From: Geoff Smith (geoffs@unixg.ubc.ca)
Date: Tue Sep 16 1997 - 23:33:03 MDT
On Mon, 15 Sep 1997, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> 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.
Au contraire, mon frere.
My message was memetically Engineered, using virulent CAPITAL LETTERS. ;-)
Science is philosophy, do you disagree?
> > 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.
I'm glad you said it and not me ;)
I remember reading somewhere about all the scientific blunders made by
artists/authors. Like in Lord of the Flies where they light a fire using
Piggy's glasses, which were the wrong type of lens to focus light. There
was some other famous novel that describes an open trellis of water that
goes uphill. Pretty silly.
geoff.
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