05-20-2016, 09:04 AM
Thank you Odin -- and a Bronx cheer to Kinser.
I can easily look at this sentence
“Imagination is inside exponential space time events"
and recognize its pretentious vacuity. "Space-time" is something that I expect to hear or see from Stephen Hawking, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, or Michio Kaku, and then only in specific contexts that have nothing to do with imagination except for explaining 'space time' in an enlightening or even entertaining manner. Of course I know what 'exponential' means, and it is strictly a mathematical word unless used as hyperbole. In contrast, "A wet person does not fear the rain." sounds like some old piece of peasant wisdom... but it at least has some coherence! It makes more sense after further contemplation. Maybe those who have met their fears of encounters with the unpleasant have no further dread of what they know well?
Wise people try to keep their language simple. Of course, bona fide scientific communication by necessity uses large words, but only with due precision. Using a word like ecdysiast* to describe Sally Rand might have some excusable humor. The creator of that word (I believe that it was H. L. Mencken) at the least wanted people to look it up in the dictionary.
Word salad does not pass editorial review in legitimate journals. Perhaps one can recognize the difference between the well-educated and the ill-educated: the well-educated have read material from some peer-reviewed journal, whatever the subject (whether history or physics) and knows what quality looks like in academic writing. It can be dry, but it makes sense at a certain level. Word salad, in contrast, is not only difficult to read but also empty. Thus on a muddled piece of patent absurdity I would be tempted to take out the red pencil and write "JUNK!" upon it.
Peer-reviewed journals have their use, but they are not for everyone. Popular-grade writing, as that one associates with a magazine that can tell one how to make an attractive and useful cabinet, can be useful for making a cabinet. So is a periodical that reduces the material in scientific journals to a popular level of learning -- so that people can be as well-informed of important aspects of science, medicine, and technology as possible. But a cabinet is useful, and having some idea of what happens to something approaching a black hole has some value as entertainment or high-school level learning. (I can make a joke about a dog's mouth as a black hole, at least for food, and people get it, especially if they see the voracious carnivore devouring some meat). Pseudo-scientific drivel is worthless at any level.
*Sally Rand was a stripper.
I can easily look at this sentence
“Imagination is inside exponential space time events"
and recognize its pretentious vacuity. "Space-time" is something that I expect to hear or see from Stephen Hawking, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, or Michio Kaku, and then only in specific contexts that have nothing to do with imagination except for explaining 'space time' in an enlightening or even entertaining manner. Of course I know what 'exponential' means, and it is strictly a mathematical word unless used as hyperbole. In contrast, "A wet person does not fear the rain." sounds like some old piece of peasant wisdom... but it at least has some coherence! It makes more sense after further contemplation. Maybe those who have met their fears of encounters with the unpleasant have no further dread of what they know well?
Wise people try to keep their language simple. Of course, bona fide scientific communication by necessity uses large words, but only with due precision. Using a word like ecdysiast* to describe Sally Rand might have some excusable humor. The creator of that word (I believe that it was H. L. Mencken) at the least wanted people to look it up in the dictionary.
Word salad does not pass editorial review in legitimate journals. Perhaps one can recognize the difference between the well-educated and the ill-educated: the well-educated have read material from some peer-reviewed journal, whatever the subject (whether history or physics) and knows what quality looks like in academic writing. It can be dry, but it makes sense at a certain level. Word salad, in contrast, is not only difficult to read but also empty. Thus on a muddled piece of patent absurdity I would be tempted to take out the red pencil and write "JUNK!" upon it.
Peer-reviewed journals have their use, but they are not for everyone. Popular-grade writing, as that one associates with a magazine that can tell one how to make an attractive and useful cabinet, can be useful for making a cabinet. So is a periodical that reduces the material in scientific journals to a popular level of learning -- so that people can be as well-informed of important aspects of science, medicine, and technology as possible. But a cabinet is useful, and having some idea of what happens to something approaching a black hole has some value as entertainment or high-school level learning. (I can make a joke about a dog's mouth as a black hole, at least for food, and people get it, especially if they see the voracious carnivore devouring some meat). Pseudo-scientific drivel is worthless at any level.
*Sally Rand was a stripper.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.