Dionysus, the mausoleum

Gwern Branwen · 21 Dec 2010, 01:57 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: gwern0 at gmail.com (Gwern Branwen)
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2010 20:57:28 -0500
Subject: (urth) Dionysus, the mausoleum
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W2764352D1330A4D4829606CF190 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W2764352D1330A4D4829606CF190 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <AANLkTimL=wCiT4LKgOGZ30PcL66KPmsmNf1RcSy5AKSM at mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 3:46 PM, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>James Wynn: Well, I hope this doesn't make you go away again. To the contrary, I
>>just want to ensure you ideas are taken seriously and met with more than a shrug.
>
> James, when I rejoined this List last year under this name, your cogent advice to
> the "new guy" was that when people present their deeply well-thought out theories here,
> they are most often ignored. People are mostly hoping their own theories will be recognized.
> The greatest interest and response thus comes from those who want to ignore the parts
> of a new theory that have obvious value and pour themselves into undercutting what they
> perceive as the weaknesses. Some see this as an appropriate version of natural selection of
> ideas, but not me. Much of what goes on is personality based. How persistent is the poster? How
> nasty are the opponents? ?In the real world, good ideas do not often stand soley on their own
> merits. There are always human beings involved.

I see it as a problem due to interpretation being a very large problem
which is also very loosely specified. When someone proposes a new
Grand Unified Theory of the Long Sun or New Sun or what not, I read it
once to see whether there are any obvious knock-down problems with it.
There usually aren't because objections are subsumed under the loose
parts, or because the poster is smart enough not to have made any
simple obvious mistakes.

So what am I supposed to do with this large comprehensive
not-obviously-wrong theory? It's almost certainly wrong since only a
few can be right and we have proposed hundreds of interpretations of
parts. Basically, the answer is ignore it.

Now, if there were some systematic comparison of theories, if there
were say 30 or 40 key points/criteria to grade an interpretation on,
then I could hope to deal with a new theory in a way which isn't
tantamount to re-reading the entire damn work with an eye to that new
interpretation. I like think I've done something akin to this with my
collation of theories for "Suzanne Delage"
(http://www.gwern.net/Suzanne%20Delage.html) and so any future
discussion of SD could be more productive (or at least terminate more
quickly), but no one has done anything similar with our favorite
topics of discussion. (Not surprising; it'd be a task comparable to
writing _Lexicon Urthus_.) So, silence it is.

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net

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