2016 — 15 September: Thursday
I was emailed an interesting research topic proposal overnight — an initially seemingly-trivial matter regarding analysis of observations of the input/output parity errors of sock quantum entanglement in modern washing machines. Despite the clear Nobel potential, my own ongoing long-running experiment in a closely-related field1 precludes my participation. Not least because it leaves me little spare time to work on another's conundrum. And more particularly because (in this specific case) I feel the researcher's counter-intuitive observations are being clouded by the interference from two feline mobile force fields. I shall have to let him down gently over our lunch today.
Another researcher...
... is suggesting I really do not want to see an accumulated price total in any of the HTML reports of my entertainment media he's been generating for me. While I fear he may be correct, I still feel one should not turn one's face from the facts, no matter how brutal. I shall doubtless be forced to remind him of Simon Garfield's wise observation at the start of his thesis "The Error World" on obsessional stamp collecting:
Little do wives know how much men spend on their hobbies. But my wife is about to find out.
I feel uneasy...
... about the publication of an authoratively-annotated edition of the book reviewed here. Heck, I don't even want to name the damn' thing! It is, indeed, a scholarly quagmire.
Now here's a good question!
Though the "cause and effect" answer struck me as quirky, even for a self-described philosopher's philosopher2:
Do scientists have a psychological need for causal explanations?
In principle, we could develop mathematical theories on the basis of cold logic, but the desire to link causes and effects pushes science forward. University of California psychologist Alison Gopnik has published a terrific paper, "Explanation as Orgasm." She notes that the
reproduction of human life is possible without the aid of sexual orgasms, but the pursuit of orgasms noticeably results in producing children.
Say what you like about psychologists, they clearly exist on a different plane of reality in California.