Some quotes, with some substitutions, denoted by [], for the actual words:
"The famous physicist Max Planck was talking about the resistance of the human mind, even the bright human mind, to new ideas.... And he said science advances one funeral at a time, and I think there's a lot of truth to that and it's certainly been true in [FIELD X]."
and
"If you stand up in front of a [FIELD Y] class and say a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, you won't get tenure.... Higher mathematics my be dangerous and lead you down pathways that are better left untrod."
and
"The more symbols they could work into their writing the more they were revered."
Question: who said these things? A disgrunted professor? Peter Woit talking about string theory?
Bzzt. Nope it's Warren Buffett. FIELD X= finance, FIELD Y=business.
More like this
In the initial "Basic Concepts" post, I discussed the concept of Force in physics. This time out, I'll be talking about fields, which is a much dicier proposition.
So far we've seen that electric charges create electric fields. We've also seen that magnetic charges would create magnetic fields if there were any such things, but there aren't.
When we start looking at fields, there are a collection
of properties that are interesting. The simplest one - and
the one which explains the property of the nimbers that
makes them so strange - is called the
characteristic of the field. (In fact, the
To end this week, we wrap up electricity and magnetism with the fourth and final of Maxwell's equations. this one includes Maxwell's own personal contribution to these:
my initial reaction, on the assumption that a physicist or mathematician would be too obvious, was Taleb (of the black swan). But that's just because I'm currently reading the book! He doesn't shy away from saying unkind things about mathematization of economics...
This one's also a gem: âThere is so much thatâs false and nutty in modern [X] and modern [Y], that if you just reduced the nonsense, thatâs a goal you should reasonably hope for.â
I heard an interview with Buffett yesterday on the BBC. He is a phenomenally intelligent, well-spoken, and utterly down-to-earth person. For anyone who is interested, it can be found here (scroll down to 04 May 09 AM).