsessively reply to me, and supposedly I am still just some "crackpot" mouthing off on the fringe—at least according to them!!!
Reality of course is that much of the realization of a shift is because of Google.
Wow, who was really talking about Google ten years ago (were they really around or is that a myth?)?
The ranting of posters against Google search result rankings is proof in and of itself of the value they see in them, as why else attack Google itself? While for me it is just so bizarre as in, why do people drive up my ideas in search rankings, but otherwise seem intent on pretending that they do not exist?
What a crazy world.
But the simplest explanation I think—going to Occam's Razor—is academic reality: top ranked academics in prestigious institutions around the world are realized to be antagonistic to my research, so people step around the danger areas, FEAR these academics, and quietly use my research anyway. Hiding. Isn't that amazing.
(So yeah if you're some academic who prides yourself on people too afraid to acknowledge better research, why?)
I emphasize ten years ago as I WAS posting for years before that because that's when I started talking about what I call tautological spaces. Little did I know then that pulling the thread with results of that research would unravel Galois Theory and Group Theory, along with "String Theory" (was it around ten years ago?). Or, GGS—Gone, Gone Strings.
So a lot of academics are walking around naked now. What a difference a decade makes…
As 2009 heads to a close and thinking about the Winter Solstice now, it occurs to me that what truly defines us is not what we expect, or what we think we know, but what happens along the way.
We are defined not by what we think but by what happens.
Descartes may have thought therefore he was, but he died anyway.
What we live in is not the age of thought, but the age of Shit Happens.
Reality doesn't need our opinion. It kind of just drags us along whether we like it or not… (Cue in debate about global warming aka climate change aka 7th mass extinction wave, but I digress—)
So here's hoping there is another decade of arguing on sci.physics for who knows whom and after that another decade and another and another—tired of typing "and another".
But who knows? Considering what happened the last ten years, one wonders, who really wants to know?
It will all happen regardless. Like it or not, here comes the next decade.
Happy Winter Solstice World!!!
# posted by James Harris @ 21:19 
