THE INFALLIBLE BOB FALLIBATES | 2006-01-20
I just gave Joe hell for saying "I could be wrong."
Then I wrote a piece, replying to Joe, about how it I feel things deeply.
Joe kept writing "I could be wrong" because he was making personal observations about me and he was being very careful to make it clear that he was not criticizing me personally, he could be wrong.
Joe is sensitive. So I attacked his sensitivity.
The same sensitiviy I just claimed a right to.
When I say I am wrong a lot, you have to admit I practice what I preach.
Once again, all this is simple but not easy. I deeply believe that you should STOP apologizing.
But on the other hand I just said that I understand sensitivity. This simple stuff gets complicated fast.
Joe, put it another way besides apology.
This is the problem with not being a Wordist. A Wordist can cut out his frontal lobe and stick a book in there. Sometimes I wish I had the Book of Whitaker to stick in there.
Everything in science starts simple. I remember being a Discussant at an economics convention and standing in front of a blackboard full of calculus equations and making corrections.
But all that calculus was based on the words, "supply and demand," what goes by the not-so-simple-sounding name of Microeconomics.
The whole basis of Western Science, expresed in Occam's Razor, is simple enough:
"Cut your assumptions to the bone."
So you get simple basic like the Laws of Thermodynamics.
So you get engineering professors standing in front of blackboards full of equations more complicated than anyone before Occam's Razor could have imagined.
The world gets very, very complicated when you see the simple truth.