wu :: forums
« wu :: forums - bizarre affair »

Welcome, Guest. Please Login or Register.
Nov 13th, 2024, 11:43pm

RIDDLES SITE WRITE MATH! Home Home Help Help Search Search Members Members Login Login Register Register
   wu :: forums
   general
   truth
(Moderators: Icarus, Eigenray, Grimbal, towr, SMQ, william wu, ThudnBlunder)
   bizarre affair
« Previous topic | Next topic »
Pages: 1  Reply Reply Notify of replies Notify of replies Send Topic Send Topic Print Print
   Author  Topic: bizarre affair  (Read 2044 times)
Benny
Uberpuzzler
*****





   


Gender: male
Posts: 1024
bizarre affair  
« on: Jul 2nd, 2008, 11:13pm »
Quote Quote Modify Modify

Here is a little summary from wikipedia
Quote:

Sokal, a professor of physics at New York University submitted a paper of nonsense camouflaged in jargon for publication in Social Text, as an experiment to see if a journal in that field would, in Sokal's words: "publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions

 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
 
How do we determine what is BS ?
 
Sokal wrote  
 
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_sin glefile.html
 
 
 
IP Logged

If we want to understand our world — or how to change it — we must first understand the rational choices that shape it.
towr
wu::riddles Moderator
Uberpuzzler
*****



Some people are average, some are just mean.

   


Gender: male
Posts: 13730
Re: bizarre affair  
« Reply #1 on: Jul 3rd, 2008, 12:27am »
Quote Quote Modify Modify

on Jul 2nd, 2008, 11:13pm, BenVitale wrote:
How do we determine what is BS ?
You read it and consider whether it has any concern for reality. (Both lies and truths concern themselves with reality, but bullsh*t ignores its importance entirely.)
Or you test whether it makes good fertilizer for your rose bed.
IP Logged

Wikipedia, Google, Mathworld, Integer sequence DB
Benny
Uberpuzzler
*****





   


Gender: male
Posts: 1024
Re: bizarre affair  
« Reply #2 on: Jul 3rd, 2008, 8:57am »
Quote Quote Modify Modify

I read it several times and I understand with the help of a couple of philosophy major students that it is nonsense. But the thing is I read Sokal's letter already knowing that it was a hoax. I tried to pretend that I was reading somebody's letter, but I couldn't pretend, fool myself. I took a couple of semesters of philosophy classes, I had good grades, but I didn't really enjoy philosophy, mainly because of the amount of stuff I was required to read.  
 
Going back to Sokal's hoax. It tells me 2 things:
 
(1) The relative emptiness of the whole post-modernist idea, especially when some sociologists invokes quantum mechanics without the faintest notion of what they are talking about.
 
(2) The second thing is the intentionally impenetrable writing style. I fully understand the need for technical terms, the definitions of which are defined and agreed upon by people engaged in the discussion.
 
It also revealed that the readership frequently has no idea what the writer is saying.  
 
I didn't understand it on my own, I had a discussion with a couple of philosophy major students.
IP Logged

If we want to understand our world — or how to change it — we must first understand the rational choices that shape it.
towr
wu::riddles Moderator
Uberpuzzler
*****



Some people are average, some are just mean.

   


Gender: male
Posts: 13730
Re: bizarre affair  
« Reply #3 on: Jul 3rd, 2008, 9:17am »
Quote Quote Modify Modify

It reminds me a bit of something I read a while ago
 
(partial quote from http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000024.html )
Quote:
Can Derrida be "even wrong"?
 
This recent interview with Jacques Derrida reminds me of a parlor game that a colleague of mine claims to have played, back in the day when it was easier to find academics who took Derrida seriously.
 
