Post by thread:[OT] Childhood cancer in relation to distance from

I should have made this OT. Sorry. Whenever anyone tells me something is "safe", I always try to get a perspective by remembering then Uranium and Radium were deemed "safe" by current standards and used in all sorts of dangerous situations and quack medicines. I don't recall the exact specifics, but I think I've read where dancers would rub Uranium (or similar) on their bodies to make themselves glow in the dark, like in a club. Why is it so easy to think this day and age is "in the know" and so difficult to just look 50 years in the past and understand that those people thought the same thing? {Original Message removed}

You know, I learned it as: "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatum." And that appears to have been a later translation of the original. Thanks for indirectly straightening me out. (-: Although a beautiful proposition, sometimes I find it difficult to know _how_ to find the simplest. I mean, ok, the simplest, but how to figure out which one is the simplest. (-: {Quote hidden}> -----Original Message----- > From: spam_OUTpiclist-bouncesTakeThisOuTmit.edu [.....piclist-bouncesKILLspam@spam@mit.edu] On Behalf > Of Russell McMahon > > Occams's razor is the proposition that, given several potentially > equally plausible explanations, the simplest should be preferred. > Originally stated as "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate" or > "plurality should not be posited without necessity." >

Lindy, Occam's Razor... On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 09:35:05 +0200, Lindy Mayfield wrote: > Although a beautiful proposition, sometimes I find it difficult to know _how_ to find the simplest. I mean, ok, the simplest, but how to figure out which one is the simplest. (-: Try explaining the different options to someone else who knows nothing about the topic - it should become clear fairly fast! (This is also a useful debugging technique - I call it the Cardboard Cutout procedure, because very often the listener doesn't actually have to say anything but just sit and listen - the process of rearranging your thoughts to explain it is enough to show you the solution). Cheers, Howard

Funny, I do that all that time, too! I go to someone, can you help with this? And after a bit of explaining it, I go, "Doh!" say thanks and leave. They don't have to say anything. Though I attributed this to the switch in modes -- I mean, from internal thought to speech -- that helps in figuring things out. Drawing helps, too. But you are correct that you have to explain things in the simplest terms to be effective. Was it in some Vonnegut books where one of his scientists always said, "Any scientist who cannot explain what he does to a 10 year old is a charlatan," or something like that? > {Original Message removed}