Dear Jesse,
Hear Hear! Excellent post reminding us of the value of lists such as
this one.
Kindest regards,
Stephen
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jesse Mazer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <everything-list@eskimo.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2005 6:36 PM
Subject: Re: Many worlds theory of immortality
Sometimes, but it's also a good description of ideas that aren't fully
developed yet. If I had speculated in 1910 that perhaps the force of
gravity could be explained in terms of objects taking the shortest path in
curved space, but didn't have a full mathematical theory that fleshed out
this germ of an idea (and also didn't yet see that the longest path
through curved spacetime would be better than the shortest path through
curved space), then this would be a "halfed-formed idea that probably
wouldn't pan out to anything", but it might still be useful to discuss it
with others who found this germ of an idea promising and wanted to develop
it further. That's how I see the purpose of this list, a combination of
brainstorming ideas about the "everything exists" idea and then
criticizing, fleshing out or disposing of these ideas. So certainly
criticism of specific ideas that don't make sense is valuable, but I don't
think it's helpful to accuse anyone who comes up with an idea that doesn't
work out of just wanting to hear themselves talk.
If it's not going to pan out anyway, then it's pretty meaningless. If it's
"rambling" it's fairly incoherent, >and if the ideas are half-formed then
what's the point to begin with?
99% of brainstorms don't pan out to anything, and brainstorms by
definition are usually half-formed, but all interesting new ideas were at
one point just half-formed brainstorms too. Perhaps I should have left out
"rambling", I only meant a sort of informal, conversational way of
presenting a new speculation.
Jesse
