KATZ@USC-ISIF@sri-unix (08/10/82)
From: Alan R. Katz <KATZ at USC-ISIF> It seems to me that the usenet people are completely unaware that this digest also goes to the Arpanet. They refer to this digest as net.space and talk about moving discussions to net.physics and net.misc. The FTL/quantum physics discussion SHOULD be moved to one of these lists because it is not appropriate to the Space mailing list (at least the Arpanet version). When the Space digest was set up, there was concern that we would start discussing FTL or other "Science Fiction" ideas instead of space. The general consensus seemed to be at that time that we ought to stick to space related topics. I am extremely interested in FTL and quantum mechanics "philosophy." I am in my 6th year of graduate school in Physics, and am working in Quantum Field Theory. I have TA'd upper division quantum mechanics courses. The trouble is that there is a large amount of misunderstanding about the subject when you deal with it in a non mathematical way. In my opinion based on my knowledge, greater than 90% of the discussion on the subject in this digest has been total nonsense, or at best extremely ill defined and misleading. So, even though I am intensely interested in the subject, I have very little desire to discuss the topic "at the layman level" in a digest form, and certainly not in the Space digest. It is important to keep ones mind open. It is even more important to approach new ideas skeptically. There is no shortage of "crackpot" ideas which sound OK to very intelligent people, if they do not have the technical knowledge with which to analyze it. In particular, the stuff Alan Holt has written is very probably nonsense. I say very probably, because in the two papers I have read by him, he spends a long time leading up to his idea for FTL, then mentions that it exists without giving any real justification, then spends a long time telling why we should fund such a project. So I guess its possible he has something, but is keeping it very secret, but I doubt it. Sorry for the long message, but being involved in the field (which I am actually in in the hope of maybe finding a FTL drive or something like it someday) I am concerned with the way certain "facts" have been thrown about even to "prove" that ESP exists! So please, lets move this kind of discussion off the Space mailing list. Alan (Katz@ISIF) -------