nonrandom mutations...

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Thursday, February 3, 2022 at 3:38:42 AM UTC+11, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 16:16:51 +0100, David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:
On 02/02/2022 15:35, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 14:31:54 +0000, Tom Gardner <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
On 02/02/22 13:49, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 12:11:03 +0000, Tom Gardner <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
On 02/02/22 10:26, Martin Brown wrote:
On 01/02/2022 11:36, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 01/02/22 10:28, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 1 Feb 2022 08:41:38 +0000, Tom Gardner <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

Instant hostility to new ideas must be hereditary too.

Is a habit of opening your mouth and letting any old nonsense come out also hereditary?

It\'s an acquired skill.

Actually is is an unfortunate habit. Lose it.

Suggesting irrelevant but obvious things is not \"new ideas\".

One never knows where divergent thinking may lead.

Some of us are better at it that than you seem to be. Patents are a way of counting coup.

> Sometimes it\'s profitable. Most always it\'s fun... especially when it annoys wedge-heads.

Annoying wedge-heads - people whose skulls have more room for brains that yours seems to have - may be gratifying but it is unlikely to be profitable in the long term.

Dilbert\'s pointy-headed boss does seem to be very satisfied with his own performance. So is Flyguy.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[David Brown]

On 02/02/2022 21:41, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 02/02/22 19:50, David Brown wrote:
On 02/02/2022 17:55, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 02/02/22 16:42, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 15:35:05 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 14:35, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 14:31:54 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 13:49, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 12:11:03 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 10:26, Martin Brown wrote:
On 01/02/2022 11:36, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 01/02/22 10:28, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 1 Feb 2022 08:41:38 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

Why can\'t
we deliberately change our genome to our benefit?

We will soon be able to. Future tense.

We already are for certain genetic disorders where the correct
functioning gene
can be inserted into the relevant cells locally to correct a
problem but without
altering any of the germ line cells.

https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/gene-therapy-techniques-restore-vision-damage-age-and-glaucoma-mice



To me \"insert into the genome\" implies the germ cell lines.

A gene has to get into a sperm or egg to be passed into a
population.
A nose spray won\'t do that. [1]

That\'s another annoyance onto the random-mutation-selection
concept.
Most mutations are in the wrong cells to be passed to descendents,
and
most descendents will drop the ball anyhow.

It is true that most mutations aren\'t in the sperm/egg cells - they
are in cancerous cells.

But so what? That\'s irrelevant to evolution mechanisms.

Instant hostility to new ideas must be hereditary too.

New ideas are ten-a-penny, and that\'s being generous.
Any idiot can generate ideas, and many do[1].

Certainly. We\'ve had brainstorming sessions when some intern said
something dumb that triggered a chain of thought that turned out to be
big. The key is to think and play and not slap.

So have I, many times - in a brainstorming session.

In a brainstorming session everybody knows that different
rules are operating. This isn\'t a brainstorming session,
and the normal rules of discussion and conversation apply.



Good, reasoned, justified ideas are worth much more,
because they are rare and the process takes time.

Crazy ideas may be in the path to that, if you don\'t kill them on
sight.

They should be killed before they escape from a brainstorming
session.

The craziest ones should, of course, be killed before escaping from the
mouth - even in brainstorming. 

I once provoked an interesting thought in a brainstorm about
networking by asking \"how would you do that with yoghurt?\"

That\'s a silly question, not a crazy idea - and very occasionally such
silly comments can lead to profitable discussions. Mostly they are a
waste of time. A \"crazy idea\" is when you start expounding on a
obviously impossible or ridiculous notion - \"We\'ll use bio-active
yoghurt and encode encryption algorithms in the DNA of the
lactobacteria. I\'ve heard that a DNA string contains as much
information as a book, so we\'ll have plenty of bandwidth.\"

In a commercial setting, time is money. There comes a point where it
would make more sense for the company to use the money to buy lottery
tickets than to spend time seriously considering pointless ideas.

Exactly where that point is, and how to classify questions, ideas or
statements - that\'s a different matter, and there is no simple answer.

It\'s fine to say - in brainstorming -
that people should not be embarrassed about giving crazy ideas, nor
should they be put down for suggesting them.  But there is no need to
waste everyone\'s time with the silliest of ideas born from pure
ignorance of the topic in question.

Larkin appears not to understand that the second phase of
brainstorming is to prune the disassociated neural firings
into a much smaller set that is worth considering.

Indeed.

Compare and contrast that with evolution


(Trump could have benefited from learning this - along with the
distinction between a press conference and a wild brainstorming meeting.)

Oh, that bleach incident was both cringeworthy and revealing!

Nor was it a one-off - but it was one of his \"best\".

Larkin likes to pretend he has no limits to the ideas he will consider,
but everyone does.

He will, of course, dismiss my ideas here out of hand - simply because
they don\'t match /his/ ideas.

Not just your ideas!

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 03/02/22 08:08, David Brown wrote:

On 02/02/2022 21:41, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 02/02/22 19:50, David Brown wrote:
On 02/02/2022 17:55, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 02/02/22 16:42, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 15:35:05 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 14:35, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 14:31:54 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 13:49, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 12:11:03 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 10:26, Martin Brown wrote:
On 01/02/2022 11:36, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 01/02/22 10:28, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 1 Feb 2022 08:41:38 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

Why can\'t
we deliberately change our genome to our benefit?

We will soon be able to. Future tense.

We already are for certain genetic disorders where the correct
functioning gene
can be inserted into the relevant cells locally to correct a
problem but without
altering any of the germ line cells.

https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/gene-therapy-techniques-restore-vision-damage-age-and-glaucoma-mice



To me \"insert into the genome\" implies the germ cell lines.

A gene has to get into a sperm or egg to be passed into a
population.
A nose spray won\'t do that. [1]

That\'s another annoyance onto the random-mutation-selection
concept.
Most mutations are in the wrong cells to be passed to descendents,
and
most descendents will drop the ball anyhow.

It is true that most mutations aren\'t in the sperm/egg cells - they
are in cancerous cells.

But so what? That\'s irrelevant to evolution mechanisms.

Instant hostility to new ideas must be hereditary too.

New ideas are ten-a-penny, and that\'s being generous.
Any idiot can generate ideas, and many do[1].

