From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Sep 15 1997 - 20:21:34 MDT
Geoff Smith wrote:
>
> > I consider extropians very intelligent and gifted people. It is my
> > perception that there are more of what I would classify "engineering"
> > mentalities than there are say..."liberal arts" mentalities.
>
> hmmm... this seems awfully simplistic, to the point of being entirely
> useless. How do you differentiate the two? By educational background?
>
> Since Engineering is a practical subset of Science, and Science is a
> subset of Philosophy, and Philosophy is an Art, I have a really hard time
> making any distinction between your two "mentalities" whatsoever.
If you can't tell the difference, and you prove it with a lot of capitalized
letters, you're a "liberal arts" mentality. If you say, "Yeah, I see that
people can be divided into these two groups, and it has predictive value, so I
don't care about the philosophical reasons why they're really the same"...
then you're an engineer.
> So maybe what I'm saying is that by being a scientist, your are by default
> an artist. Does it work the other way around? Maybe not. You tell me.
> You are the "liberal artist."
People who study science are artists; people who study art are not.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/singularity.html
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/algernon.html
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.
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