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" <lasermazer.domain.name.hidden>
To: <aet.radal.ssg.domain.name.hidden>; <everything-list.domain.name.hidden.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
>
Received on Tue May 24 2005 - 19:09:57 PDT