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Comment by bandushrew | Hacker News Reader

". I can come up with an elaborate theory on an owl-based patriarchy and write a book on it, and even recruit some other nutters to back me up but it doesn't mean it's provably true or actionable and constructive."

or some idiot could study ant trails and provide data that could improve the solution to certain algorithms.

Sure, life would be simpler and more controllable if we knew what we were going to discover before we discovered it, but we dont. Come up with an elaborate theory on owl based patriarchy that gives some other smart chap an epiphany about the behavior of whale tribal groups, and who knows what improvements your investigations might provide for.

Of course, if you just make it all up, you are not practicing science, you are practicing fraud.

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I think you missed the point of what I was saying. :)

My owl patriarchy comment was an off-the-cuff made-up example intended to standin for the soft sciences and fuzzy academic fields, like women's studies, literature theory, philosophy, etc. which really don't exist or have any objective use or application outside of academic circles. And which are, at the same time, topics you don't necessarily have to go to university and spend tons of time and money to become "educated" on. Even the need to be certified in those fields is only required for you to go on to become a certifier of other future potential certifiers, a sort of incestuous perpetual motion machine.

I was not talking about science or experiments or data or anything like that. And yes, we agree, synergy and serendipity and cross-pollination between subjects is a good thing.

The problem I had is that I can equally well imagine someone making that kind of point about the idea of spending money to study ant trails, without the benefit of hindsight the idea is just kind of ridiculous. sure that will lead to new ideas in computer theory and AI.

I think you will find that there are practical uses for at least aspects of literature theory (ask google).

And philosophy has driven humanity forward for thousands of years, the fact you bring it up as possibly useless tells me that you have failed to educate yourself as you should.

I cannot speak about women's studies, as I have no idea what they cover, but on the whole history tells me that where a subject drives people to think deeply about something, humanity generally wins out eventually.

Here is a wikipedia page on the history of logic. Note its roots in philosophy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_logic

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