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Harv Makes It Clear In My Mind!

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Posted by Richard D. Stafford, Ph.D. on April 12, 2002 14:55:16 UTC

Hi Aurino,

I also am looking forward to more philosophical topics to discus with Harv! That is the main reason I keep pushing him. If I can ever get him to understand what I have discovered, I think he could very well make some significant contributions to the philosophical implications. Certainly I am at a loss to do so though I have thought about them for 40 years.

By the way, the discussion with Harv has been worthwhile to me on any count as it certainly has clarified my own understanding of my logic a lot; i.e., made me much more confident that my analysis is correct than I was. Thinking about things on your own can be difficult. As an example of what I am talking about, let me tell you a story.

When I was working on my Ph.D. thesis (calculating a nuclear scattering cross-section from basic particle theory - major number crunching so to speak), the answer I initially got was off by a factor of 10 from what common sense told me it had to be and I could not find the error for love or money. So I forced my wife to sit through a detailed explanation of the entire construct of the computer program. Now, she understood practically nothing of what I said, but I found the error! The act of explaining it was the issue which got me to look at each step. The human mind tends to presume the details are correct and, once it decides a step is correct, it will jump over the same error a million times without ever noticing it.

Harv has forced me to look at the details of what I am saying and this is a valuable contribution.

Have fun -- Dick

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