Certainly. We\'ve had brainstorming sessions when some intern said
something dumb that triggered a chain of thought that turned out to be
big. The key is to think and play and not slap.

So have I, many times - in a brainstorming session.

In a brainstorming session everybody knows that different
rules are operating. This isn\'t a brainstorming session,
and the normal rules of discussion and conversation apply.



Good, reasoned, justified ideas are worth much more,
because they are rare and the process takes time.

Crazy ideas may be in the path to that, if you don\'t kill them on
sight.

They should be killed before they escape from a brainstorming
session.

The craziest ones should, of course, be killed before escaping from the
mouth - even in brainstorming.

I once provoked an interesting thought in a brainstorm about
networking by asking \"how would you do that with yoghurt?\"


That\'s a silly question, not a crazy idea - and very occasionally such
silly comments can lead to profitable discussions. Mostly they are a
waste of time. A \"crazy idea\" is when you start expounding on a
obviously impossible or ridiculous notion - \"We\'ll use bio-active
yoghurt and encode encryption algorithms in the DNA of the
lactobacteria. I\'ve heard that a DNA string contains as much
information as a book, so we\'ll have plenty of bandwidth.\"

In a commercial setting, time is money. There comes a point where it
would make more sense for the company to use the money to buy lottery
tickets than to spend time seriously considering pointless ideas.

I was in HP Labs at the time, before the likes of Princess
Fiorina didn\'t like the cost of the \"technology gambles\"
HPLabs was making. They decided that they would rather
\"invest\" the money buying companies with successful
products.

Long after I left they implemented that policy, and bought
things like WebOS and Autonomy. My, didn\'t that work
well - not.

 

[David Brown]

On 02/02/2022 22:42, Don Y wrote:

On 2/2/2022 1:41 PM, Tom Gardner wrote:
I once provoked an interesting thought in a brainstorm about
networking by asking \"how would you do that with yoghurt?\"

A big part of brainstorming is to defy the \"group-think\"
that so permeates organizations.  To challenge what they
thin of as \"obvious\" and demand explanations for why things
\"must\" be a certain way (what makes that a *requirement*
other than \"that\'s how we\'ve always done it\" or \"that seems
the obvious way forward\")

Sure. And that\'s very important.

But it is also important to be realistic. You can picture this as a
sort of Poisson curve. Most improvements on a product (or whatever) do
come from small changes and steps. Big changes and improvements come
from more far-out ideas and innovations, but they are correspondingly
rarer and less likely to succeed. When you go too far out on the tail,
the likelihood of ending up with a positive payback becomes negligible.

Thus the sensible economic strategy for a company will usually mean that
most of their effort goes to the low-risk but low-payoff changes -
conservative viewpoint. They also need to put /some/ effort into the
bigger gambles of ideas and development where the likelihood of success
is much lower, but the pay-off is higher. But you don\'t waste time and
money in the ridiculous ideas unless you have money to burn - it is only
when you are the size of IBM that you can afford to get patents on
faster-than-light travel.

Sometimes companies get the balance wrong, and are /too/ conservative.
But large, established companies can\'t take too many risks either - they
have a responsibility to their employees, customers, suppliers and
shareholders who all benefit more from slow and steady rather than big
all-or-nothing risks. It is the small startups that can take those risks.

This is particularly true of organizations that don\'t have
much inherent variety in their product offerings and much
market pressure to explore new options.

Yes.

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 16:55:32 +0000, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 16:42, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 15:35:05 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 14:35, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 14:31:54 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 13:49, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 12:11:03 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 10:26, Martin Brown wrote:
On 01/02/2022 11:36, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 01/02/22 10:28, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 1 Feb 2022 08:41:38 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

Why can\'t
we deliberately change our genome to our benefit?

We will soon be able to. Future tense.

We already are for certain genetic disorders where the correct functioning gene
can be inserted into the relevant cells locally to correct a problem but without
altering any of the germ line cells.

https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/gene-therapy-techniques-restore-vision-damage-age-and-glaucoma-mice

To me \"insert into the genome\" implies the germ cell lines.

A gene has to get into a sperm or egg to be passed into a population.
A nose spray won\'t do that. [1]

That\'s another annoyance onto the random-mutation-selection concept.
Most mutations are in the wrong cells to be passed to descendents, and
most descendents will drop the ball anyhow.

It is true that most mutations aren\'t in the sperm/egg cells - they
are in cancerous cells.

But so what? That\'s irrelevant to evolution mechanisms.

Instant hostility to new ideas must be hereditary too.

New ideas are ten-a-penny, and that\'s being generous.
Any idiot can generate ideas, and many do[1].

Certainly. We\'ve had brainstorming sessions when some intern said
something dumb that triggered a chain of thought that turned out to be
big. The key is to think and play and not slap.

So have I, many times - in a brainstorming session.

In a brainstorming session everybody knows that different
rules are operating. This isn\'t a brainstorming session,
and the normal rules of discussion and conversation apply.

Why can\'t people suggest new ideas in an online discussion group?

And do you make the rules?

Good, reasoned, justified ideas are worth much more,
because they are rare and the process takes time.

Crazy ideas may be in the path to that, if you don\'t kill them on
sight.

They should be killed before they escape from a brainstorming
session.

Do you switch new-idea hostility on and off? Take amnesia pills when
the formal thinking session is over?

Do you only allow yourself to have ideas during officially declared
times? I guess that\'s better than never having any ideas, but seems
restrictive.

Brainstorming isn\'t so much an event as it\'s an organizational
attitude.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc trk

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
\"Bunter\", he said, \"I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason\"

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 20:50:20 +0100, David Brown
<david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 02/02/2022 17:55, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 02/02/22 16:42, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 15:35:05 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 14:35, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 14:31:54 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 13:49, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 12:11:03 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 10:26, Martin Brown wrote:
On 01/02/2022 11:36, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 01/02/22 10:28, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 1 Feb 2022 08:41:38 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

Why can\'t
we deliberately change our genome to our benefit?

We will soon be able to. Future tense.

We already are for certain genetic disorders where the correct
functioning gene
can be inserted into the relevant cells locally to correct a
problem but without
altering any of the germ line cells.

https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/gene-therapy-techniques-restore-vision-damage-age-and-glaucoma-mice


To me \"insert into the genome\" implies the germ cell lines.

