my responses:

No, you're not a meanie. In fact, you are quite considerate to have gone through so much trouble not to laugh at his face.

You are not a stalker either. You're merely at a loss as to which is the best way to feed your insatiable curiosity for Hot Track Guy.

Actually, Einstein wouldn't have taught quantum physics either. He really disliked its probabilistic framework. A famous quote of his is that "God does not play dice", and he spent a fair amount of time trying to poke holes in quantum theory (without success).

I can't believe you had enough self restraint to leave the room. Talk about well mannered.... sheesh. He probably gets away with that sort of stuff if all his friends are like you and never call him on it.

And as long as you don't start following Mr.X home at night and watch him change through a telescope from a nearby park, I don't think that's stalking. RESEARCH! ITS RESEARCH!

It's hard to live in the South/Midwest and have an IQ higher than, oh say, warm milk.

If ignorance were bliss, these places would be Shangra-la. However, ignorance is not bliss. It is just annoying and sad.

Sometimes I wonder why we even bother with education. Why don't we just give every redneck kid a truck, a gun and a bottle of whiskey when they turn school age and let Darwin sort it out.

Q: What do you call a 16 year old girl with brothers that is still a virgin in Arkansas?

A: Track Star.

I don't think you're meant but...I think Einstein would have a lot to teach about philosophy. Outside of his technical work in physics he contributed a lot to the debate around the philosophical implications of non-classical physics. He corresponded with Bertrand Russel (who wrote a book about relativity and like Einstein won a Nobel prize but for literature) and he took positions on questions around determinism, uncertainty and so on.

OK. A lot of what people hear about philosophy is the speculative, discursive stuff but philosophy also concerns science and mathematics. Philosophers use example from Cantor's work example to discuss whether or not there are infinite objects, whether abstract objects (like the natural numbers) are real. They use Curry and Turing's work to discuss the nature of intelligence and whether artificial intelligence is possible. Lots of work in logic (Herbrand, Heyting, brouwer) is probably done as much by philosophers as by mathematicians. Penrose is a physicist who writes about the nature of consciousness and enters into debate with philosophers of mind.

Popper was a physicist. Wittgenstein was an Engineer. Philosophy isn't just hot air - it's just that the technical and formal stuff isn't of much interest to non-specialists.

sumbloke (off to reduce an argument to conjunctive normal form and then rewrite it in the lamba calculus)

 

And as long as you don't start following Mr.X home at night and watch him change through a telescope from a nearby park

Don't give the boy ideas.

 

Don't give the boy ideas.

Oh, it's too late now. The seed has already been planted and now the flower is hungry for some Hot CC Guy nudity.

I don't think you're meant but...I think Einstein would have a lot to teach about philosophy. Outside of his technical work in physics he contributed a lot to the debate around the philosophical implications of non-classical physics. He corresponded with Bertrand Russel (who wrote a book about relativity and like Einstein won a Nobel prize but for literature) and he took positions on questions around determinism, uncertainty and so on.

 

OK. A lot of what people hear about philosophy is the speculative, discursive stuff but philosophy also concerns science and mathematics. Philosophers use example from Cantor's work example to discuss whether or not there are infinite objects, whether abstract objects (like the natural numbers) are real. They use Curry and Turing's work to discuss the nature of intelligence and whether artificial intelligence is possible. Lots of work in logic (Herbrand, Heyting, brouwer) is probably done as much by philosophers as by mathematicians. Penrose is a physicist who writes about the nature of consciousness and enters into debate with philosophers of mind.

 

Popper was a physicist. Wittgenstein was an Engineer. Philosophy isn't just hot air - it's just that the technical and formal stuff isn't of much interest to non-specialists.

 

sumbloke (off to reduce an argument to conjunctive normal form and then rewrite it in the lamba calculus)

Although you didn't actually say it, I would like to clarify that Prof. Einstein did not get his Nobel Prize for anything realted to relativity. He got it for his work on the photoelectric effect and in fact, at the time, it was well known that in order to feel comfortable in giving it to him, the prize committee ignored his relativity theory.

Just had to put in my 2