My colleague would open one of Derrida's works to a random page, pick a random sentence, write it down, and then (above or below it) write a variant in which positive and negative were interchanged, or a word or phrase was replaced with one of opposite meaning. He would then challenge the assembled Derrida partisans to guess which was the original and which was the variant. The point was that Derrida's admirers are generally unable to distinguish his pronouncements from their opposites at better than chance level, suggesting that the content is a sophisticated form of white noise. On this view, as Wolfgang Pauli once said of someone else, Derrida is "not even wrong.".
« Last Edit: Jul 3rd, 2008, 9:18am by towr » IP Logged

Wikipedia, Google, Mathworld, Integer sequence DB
Benny
Uberpuzzler
*****





   


Gender: male
Posts: 1024
Re: bizarre affair  
« Reply #4 on: Jul 3rd, 2008, 10:15am »
Quote Quote Modify Modify

Good link, towr.
 
That's philosophy. I care more about math and physics, especially determining hoaxes, wrong perspectives in math and physics.
 
Consider the following:
 
In the Journal of Theoretics  
 
http://d1002391.mydomainwebhost.com/JOT/Links/links-theory.htm
 
there's Tsolkas Christos claiming that The Theory of Relativity is Wrong. See link
 
http://www.tsolkas.gr/
 
I don't have enough time now to go through his explanations, but I will as soon as time allows me. I have math assignments in Number Theory to worry about
 
IP Logged

If we want to understand our world — or how to change it — we must first understand the rational choices that shape it.
towr
wu::riddles Moderator
Uberpuzzler
*****



Some people are average, some are just mean.

   


Gender: male
Posts: 13730
Re: bizarre affair  
« Reply #5 on: Jul 3rd, 2008, 1:04pm »
Quote Quote Modify Modify

on Jul 3rd, 2008, 10:15am, BenVitale wrote:
That's philosophy. I care more about math and physics, especially determining hoaxes, wrong perspectives in math and physics.
Well, if you consider the Solkas affaire, the context is really philosophy of science.
And of course they're both cases of incomprehensibly dense texts that no one really wants to admit not understanding. It's like the Emperor's new clothes, no one wants to be the first to say he's naked.
 
Whether Solkas also really succeeds in his intended criticism that people in those fields don't understand the scientific concepts they refer to; well, I'm not so sure.
 
Quote:
there's Tsolkas Christos claiming that The Theory of Relativity is Wrong.
I've seen a similar person that even started his own journal so he could publish his crackpot ideas.
IP Logged

Wikipedia, Google, Mathworld, Integer sequence DB
Benny
Uberpuzzler
*****





   


Gender: male
Posts: 1024
Re: bizarre affair  
« Reply #6 on: Jul 3rd, 2008, 1:31pm »
Quote Quote Modify Modify

Sure, but what about the Journal of Theoretics? Isn't it  a reliable Journal?
IP Logged

If we want to understand our world — or how to change it — we must first understand the rational choices that shape it.
towr
wu::riddles Moderator
Uberpuzzler
*****



Some people are average, some are just mean.

   


Gender: male
Posts: 13730
Re: bizarre affair  
« Reply #7 on: Jul 3rd, 2008, 1:55pm »
Quote Quote Modify Modify

on Jul 3rd, 2008, 1:31pm, BenVitale wrote:
Sure, but what about the Journal of Theoretics? Isn't it  a reliable Journal?
Looking at the link, I would doubt it.
I'd try to find out who cites it and how often.
 
I don't know a good site to check citation, to be frank. But doing a search at the nature website, "journal of theoretics" give 0 hits, and "wikipedia" gives 125.
And, as some people frequently point out, wikipedia is not a reliable academic resource*. So that implies something about journal of theoretics.
But as I said, that wasn't a proper search for citations.
 
 
*) to be fair most hits seem to be more about wikipedia, than a reference to information there; although there's at least one in the first 10 hits.
IP Logged

Wikipedia, Google, Mathworld, Integer sequence DB
Pages: 1  Reply Reply Notify of replies Notify of replies Send Topic Send Topic Print Print

« Previous topic | Next topic »

Powered by YaBB 1 Gold - SP 1.4!
Forum software copyright © 2000-2004 Yet another Bulletin Board