A gene has to get into a sperm or egg to be passed into a population.
A nose spray won\'t do that. [1]

That\'s another annoyance onto the random-mutation-selection concept.
Most mutations are in the wrong cells to be passed to descendents,
and
most descendents will drop the ball anyhow.

It is true that most mutations aren\'t in the sperm/egg cells - they
are in cancerous cells.

But so what? That\'s irrelevant to evolution mechanisms.

Instant hostility to new ideas must be hereditary too.

New ideas are ten-a-penny, and that\'s being generous.
Any idiot can generate ideas, and many do[1].

Certainly. We\'ve had brainstorming sessions when some intern said
something dumb that triggered a chain of thought that turned out to be
big. The key is to think and play and not slap.

So have I, many times - in a brainstorming session.

In a brainstorming session everybody knows that different
rules are operating. This isn\'t a brainstorming session,
and the normal rules of discussion and conversation apply.



Good, reasoned, justified ideas are worth much more,
because they are rare and the process takes time.

Crazy ideas may be in the path to that, if you don\'t kill them on
sight.

They should be killed before they escape from a brainstorming
session.

The craziest ones should, of course, be killed before escaping from the
mouth - even in brainstorming. It\'s fine to say - in brainstorming -
that people should not be embarrassed about giving crazy ideas, nor
should they be put down for suggesting them. But there is no need to
waste everyone\'s time with the silliest of ideas born from pure
ignorance of the topic in question.

(Trump could have benefited from learning this - along with the
distinction between a press conference and a wild brainstorming meeting.)

Larkin likes to pretend he has no limits to the ideas he will consider,
but everyone does.

He will, of course, dismiss my ideas here out of hand - simply because
they don\'t match /his/ ideas.

That rant is itself a wonderful example of hostility to other peoples\'
ideas.

Too recursive.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc trk

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
\"Bunter\", he said, \"I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason\"

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 20:41:09 +0000, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 19:50, David Brown wrote:
On 02/02/2022 17:55, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 02/02/22 16:42, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 15:35:05 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 14:35, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 14:31:54 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 13:49, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 12:11:03 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 10:26, Martin Brown wrote:
On 01/02/2022 11:36, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 01/02/22 10:28, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 1 Feb 2022 08:41:38 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

Why can\'t
we deliberately change our genome to our benefit?

We will soon be able to. Future tense.

We already are for certain genetic disorders where the correct
functioning gene
can be inserted into the relevant cells locally to correct a
problem but without
altering any of the germ line cells.

https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/gene-therapy-techniques-restore-vision-damage-age-and-glaucoma-mice


To me \"insert into the genome\" implies the germ cell lines.

A gene has to get into a sperm or egg to be passed into a population.
A nose spray won\'t do that. [1]

That\'s another annoyance onto the random-mutation-selection concept.
Most mutations are in the wrong cells to be passed to descendents,
and
most descendents will drop the ball anyhow.

It is true that most mutations aren\'t in the sperm/egg cells - they
are in cancerous cells.

But so what? That\'s irrelevant to evolution mechanisms.

Instant hostility to new ideas must be hereditary too.

New ideas are ten-a-penny, and that\'s being generous.
Any idiot can generate ideas, and many do[1].

Certainly. We\'ve had brainstorming sessions when some intern said
something dumb that triggered a chain of thought that turned out to be
big. The key is to think and play and not slap.

So have I, many times - in a brainstorming session.

In a brainstorming session everybody knows that different
rules are operating. This isn\'t a brainstorming session,
and the normal rules of discussion and conversation apply.



Good, reasoned, justified ideas are worth much more,
because they are rare and the process takes time.

Crazy ideas may be in the path to that, if you don\'t kill them on
sight.

They should be killed before they escape from a brainstorming
session.

The craziest ones should, of course, be killed before escaping from the
mouth - even in brainstorming.

I once provoked an interesting thought in a brainstorm about
networking by asking \"how would you do that with yoghurt?\"


It\'s fine to say - in brainstorming -
that people should not be embarrassed about giving crazy ideas, nor
should they be put down for suggesting them. But there is no need to
waste everyone\'s time with the silliest of ideas born from pure
ignorance of the topic in question.

Larkin appears not to understand that the second phase of
brainstorming is to prune the disassociated neural firings
into a much smaller set that is worth considering.

Don\'t be silly. We manufacture and sell megabucks of stuff that
originated in brainstorming sessions. If you actually design
electronics, you buy the chips that resulted from one.

After you find ideas, they need to be implemented with severe
engineering discipline. But they need to be found first. Not many
people can do both.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc trk

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
\"Bunter\", he said, \"I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason\"

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 14:42:30 -0700, Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid>
wrote:

On 2/2/2022 1:41 PM, Tom Gardner wrote:
I once provoked an interesting thought in a brainstorm about
networking by asking \"how would you do that with yoghurt?\"

A big part of brainstorming is to defy the \"group-think\"
that so permeates organizations. To challenge what they
thin of as \"obvious\" and demand explanations for why things
\"must\" be a certain way (what makes that a *requirement*
other than \"that\'s how we\'ve always done it\" or \"that seems
the obvious way forward\")

This is particularly true of organizations that don\'t have
much inherent variety in their product offerings and much
market pressure to explore new options.

Right. Some people poison idea creation and evolution. In an
unmoderated newsgroup, we have lots of people like that.

They often poison as teams.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc trk

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
\"Bunter\", he said, \"I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason\"

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 3 Feb 2022 10:47:44 +0100, David Brown
<david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 02/02/2022 22:42, Don Y wrote:
On 2/2/2022 1:41 PM, Tom Gardner wrote:
I once provoked an interesting thought in a brainstorm about
networking by asking \"how would you do that with yoghurt?\"

A big part of brainstorming is to defy the \"group-think\"
that so permeates organizations.  To challenge what they
thin of as \"obvious\" and demand explanations for why things
\"must\" be a certain way (what makes that a *requirement*
other than \"that\'s how we\'ve always done it\" or \"that seems
the obvious way forward\")


Sure. And that\'s very important.

