Saturday, October 9, 2010

Today is one of the good days I'll cherish in my life. Found myself in a pretty odd situation to start with, but as the day progressed, I felt renewed. The takeaway is this: if we want to pursue something in depth and with intensity, stay away from mediocre talk and second-rate people who play with words. Such mediocrity is all too common in India that practical seclusion is preferable. A Feynman extract sums it up all:

In constructing a new theory, we shall be careful to insist that they should be precise theories, giving a description from which definite conclusions can be drawn. We do not want to proceed in a fashion where we have to change the details of the theory at every place that we find in conflict with the experiment, or with our initial postulates. Any vague theory that is not completely absurd can be patched up by more vague talk at every point that brings up inconsistencies -- and if we begin to believe in the talk rather than in the evidence, we will be in a sorry state. (pp 62, Lectures on Gravitation) [Hat-tip AD]

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