🚀 go-pugleaf

Originally-From: terry@asl.dl.nec.com
>In article <1993Jan8.021210.27077@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
>crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:

>> ...
>> Words are much more dangerous than equations.  Equations are well-defined
>> and can be examined quantititively for correlations with experience.
>> Words are fluid and mutable and ill-defined.
>> ...

>Alright!  Concur completely.  Precisely why I _stuck my neck out and sent
>out the UC draft_ -- so others would whack me up the side of the head and
>(maybe even occassionally) help me develop specific quantifications for it.

>I rushed it because it has very specific experimental implications, some
>of which seemed to be pretty relevant (and maybe even accurate).  This was
>a terrible thing for me to do?  Maybe next time I should sit on it for, oh,
>six months to a year and patent the daylights out of every other sentence?
>Alas, I just don't have that high of an opinion of my own ideas!

Relax, Terry. As the originator of the "words are dangerous" quote, let me add
that it was not meant as a put-down, but rather as an encouragement for you to
quantify these arguments. As they stand, they are not enough, that's all.
Quantification (mathematics) can also be way off, of course, if you start with
nonsensical axioms. But the very act of formulating mathematical relationships
seems to focus the mind, and one tends to reduce the starting premises to a
minumum of (safe) assumptions. In any case, a beautiful argument will always
get to the point where you have to provide some numbers. How big is the
effect? Is it significant? As I have asked, is 100,000K = 10 eV enough for
fusion?
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Dieter Britz alias britz@kemi.aau.dk
Kemisk Institut, Aarhus Universitet, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
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