But it is also important to be realistic. You can picture this as a
sort of Poisson curve. Most improvements on a product (or whatever) do
come from small changes and steps. Big changes and improvements come
from more far-out ideas and innovations, but they are correspondingly
rarer and less likely to succeed. When you go too far out on the tail,
the likelihood of ending up with a positive payback becomes negligible.

Thus the sensible economic strategy for a company will usually mean that
most of their effort goes to the low-risk but low-payoff changes -
conservative viewpoint. They also need to put /some/ effort into the
bigger gambles of ideas and development where the likelihood of success
is much lower, but the pay-off is higher. But you don\'t waste time and
money in the ridiculous ideas unless you have money to burn - it is only
when you are the size of IBM that you can afford to get patents on
faster-than-light travel.

Sometimes companies get the balance wrong, and are /too/ conservative.
But large, established companies can\'t take too many risks either - they
have a responsibility to their employees, customers, suppliers and
shareholders who all benefit more from slow and steady rather than big
all-or-nothing risks. It is the small startups that can take those risks.

This is particularly true of organizations that don\'t have
much inherent variety in their product offerings and much
market pressure to explore new options.

Yes.

I work with a couple of Fellows of a largish aerospace company. They
create Fellows because they know that they need ideas. A Fellow has a
nominal boss whose only responsibility is to issue a paycheck; the
Fellows do whatever they want wherever they want. One of my pals has
two offices, it two cities, so nobody knows where he is.

Every year or two, all the Fellows, I think about 150, are flown to a
luxury resort for a week to brainstorm, or to do whatever they want.
There are no rules, no agenda, free drinks.

It seems to work.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc trk

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
\"Bunter\", he said, \"I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason\"

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 3 Feb 2022 09:08:50 +0100, David Brown
<david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 02/02/2022 21:41, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 02/02/22 19:50, David Brown wrote:
On 02/02/2022 17:55, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 02/02/22 16:42, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 15:35:05 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 14:35, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 14:31:54 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 13:49, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 12:11:03 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 10:26, Martin Brown wrote:
On 01/02/2022 11:36, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 01/02/22 10:28, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 1 Feb 2022 08:41:38 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

Why can\'t
we deliberately change our genome to our benefit?

We will soon be able to. Future tense.

We already are for certain genetic disorders where the correct
functioning gene
can be inserted into the relevant cells locally to correct a
problem but without
altering any of the germ line cells.

https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/gene-therapy-techniques-restore-vision-damage-age-and-glaucoma-mice



To me \"insert into the genome\" implies the germ cell lines.

A gene has to get into a sperm or egg to be passed into a
population.
A nose spray won\'t do that. [1]

That\'s another annoyance onto the random-mutation-selection
concept.
Most mutations are in the wrong cells to be passed to descendents,
and
most descendents will drop the ball anyhow.

It is true that most mutations aren\'t in the sperm/egg cells - they
are in cancerous cells.

But so what? That\'s irrelevant to evolution mechanisms.

Instant hostility to new ideas must be hereditary too.

New ideas are ten-a-penny, and that\'s being generous.
Any idiot can generate ideas, and many do[1].

Certainly. We\'ve had brainstorming sessions when some intern said
something dumb that triggered a chain of thought that turned out to be
big. The key is to think and play and not slap.

So have I, many times - in a brainstorming session.

In a brainstorming session everybody knows that different
rules are operating. This isn\'t a brainstorming session,
and the normal rules of discussion and conversation apply.



Good, reasoned, justified ideas are worth much more,
because they are rare and the process takes time.

Crazy ideas may be in the path to that, if you don\'t kill them on
sight.

They should be killed before they escape from a brainstorming
session.

The craziest ones should, of course, be killed before escaping from the
mouth - even in brainstorming. 

I once provoked an interesting thought in a brainstorm about
networking by asking \"how would you do that with yoghurt?\"


That\'s a silly question, not a crazy idea - and very occasionally such
silly comments can lead to profitable discussions. Mostly they are a
waste of time. A \"crazy idea\" is when you start expounding on a
obviously impossible or ridiculous notion - \"We\'ll use bio-active
yoghurt and encode encryption algorithms in the DNA of the
lactobacteria. I\'ve heard that a DNA string contains as much
information as a book, so we\'ll have plenty of bandwidth.\"

In a commercial setting, time is money.

How about a few billion dollars per hour? I\'ve seen it happen.

There comes a point where it

would make more sense for the company to use the money to buy lottery
tickets than to spend time seriously considering pointless ideas.

Exactly where that point is, and how to classify questions, ideas or
statements - that\'s a different matter, and there is no simple answer.

Once you start classifying ideas, you\'ve wrecked the concept. That is
outright hostility to brainstorming.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc trk

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
\"Bunter\", he said, \"I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason\"

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 12:44:30 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 16:55:32 +0000, Tom Gardner <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
On 02/02/22 16:42, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 15:35:05 +0000, Tom Gardner <spam...@blueyonder.co..uk> wrote:
On 02/02/22 14:35, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 14:31:54 +0000, Tom Gardner <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
On 02/02/22 13:49, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 12:11:03 +0000, Tom Gardner <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
On 02/02/22 10:26, Martin Brown wrote:
On 01/02/2022 11:36, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 01/02/22 10:28, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 1 Feb 2022 08:41:38 +0000, Tom Gardner <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

<snip>

It is true that most mutations aren\'t in the sperm/egg cells - they are in cancerous cells.

But so what? That\'s irrelevant to evolution mechanisms.

Instant hostility to new ideas must be hereditary too.

New ideas are ten-a-penny, and that\'s being generous.
Any idiot can generate ideas, and many do[1].

Certainly. We\'ve had brainstorming sessions when some intern said
something dumb that triggered a chain of thought that turned out to be
big. The key is to think and play and not slap.

So have I, many times - in a brainstorming session.

In a brainstorming session everybody knows that different
rules are operating. This isn\'t a brainstorming session,
and the normal rules of discussion and conversation apply.

Why can\'t people suggest new ideas in an online discussion group?

They can - this is an unmoderated group and you can post what you like.

> And do you make the rules?

The rule is that this is an unmoderated group, and if your \"new ideas\" are a waste bandwidth, we can be rude about them. Sensible people get the message and minimise the nonsense content. You do seem to be less than sensible.

Good, reasoned, justified ideas are worth much more, because they are rare and the process takes time.

