From: mitsu@nic.cerf.net (Mitsuharu Hadeishi)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Report on Philosophies of Physicists
Date: 4 Sep 92 03:42:05 GMT
Distribution: na


sichase@csa3.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:
>In article <2726@news.cerf.net>, mitsu@nic.cerf.net (Mitsuharu Hadeishi)
>writes...
>> 
>>       Believe me, I have tried to address these issues using
>>brief discussions before, and I could do so now if I wanted to, but in
>>my experience I have had very little success communicating the
>>basic ideas to someone who has not already tried to think about
>>these issues in depth.  Although the basic concepts seem rather
>>simple and "obvious", I have found that when attempting
>>to discuss them with people who have not done any serious
>>work in philosophy (Western or Eastern), I cannot seem to make
>>myself understood clearly.  I believe the reason is simply that there...
>> 
>>       In sum, the problems are so subtle and so filled
>>with the potential for misunderstanding that I have long since
>>given up on trying to explain them in brief.  The only answer
>
>This has got to win the award for the most arrogant post ever to appear
>on sci.physics.  Mitsu, that was not easy to do, but you have managed it
>anyway.  You are speaking to probably the brightest group of people you
>will ever have the good fortune to deal with.  If you can't explain it to them,
>then you are probably a complete incompetent.  Since your language skills 
>demonstrate that you have a brain, I am forced to conclude that rather 
>than incompetent, you are just a self-absorbed fool.

	Scott, I never said that people in this newsgroup were too
stupid to understand my arguments, but that I could not do justice
to the subject matter by a brief explanation.  If I really wanted to
get involved in a long discussion I would have to spend a lot more
time writing these posts than I can afford at the moment.  I leave
such things to professional philosophers who are likely to be able
to express se things a lot better than I can anyway.  This is why
I referred people to other source texts.

>Why did yout??! bother to get involved in this thread in the first place, if you 
>knew from the beginning that we would all be unable to grasp the subtleties 
>of your wisdom?

	Actually, the point of my posting was simply to point out that
Heisenberg also found parallels between Eastern philosophy and
QM.  I never intended to get involved in explaining Eastern philosophy
per se.  It is "beyond the scope of this newsgroup", IMHO.  Believe
me, I speak from experience; I've tried doing this before.  Once
burned, twice shy.

>If each of us followed your reasoning, and refused to explain anything that
>might be too subtle for everyone to grasp every nuance, then there would be
>nothing left to post but stupid arguments about funding the SSC and space
>potatoes.  Fortunately, we do not.  Rather, we take the attitude, which 
>comes from our love of physics, that anyone who wants to play is welcome - 
>especially those who are most likely *not* to understand everything, people
>who are new to physics but interested enough to want to find out what it's 
>about.  Not everyone understands everything, but we have fun.  

	It may well be that you and 50% of the readers of this newsgroup
would be able to follow my postings without having major misunderstandings,
but I know from experience that a few people (at least) would take great
exception to my statements and misunderstand them to be somehow
undermining the whole underpinnings of Western Civilization (you may
laugh now, but if I tried it you'd see the flames rising like a forest fire).
The only way to avoid this is to not start it.  If folks are really
interested in these ideas, again I refer them to much more complete
works which go into great detail, written by people who have devoted
their lives to elucidating these issues.  If I were being paid to do it, I
would do it, but I'm not, and I just cannot afford to do it myself (even
if I were able to do a sufficiently complete job).  This has much more
to do with the limitations of both myself and the medium than any
limitations of the readers of this newsgroup.

Mitsu