Scott Aaronson has a great anecdote from a philosophy talk. The speaker makes up for the sheer implausibility of his claim with the cleverness of his response to an obvious counterargument.
Tags: PhilosophyThe speaker's response is indeed awesome! I approve.
By the way, I have seen Harvey Friedman give a talk, and he is extremely amusing. I believe he holds appointments in four departments: math, stats, philosophy, and religious studies. (I could look this up, but I'm lazy.) I think he also became an assistant professor at 18, so he's one of those freaks...
Posted by: Mason | July 24, 2006 12:36 PMThe mathematical representation of "Zing!" should be separate from the physicist's or chemist's or biologist's "Zing!" in the scientific community.
Posted by: Josh | July 24, 2006 7:40 PM __
// \
Zn-| ||-Gd
\\__/
My obvious chemical representation. Settled for "Zinged!"
Obviously, apologies to anyone who knows anything about Chemistry and finds it ludicrous that I can pair two such elements into a ridiculous looking molecule like this. I'm sure they will come up with a better version for their community.
Posted by: Josh | July 24, 2006 7:51 PMStupid comments section and it's left-justification.
Should look like
Zn- -Gd
With a cute little hexagon in the middle.
Posted by: Josh | July 24, 2006 7:52 PMAlso, ideally for the mathematical representation, I'd include these elements in the equation:
I preface this by apologizing now to the mathematical community, since I don't remember anything since like 11th grade.
X, being the ratio of (time elapsed before a comeback is delivered) to (amount of observers awestruck by the comeback) approaches Zing! as X gets smaller.
I'm sure there's a way to phrase this as lim x = Zing! But I don't know how to do it myself.
Posted by: Josh | July 24, 2006 7:58 PMActually, the mathematical version of this is probably the "Zing theorem."
Also, if you really want to make something a mathematical representation of something, then you'll probably want to look in an abstract algebra book first. :)
Posted by: Mason | July 24, 2006 8:28 PM