When I read articles by creation scientists and there ilk I’m often filled with a feeling of “how the heck can you believe that, surely you’ve heard about this, this, and this.” Invariably they have none read of the “this”‘s. Yesterday I gave a talk at the Santa Fe Institute’s Complex Systems Summer School on quantum computation. And after the talk, I was having a discussion with someone about quantum computing. And they said they still thought quantum computers are not a valid model of computation. And I was thinking to myself, “But surely you’ve read this, this, this, this, this, and this? Just to name a few.” Never thought I’d be having these thoughts around another scientist.
O brave new quantum world!
Weak the force had become. Darth Vader had spread nonsensical FUD throughout the Empire, and few Jedi had contradicted him. Proud Jedi knights conversed only among themselves. Edifying comments in QubitNews or blogs or newsgroups, they rarely posted. Despised the public they did. Good relations with the Wookies, they had lost. That is why they were failing.
Your link to quant-ph/9610011 didn’t show up.
I guess in a field where there is math and the possibility of proofs, it is harder to find rational justification for technically informed, educated people to disagree.
In my field, which is becoming harder to define – maybe medical functional genomics or functional genomics of immunology – no one agrees on much. We don’t even have a complete inventory of the parts, much less know what they do in a true mechanistic sense.
Do you ever read the Panda’s Thumb blog? It’s pretty good for covering the creationism thing, though sometimes I find the scientific elitism a bit annoying.