What's up with Sklansky and physicists?

[fishsauce]

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I'd clarify that mathematicians frequently don't give a fig one way or another whether or not what they do is useful or describes reality in some way.

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Ever tried to get funding for research?

[chezlaw]

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I'd clarify that mathematicians frequently don't give a fig one way or another whether or not what they do is useful or describes reality in some way.

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Ever tried to get funding for research?

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So they care about funding enough to pretend they care whether or not their work has useful applications.

chez

[Duke]

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Because physics is the only true science. Everything else is stamp collecting.

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That's pretty funny, because I've seen the quote "Mathematics is the only true science, everything else is just applied mathematics" around the math department. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

Instead of just being logicians and solving the problems you guys make up, I prefer to think that mathematicians develop the language with which physicists, scientists, and engineers speak and illustrate the framework necessary for scientific ideas to make sense.

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Mathematics is nothing but a model that Physicists choose to use when talking about what they're figuring out about the universe.

~D

[chezlaw]

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Mathematics is nothing but a model that Physicists choose to use when talking about what they're figuring out about the universe.


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Other way round. Physics is just a model used by mathematicians when they want to talk about the universe.

Also, many pure mathematicians thinks its just bad luck when their work can be useful in talking about the universe.

chez

[David Sklansky]

The best one are all brilliant and the average ones are usually smarter than all but the best in the other fields you cite. But I realize that a top Phd in Math, Chemistry, or even Economics, from Harvard, is smarter than any physicist who graduated from wherever Tom Weideman did.

[benkahuna]

So, it's just valuing brilliance?

[Ezcheeze]

That's what the man said...

[benkahuna]

It wasn't a direct response so I wanted it pinned down.

[Ezcheeze]

I guess you've missed some of his posts where hes talked about this before. In alot of his arguments he uses the opinions or behaviour of "smart poeple" to suggest certian courses of action or belief. Physicists are just a concrete example for him to use to say "hey look theres a group of smart poeple".

Actually, now that I think more about it I think there is probably more to picking physicists than them just being smart. On the surface I would expect him to have used mathematicians as the group. The best of the best in that field should be about as smart as the best from physics, but I think the average mathematician should be smarter than the average physicist. He very likley chose physicists as his "representative" because current physical theories suggest alot of what is written in the bible and other religious texts is false. And most of Sklansky's arguments on this forumn are with religious poeple.

[David Sklansky]

Plus a knowledge of the subject. I'm sure I could throw in world class molecular biologists.