From: Lyle Burkhead (lybrhed@earthlink.net)
Date: Tue Nov 16 1999 - 14:31:38 MST
Robert J. Bradbury wrote,
> Well, I suspect "good" is in the eye of the beholder.
> I'd be much more comfortable with people who are
> actually well versed in the various technologies required
> saying what they view can or cannot be done.
> The semiconductor industry is littered with claims,
> by people *well versed* in the technology, about
> "hitting the wall". We haven't yet. If the "experts"
> on a technology can't do a decent analysis,
> I'd say non-experts are in a much worse position.
For the thousandth time, it's not a question of what can or can't
be done.
Newton's Third Law doesn't put any limit on how much force can be
exerted. Newton doesn't say anything about what can or can't be
done. He simply asserts that there will always be an equal and
opposite force. That's the kind of point I'm making in
Geniebusters. It's a general point about the structure of the
situation.
But some people just don't get it.
In the first book of Euclid's Elements, one encounters the
proposition that in an isosceles triangle, the angles opposite the
equal sides are themselves equal. In the old days before the SAT,
this proposition was used to screen students. It was called the
pons asinorum, which means "bridge of asses," the point being that
a horse will cross a bridge, but a donkey won't (unless you
blindfold him). Some students could learn arithmetic, but when you
gave them an abstract proposition in geometry, they just didn't get
it. They would come to that point and stop, like an ass stops
before a bridge.
Lyle
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