Crazy ideas may be in the path to that, if you don\'t kill them on sight.

They should be killed before they escape from a brainstorming session.

Do you switch new-idea hostility on and off? Take amnesia pills when
the formal thinking session is over?

The hostility level may get turned down during brainstorming sessions, but the nonsense detector is never turned off. Anybody who produces complete nonsense in a brainstorming session session has missed the point, and will suffer for it.

> Do you only allow yourself to have ideas during officially declared times? I guess that\'s better than never having any ideas, but seems restrictive..

Don\'t be silly. Ideas come up when they fell like emerging. Brain-storming sessions are aimed at getting people to come up with them faster than they otherwise might, but I can\'t say they\'ve ever looked that useful to me.

> Brainstorming isn\'t so much an event as it\'s an organizational attitude.

More like a managerial gesture aimed at reminding people that new ideas can be useful, and that you should talk to your boss about it if you happen to come up with one. It can be much more profitable to resign and set up at start-up to exploit the new idea, but most start-up do fail.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 12:46:43 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 20:50:20 +0100, David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:
On 02/02/2022 17:55, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 02/02/22 16:42, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 15:35:05 +0000, Tom Gardner <spam...@blueyonder.co..uk> wrote:
On 02/02/22 14:35, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 14:31:54 +0000, Tom Gardner <spam...@blueyonder..co.uk> wrote:
On 02/02/22 13:49, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 12:11:03 +0000, Tom Gardner <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
On 02/02/22 10:26, Martin Brown wrote:
On 01/02/2022 11:36, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 01/02/22 10:28, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 1 Feb 2022 08:41:38 +0000, Tom Gardner <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

<snip>

Larkin likes to pretend he has no limits to the ideas he will consider, but everyone does.

He will, of course, dismiss my ideas here out of hand - simply because they don\'t match /his/ ideas.

That rant is itself a wonderful example of hostility to other peoples\' ideas.

Wrong. The hostility expressed is to your behavior. You do have a habit of posting silly ideas, but that isn\'t the problem - it is your enthusiasm for claiming that you have a right to be a silly as you like, and that people shouldn\'t criticise you for posting ignorant nonsense

> Too recursive.

No. Just silly.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 12:50:59 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 20:41:09 +0000, Tom Gardner
spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 19:50, David Brown wrote:
On 02/02/2022 17:55, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 02/02/22 16:42, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 15:35:05 +0000, Tom Gardner <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
On 02/02/22 14:35, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 14:31:54 +0000, Tom Gardner <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
On 02/02/22 13:49, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 12:11:03 +0000, Tom Gardner <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
On 02/02/22 10:26, Martin Brown wrote:
On 01/02/2022 11:36, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 01/02/22 10:28, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 1 Feb 2022 08:41:38 +0000, Tom Gardner <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

snip

Larkin appears not to understand that the second phase of
brainstorming is to prune the disassociated neural firings
into a much smaller set that is worth considering.
Don\'t be silly. We manufacture and sell megabucks of stuff that
originated in brainstorming sessions. If you actually design
electronics, you buy the chips that resulted from one.

You sell stuff to ASML, but Phil Hobbs seems to have come up with the secret sauce, and you merely put together the circuits he designed.
He\'s not going to admit it - it wouldn\'t make you all that happy if he did - but that does look to be the most plausible explanation.

> After you find ideas, they need to be implemented with severe engineering discipline. But they need to be found first. Not many people can do both.

I\'ve met quite a few, and most of them have more patent to their name than you do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Blumlein

is an example you might aspire to - he had clocked up 128 patents when he died aged 38.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 1:05:30 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 3 Feb 2022 09:08:50 +0100, David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:
On 02/02/2022 21:41, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 02/02/22 19:50, David Brown wrote:
On 02/02/2022 17:55, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 02/02/22 16:42, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 15:35:05 +0000, Tom Gardner <spam...@blueyonder..co.uk> wrote:
On 02/02/22 14:35, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 14:31:54 +0000, Tom Gardner <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
On 02/02/22 13:49, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 12:11:03 +0000, Tom Gardner <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
On 02/02/22 10:26, Martin Brown wrote:
On 01/02/2022 11:36, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 01/02/22 10:28, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 1 Feb 2022 08:41:38 +0000, Tom Gardner <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

<snip>

In a commercial setting, time is money.

How about a few billion dollars per hour? I\'ve seen it happen.

Or think that you did.

There comes a point where it would make more sense for the company to use the money to buy lottery tickets than to spend time seriously considering pointless ideas.

Exactly where that point is, and how to classify questions, ideas or statements - that\'s a different matter, and there is no simple answer.

Once you start classifying ideas, you\'ve wrecked the concept.

Twaddle.

> That is outright hostility to brainstorming.

It might be outright hostility to what John Larkin imagines to be brainstorming, but brainstorming is coming up with ideas that might serve a purpose, and the purpose forces the listeners to classify the ideas into relevant and irrelevant. Practical and practicable come later.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[David Brown]

On 03/02/2022 15:16, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 12:46:43 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 20:50:20 +0100, David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote: wrote:

snip

Larkin likes to pretend he has no limits to the ideas he will consider, but everyone does.

He will, of course, dismiss my ideas here out of hand - simply because they don\'t match /his/ ideas.

That rant is itself a wonderful example of hostility to other peoples\' ideas.

Exactly as I predicted. John Larkin expects everyone to consider his
daftest and most ignorant outpourings (they usually don\'t have enough
thought behind them to be called \"ideas\") as worthy of serious
discussion. He thinks they should be treated as being on the same
standing as long-established scientific theory and consensus in the
field until it can be proven - to his satisfaction (which never happens)
- that he was wrong.

On the other hand, he is openly hostile to anyone else\'s comments,
ideas, or explanations of real-life science and facts. The hostility is
often wrapped in his martyr syndrome - we are all being nasty to him by
not bowing down to his self-proclaimed genius.

Wrong. The hostility expressed is to your behavior. You do have a habit of posting silly ideas, but that isn\'t the problem - it is your enthusiasm for claiming that you have a right to be a silly as you like, and that people shouldn\'t criticise you for posting ignorant nonsense

That\'s it.

