Re: John Conway, "Free Will Theorem"

From: John M <jamikes.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 10:03:40 -0400

Stathis, thanks for your reply, but my two points in return are:

1. to the list-appearance remark: I did not miss the 'responses', I missed
the list-mail CONTAINIG my post. Whether there is a response is of course up
to the (non?)respondents. I don't "require" such.

2. in the thread: I wonder if your logic is straightforward, if you don't
have an understanding about a "very complicated" system, a fault in it will
NOT clear up your underestanding. I agree that in medical 'sciences' there
is a widely used practice of studying the sick and drawing conclusions on
the healthy, but that does not mean that I should accept it as the right
method. You can draw true conclusions from the 'faults' if you know the
unfaulted system. Otherwise you just guess. Maybe guess right

John M
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stathis Papaioannou" <stathispapaioannou.domain.name.hidden>
To: <jamikes.domain.name.hidden>
Cc: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2005 1:42 AM
Subject: Re: John Conway, "Free Will Theorem"


>
> John Mikes wrote:
>
> >Stathis:
> >it is always dangerous (wrong!) to mix deviated cases (sick patients)
with
> >the general (non sick) human (behavioral etc.) concepts.
> >One thing is even worse: to draw conclusions of such.
>
> I disagree with this, in general. In medical science, in particular, one
of
> the most common means of progress in understanding normal physiology has
> been the study of pathological cases. If you have a very complex system,
and
> a fault develops, if you can trace and understand the fault, then you
> understand at least one small part of the system.
>
> >I wrote some comments in this thread lately and did not see them being
> >included in the list-posts. Am I banned from writing to the list?
>
> John, of course your comments are welcome on the list. It is easy to think
> that you are being ignored when nobody replies to your post, but that is
not
> necessarily the case. The posts that get most replies seem to be the ones
> that say something provocative, controversial, or just plain wrong:
everyone
> loves a good argument! It could simply be that everyone agrees with you if
> you have no replies. For example, I don't think anyone specifically
replied
> to George Levy's post on this thread, which I thought was very well
reasoned
> and I completely agreed with.
>
> --Stathis Papaioannou
>
Received on Tue Apr 12 2005 - 10:25:03 PDT