John - and anyone else - is free to post as silly comments as they like.
And sometimes we end up with entertaining threads, starting with a
silly post.

But people who are less ignorant and more capable of rational thought
are equally free to call them out for being silly, and sometimes to
explain the reality of how the world actually works.

Larkin would do better if he read these explanations, learned from them,
and used them as positive feedback to post less silly and more
interesting ideas in the future. Instead, he prefers to attack
pointlessly with the same tired old routine - claiming we are dismissing
ideas out of hand, therefore we can\'t brainstorm, therefore we are bad
engineers and he is a genius.

So how about you just accept that the huge majority of random crazy
ideas are utterly worthless, and /can/ be quickly dismissed? Keep
posting them if you like, but stop getting your knickers in a twist when
people tell you they are daft.

(And Bill, please stop obsessing about patent counts. They are a
totally useless measurement or indication of inventiveness, design
ability or anything else. They are primarily a business technique for
beating down the competition as an alternative to building better
products, and such a tiny percentage of granted patents represent truly
innovate inventions that there is no point in bringing them up.)

 

[Joe Gwinn]

On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 20:21:18 +0100, David Brown
<david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 02/02/2022 17:51, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 16:29:53 +0100, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 02/02/2022 14:49, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 12:11:03 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 02/02/22 10:26, Martin Brown wrote:
On 01/02/2022 11:36, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 01/02/22 10:28, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 1 Feb 2022 08:41:38 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

Why can\'t
we deliberately change our genome to our benefit?

We will soon be able to. Future tense.

We already are for certain genetic disorders where the correct functioning gene
can be inserted into the relevant cells locally to correct a problem but without
altering any of the germ line cells.

https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/gene-therapy-techniques-restore-vision-damage-age-and-glaucoma-mice

To me \"insert into the genome\" implies the germ cell lines.

A gene has to get into a sperm or egg to be passed into a population.
A nose spray won\'t do that. [1]

That\'s another annoyance onto the random-mutation-selection concept.
Most mutations are in the wrong cells to be passed to descendents, and
most descendents will drop the ball anyhow.


That might annoy /you/, but it is not something that affects the
validity of the theory of evolution. It just means that random mutation
of genes within a cell is a slow modifier in the evolution of
multi-cellular organisms.

A far bigger effect is sexual mixup of genes, which is also a
\"random-mutation-selection\" concept but on a different scale.


[1] Barring horizontal transmission from viruses or kissing. Maybe
kissing is a way of sharing genes in a tribe. Maybe kissing is
biologically important.


Viruses are an important vector for evolution. They are a common source
of horizontal gene transfer in microbes. Mutation or gene transfer via
viruses does not happen often in higher organisms

Are you sure of that? Horizontal transfer is a huge boost to
evolution, and everything has to evolve. Dispersion of improvements by
family descent is very inefficient.

Retroviruses do in fact insert their genes into the somatic genomes of
their hosts. Some of it makes it into the germline genome over time.

We know this because there are lots of (usually nonfunctional) viral
genomes in the genome of all animals large enough to see. HIV is the
current poster child in humans, SIV in simians.


Some bacterial can also fiddle with host DNA.

..<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolbachia>

No, everything does not have to evolve - there are lots of organisms
that have changed very little for perhaps hundreds of millions of years.
Horizontal transfers /can/ introduce new genes, but the /vast/ majority
of horizontal transfers are detrimental to the organism if they do
anything noticeable at all.

True, but relevance unclear. And in Biology, there is always an
asterisk or two.

You may have heard of the \"immune system\". One of its jobs is to
minimise virus infections - identifying and destroying virus particles,
and destroying any cells that get infected. The better an organism\'s
immune system (and even bacteria have immune systems to counter
viruses), the lower the opportunity for virus infections of any sort,
never mind ones that transfer genes.

Patronizing. Not effective.

To get a horizontal transfer via a virus, you need multiple things to
happen. First, the virus must infect one host\'s cell but make a
monumental screw-up during the infection, so that a bit of the host\'s
DNA gets caught up along with the virus DNA when the cell replicates the
virus. That happens, but it\'s extremely rare - and usually such
mistakes means no successful virus production. Then this modified virus
needs to get into another host, and have another monumental screw-up on
the part of the virus /and/ on the part of the host cell, where the DNA
fragment gets mixed with the host\'s DNA. And then the host cell must
eliminate the virus (so that it doesn\'t die by virus reproduction), and
the DNA change must be non-fatal to the cell. If this happens in the
target host\'s germ cells then the mutation will pass on to the next
generation (probably killing them long before they can produce
descendants of their own). Otherwise you\'ve made either a one-off cell
change that ends with the cell\'s death, or a tumour.

Horizontal transfer from viruses to big animals like humans does in
fact happen, as discussed above.

And even if horizontal transfers /were/ as potentially useful for
evolution in the long term as you imagine, that does not mean it
happens. You have this bizarre belief that just because something is
useful or efficient (in your eyes at least), evolution will cause it to
evolve.

Even though evolution is blind, it does seem to solve whatever problem
is presented, because that\'s where the most stress is.

Evolution does not have aims, guides, or targets. It is not intelligent
or guided. It does not optimise, or reach ideal solutions. It does not
make huge leaps to new methods just because you think these might be a
good idea. It does not always eliminate bad traits and enhance good
ones. It does not necessarily lead to the best choices or the \"fittest\"
results.

Actually, evolution does in fact optimize. Where needed. See above.

(as you say, they have
to hit egg or sperm cells - and the great majority of mutations are
either lethal or have little significant effect). But they are vital
for getting completely new features into the population. The placenta
in mammals, for example, has been traced to virus gene transfer.

As for kissing - how exactly do you think that would transfer genes?

For one, by transferring viruses. Maybe even cells.


Do you not realise how ignorant that sounds?

Ad hominem. Not effective.

Let\'s take an analogy that might make it simpler for you. A cell is
like an electronics board, and its genetic code is like the schematic
and pcb design for the board. Do you think you can change the designs
of the boards in some machine just by putting a different board beside
them? That\'s your \"cells transferred by kissing\" idea.

Perhaps you should bang the different boards together and see what
happens - that\'s the horizontal transfer. One time out of a billion you
might make a short-circuit, or break a track, that gives one of the
boards new characteristics that you hadn\'t seen before.

Compare that to taking two extremely similar designs (99% or more
match), and swapping a few corresponding sections of the schematic to
see if there is an improvement. If you\'ve swapped something critical,
it will probably not work at all. If you\'ve swapped some values of
filter components, maybe you\'ll get a slightly better filter. That is
the analogue of sexual reproduction.

Which method do /you/ think is going to be more successful?

This is a straw man argument, and deeply flawed to boot. DNA and RNA
are recipe strings, and not schematics, so the analogy fails.

One can use Genetic Programming to evolve circuit designs. Was
interesting, but did not turn out to be all that useful in practice.

..<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_programming>

Evolutionary Design of Digital Circuits Using Genetic Programming

..<https://arxiv.org/abs/1304.2467>

If you don\'t want that random brain-fart to be dismissed, you\'ll have to
justify why you think there is significant genetic material in spit,

Dismissed? Ideas should be played with. But I don\'t mind if you
instinctively attack ideas... less competition.


I offered you a chance to justify your idea before I dismissed it. It
turns out you had nothing. Good ideas are useful - but your view that
all ideas are somehow worthy for consideration is absurd. (I didn\'t
dismiss it out of hand - I thought about it, then dismissed it.)

People are put in prison based on the genes in a bit of spit.


Yes - so what? Do you think the DNA in someone else\'s spit magically
transforms you? Seriously? Do you also think that if you eat chicken,
you might sprout feathers? (Are you going to dismiss that idea out of
hand?) If a radioactive spider bites you and injects some of its DNA in
its saliva, is that going to turn you into a superhero? (Surely you
will play around with that idea too, to give you an edge on your
competition.)

Males kiss, as kissing the hand or ring of a king or the pope. Some
cultures kiss a lot more than we do.


And some do so less. None of that matters.

If kissing spreads disease, it would be deselected. But it\'s not. Same
with shaking hands... spreads germs!


Kissing /does/ spread disease - as does shaking hands, and any kind of
contact. But the benefits usually outweigh the risks.

Well, to be precise, what is deselected are people who cannot handle
the close contact needed to be a species of social animal. Immune
systems also evolve to suit.


You are talking past one another. Your objectives are different, so
both can be correct, or not, independently of one another.


Joe Gwinn

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 3 Feb 2022 16:33:25 +0100, David Brown
<david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 03/02/2022 15:16, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 12:46:43 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 20:50:20 +0100, David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote: wrote:

snip

Larkin likes to pretend he has no limits to the ideas he will consider, but everyone does.

He will, of course, dismiss my ideas here out of hand - simply because they don\'t match /his/ ideas.

That rant is itself a wonderful example of hostility to other peoples\' ideas.

Exactly as I predicted. John Larkin expects everyone to consider his
daftest and most ignorant outpourings (they usually don\'t have enough
thought behind them to be called \"ideas\") as worthy of serious
discussion. He thinks they should be treated as being on the same
standing as long-established scientific theory and consensus in the
field until it can be proven - to his satisfaction (which never happens)
- that he was wrong.

That\'s absurd. I admit to generating a lot of goofy ideas. And to
designing \"lunatic fringe electronics.\"

Works for me.

It is interesting how many people want to talk about me and not talk
about electronics.

\"long-established scientific theory\" doesn\'t design anything.

On the other hand, he is openly hostile to anyone else\'s comments,
ideas, or explanations of real-life science and facts. The hostility is
often wrapped in his martyr syndrome - we are all being nasty to him by
not bowing down to his self-proclaimed genius.


Wrong. The hostility expressed is to your behavior. You do have a habit of posting silly ideas, but that isn\'t the problem - it is your enthusiasm for claiming that you have a right to be a silly as you like, and that people shouldn\'t criticise you for posting ignorant nonsense

If they were real electronic designers, they would join the game and
play with ideas and not stomp on them. Few people have the guts to do
that in public.

That\'s it.

John - and anyone else - is free to post as silly comments as they like.
And sometimes we end up with entertaining threads, starting with a
silly post.

But people who are less ignorant and more capable of rational thought
are equally free to call them out for being silly, and sometimes to
explain the reality of how the world actually works.

Larkin would do better if he read these explanations, learned from them,
and used them as positive feedback to post less silly and more
interesting ideas in the future. Instead, he prefers to attack
pointlessly with the same tired old routine - claiming we are dismissing
ideas out of hand, therefore we can\'t brainstorm, therefore we are bad
engineers and he is a genius.

That\'s about right.

So how about you just accept that the huge majority of random crazy
ideas are utterly worthless, and /can/ be quickly dismissed? Keep
posting them if you like, but stop getting your knickers in a twist when
people tell you they are daft.

(And Bill, please stop obsessing about patent counts. They are a
totally useless measurement or indication of inventiveness, design
ability or anything else. They are primarily a business technique for
beating down the competition as an alternative to building better
products, and such a tiny percentage of granted patents represent truly
innovate inventions that there is no point in bringing them up.)

That\'s all he\'s got, some old patents and some old papers. Sad.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc trk

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
\"Bunter\", he said, \"I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason\"

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 2:33:38 AM UTC+11, David Brown wrote:

On 03/02/2022 15:16, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 12:46:43 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 20:50:20 +0100, David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote: wrote:

<snip>

(And Bill, please stop obsessing about patent counts. They are a
totally useless measurement or indication of inventiveness, design
ability or anything else. They are primarily a business technique for
beating down the competition as an alternative to building better
products, and such a tiny percentage of granted patents represent truly
innovate inventions that there is no point in bringing them up.)

Actually, they aren\'t totally useless. The patenting system is much abused, but the tiny percentage of granted patents that cover and protect truly innovative inventions protect most of the useful innovations that have got us where we are today. Blumlein\'s 128 patents included stereo recording and colour television.

When I worked at EMI Central Research, they were patent-mad, in much the same way that Bell Labs, RCA and IBM were, but I met

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfrey_Hounsfield

who invented the brain-scanner. I also met, and managed to avoid working with, Christopher A. G. LeMay

who patented the signal processing scheme that made the brain scanner practical

C. A. G. Lemay, “Method and apparatus for constructing a representation of a planar’s slice of body exposed to penetrating radiation,” U.S. Patent No. 3,924,129 (1975).

Hounsfield was odd. LeMay was a total menace - he\'d work late and tinker with the gear under development without documenting his changes. The people working on the project that I\'d managed to avoid had to go over their gear every morning to find out what he\'d done and either document it or correct it.

One of my friends invented - and patented - a better confocal microscope, and everybody making confocal microscopes ended up paying license fees to the company he\'d set up. He ended up collecting a few million dollars for his contribution.

My father had 25 patents. A couple of them were commercially significant. He didn\'t get a lot of money out of them, but they did make an appreciable difference to the world (though you\'d have to be a pulp and paper chemist to know how). He was world famous in that very small world.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 11:08:34 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 3 Feb 2022 16:33:25 +0100, David Brown
david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 03/02/2022 15:16, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 12:46:43 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 20:50:20 +0100, David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote: wrote:

snip

Larkin likes to pretend he has no limits to the ideas he will consider, but everyone does.

He will, of course, dismiss my ideas here out of hand - simply because they don\'t match /his/ ideas.

That rant is itself a wonderful example of hostility to other peoples\' ideas.

Exactly as I predicted. John Larkin expects everyone to consider his
daftest and most ignorant outpourings (they usually don\'t have enough
thought behind them to be called \"ideas\") as worthy of serious
discussion. He thinks they should be treated as being on the same
standing as long-established scientific theory and consensus in the
field until it can be proven - to his satisfaction (which never happens)
- that he was wrong.

That\'s absurd.

But it\'s your behavior that\'s absurd, not the description of it.

> I admit to generating a lot of goofy ideas. And to designing \"lunatic fringe electronics.\"

You have claimed that your circuits are \"insanely good\". They don\'t seem to be all that good.

> Works for me.

What works for you is your conviction that what you are selling is good. It\'s clearly good enough to sell, and people who sell stuff to like to make exaggerated claims about the value of what they are selling. If you have sincere (even if mistaken) ideas about the high quality of your products, you\'ll sell them more effectively.

It is interesting how many people want to talk about me and not talk
about electronics.

Nobody wants to talk with you about electronics - you don\'t have anything useful to say.

> \"long-established scientific theory\" doesn\'t design anything.

Of course it doesn\'t. But knowing more about what you are designing, and the problems you are designing to solve can be very helpful.

On the other hand, he is openly hostile to anyone else\'s comments,
ideas, or explanations of real-life science and facts. The hostility is
often wrapped in his martyr syndrome - we are all being nasty to him by
not bowing down to his self-proclaimed genius.

Wrong. The hostility expressed is to your behavior. You do have a habit of posting silly ideas, but that isn\'t the problem - it is your enthusiasm for claiming that you have a right to be a silly as you like, and that people shouldn\'t criticise you for posting ignorant nonsense.

If they were real electronic designers, they would join the game and
play with ideas and not stomp on them. Few people have the guts to do
that in public.

You certainly don\'t.

That\'s it.

John - and anyone else - is free to post as silly comments as they like.
And sometimes we end up with entertaining threads, starting with a
silly post.

But people who are less ignorant and more capable of rational thought
are equally free to call them out for being silly, and sometimes to
explain the reality of how the world actually works.

Larkin would do better if he read these explanations, learned from them,
and used them as positive feedback to post less silly and more
interesting ideas in the future. Instead, he prefers to attack
pointlessly with the same tired old routine - claiming we are dismissing
ideas out of hand, therefore we can\'t brainstorm, therefore we are bad
engineers and he is a genius.

That\'s about right.

Or so John Larkin likes to think
If he can\'t get the flattery he wants, he flatters himself.

(And Bill, please stop obsessing about patent counts. They are a
totally useless measurement or indication of inventiveness, design
ability or anything else.

Not strictly true. Good patents are worth millions, but it isn\'t easy to pick out the small proportion of patents that are worth taking out. Places like Bell Labs, EMI Central Research, RCA and IBM patented everything they could so that they didn\'t miss any opportunity.

> >They are primarily a business technique for beating down the competition as an alternative to building better products, and such a tiny percentage of granted patents represent truly innovate inventions that there is no point in bringing them up.)

Wrong. The small proportion of truly innovative and useful patents pay for all the others and quite lot more. Without the protection they offer to genuine and useful innovations, we\'d have fewer innovations. The patent system was invented for a reason. There might be a better way of doing what it does, but nobody seems to have invented it yet.

> That\'s all he\'s got, some old patents and some old papers. Sad.

John Larkin hasn\'t even got that, so he decides that they aren\'t worth having. Predictably.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[David Brown]

On 04/02/2022 02:04, Anthony William Sloman wrote:

On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 2:33:38 AM UTC+11, David Brown wrote:
On 03/02/2022 15:16, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 12:46:43 AM UTC+11, John Larkin
wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 20:50:20 +0100, David Brown
david...@hesbynett.no> wrote: wrote:

snip

(And Bill, please stop obsessing about patent counts. They are a
totally useless measurement or indication of inventiveness, design
ability or anything else. They are primarily a business technique
for beating down the competition as an alternative to building
better products, and such a tiny percentage of granted patents
represent truly innovate inventions that there is no point in
bringing them up.)

Actually, they aren\'t totally useless. The patenting system is much
abused, but the tiny percentage of granted patents that cover and
protect truly innovative inventions protect most of the useful
innovations that have got us where we are today.

I didn\'t say patents are always useless. I said that counting numbers
of patents is a totally useless measure of inventiveness or anything
else. When someone comes up with a great new idea, they do not
necessarily patent it. When a patent is filed, it is not necessarily
for a great new idea. There is very little correlation between patents
filed and innovation - therefore patent counts are useless as a measure.

Making lots of money is an equally poor measure of engineering or
designer skills. (It can be an indicator of other skills or
characteristics, but often its an indicator of being lucky, knowing the
right people, being born in the right place to the right family, or
being ruthless enough to grab more than your fair share.)


Stop name-dropping - claiming credit by association is as unbecoming as
Larkin\'s self-satisfaction and claims to genius.

In a setting like a this newsgroup, we have no way to reasonably judge
anyone else\'s abilities, other than for specific topics under
discussion. Pissing contents about who can boast the loudest, make the
most money or name the most patent holders, are pretty pathetic on all
sides.