The Conclusion

Ian Rogers said:

Starting to get worried about this thread...... Doesn't seem to be flying in the right direction!

I'm sure the topic isn't what the OP had originally had in mind...

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I had 2 things in mind; one to hear funny stories about wrong conclusions (assumption too), and the second one is to learn what flies in the mind of an engineer.

Musicmanager said:

When you're driving along the motorway and a fly hits the windscreen what goes through his mind ?

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That he could have donated his body to science.

Nope ! His back legs !!

Musicmanager said:

When you're driving along the motorway and a fly hits the windscreen what goes through his mind ?

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the same thing that went thru the Programmer's mind when he came up with the name for the Engineer's multiplication sign

He saw a bunch of electrons hitting the phosphor of his CRT at the speed of light.
. . . *
And that's why some programmers I know call it ..... wait for it ....

... the Splat Key.

Tony Stewart said:

the same thing that went thru the Programmer's mind when he came up with the name for the Engineer's multiplication sign

He saw a bunch of electrons hitting the phosphor of his CRT at the speed of light.
. . . *
And that's why some programmers I know call it ..... wait for it ....

... the Splat Key.

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Do you mean the answer is: "ho boy, I've been multiplied" ?

I started life as we know it as an Engineer in Winnipeg at Bristol Aerospace in 1975. I was green and full of schematics from every article of Designer's Corner from EDN since 1960, so I had some idea how to be creative. My job, design a radio to track a floating wind powered weather station so that its weather data and moving position could be sent up to GOES #1 (no GPS) and downlink via landline to Tuktoyutuk where offshore oil riggers could get forecasts on icebergs to pull out on bad weather or icebergs.

My assumption was that if my boss's boss said it was ok. It should work. He flew up there to measure Navy VLF signals and so I thought if I did it right, it should work. I had no idea.
Well it did, for as long as I worked there even with Polar Bear-proof springy whip antenna. But then 4 years later after I moved onto a better high tech job, I learnt it stopped working.
My boss successfully navigated the movement of 10 miles per day on an ice flow using the magnetometer x,y data.

I should never have assumed my design was good enough because it worked and asked, how much margin of signal loss do I need to ensure it will always work and asked for help on getting a spec for the minimum SNR. The concept of triangulation was used to detect at least 3 out of 5 parallel channels at VLF from the Megawatt transmitters around the world used to communicate with submarines. All carriers are cesium time sync'd.. e,g, Cutler Maine, Jim Creek, Hawaii. Norway etc.

I heard later the wind generator ended up in Siberia.
So if any Ruskie friends remember a 60 ft egg-beater turbine on a tripod with battery packs and electronics in the pilons, let me know.

Because as we know now, ice-flows up there, tend to flow in the opposite direction of the earth's spin whereas Jet Streams prevail from the west.

I'm not sure "weather" this fits as a wrong conclusion or an unexpected result., it was the 1st one to exist.

Finding the cruelty to flies quite distressing here...

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Yea I agree. I would rather they did the experiment with a horse.

Lead a horse to water and if it doesn't drink pull its legs off then lead another horse to the same water and see if it drinks after seeing what happened to the first one.

Conclusion ?
1) If at first you don't succeed, Destroy all evidence that you tried.
2) If at first you don't succeed, Then skydiving definitely isn't for you.
3) If at first you don't succeed, flush, flush again…
7) If at first you don't succeed, give up ~~Homer Simpson quote~~
8) If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style.
9) If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it

As I have learned by example of my wife,

If at first you don't succeed, blame everyone else for not having compensated for your ignorance of the subject.

Ian Rogers said:

Are conclusions and assumptions the same??? If so .. Yes!!!

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My example.

Yesterday Ian said that he makes wrong assumptions rather than wrong conclusions. I immediately jumped and said that assumption is the same as conclusion. After we finished squashing flies on windscreens I realised that I jumped to the wrong conclusion. Assumption is different to conclusion; we often make wrong assumption and sometimes it can lead us to the wrong conclusions.

Murphy law is also related to that. After repeatedly making the wrong assumptions and fail each time we turn to blame it on Murphy; it is hard for us to believe that we can make so many wrong assumptions in a raw. Blaming it on Murphy is the wrong conclusion. The right conclusion has to be that we failed because we made many wrong assumptions.

I suspect that we make so many wrong assumptions and reach wrong conclusions because most of our decisions are emotional and not logical.

Is this what the bible refers to as ' The Feast of the Assumption ' ???

All logically invalid conclusions or arguments are based on at least one invalid preposition, assumption or fallacy based on Aristotle (and later) Pluto's Rules of Logic.

Factoid: there are 144 Fallacious Rules. e.g. Argumentum ad Hominum

I once had a discussion on Religion with someone who was well educated on Islam. He was willing to have a debate but before I accepted, I said the terms of the debate must be based on Greek Logic and specifically avoiding all Fallacies or wrong assumptions or uses of BAD logic.

I said valid arguments are based on logical use of facts, AND avoiding fallacies , while opinions are based on unproven Beliefs. He said what fallacies? I rest my case. Debate impossible.

To tie this into Electronics and Software.. Boolean Logic is based on Boole's Algebra which is subset of Greek Logic, although neither the Greeks nor the Romans had a number for zero, so Aristotle used the Greek symbols for 1 and 2.

Whenever we use Faith, we use Beliefs, such as Religion, which are not based on Laws of Physics or proven facts. But still Faith is a highly underutilized strength for all of us to choose.

I once had a discussion on Religion with someone who was well educated on Islam. He was willing to have a debate but before I accepted, I said the terms of the debate must be based on Greek Logic and specifically avoiding all Fallacies or wrong assumptions or uses of BAD logic.

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Some years ago when I was younger and cockier I got into a debate with a street preacher while in Las Vegas. Lets just say he was dead set against what the sinners were doing with their lives so I took the stand relating to our freedoms of choice and opportunity for unlimited forgiveness.

Lets just say that was a very entertaining 15 minute pubic sidewalk debate that left a good deal of the crowd who was watching us laughing at his ignorance of what he was preaching.
He could quote the bible word for word chapter and verse and even corrected me on what exactly it said on the topics of what we were debating but apparently never thought the actual words and meanings through as to how they applied to a persons freedom to live their lives.

Tony Stewart said:

Whenever we use Faith, we use Beliefs, such as Religion, which are not based on Laws of Physics or proven facts. But still Faith is a highly underutilized strength for all of us to choose.

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I accept your main point. My definition is: logical = not emotional. Religion is only small part of our emotion. Most of us subconsciously make only emotional decisions throughout the day, whether it's what to say to people or what shoes to buy, it is always driven by our emotions. When we make an experiment in electronics we mix our conclusion with emotion and that is why conclusion is often wrong. Only others who don't have your emotions can see what is wrong with that conclusion.

Tony Stewart said:

I said valid arguments are based on logical use of facts, AND avoiding fallacies , while opinions are based on unproven Beliefs. He said what fallacies? I rest my case. Debate impossible.

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It is unfair to put preconditions to a debate. If you can prove your point using only your rules then your point is useless.

tcmtech said:

Lets just say that was a very entertaining 15 minute pubic sidewalk debate that left a good deal of the crowd who was watching us laughing at his ignorance of what he was preaching.

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More than likely you were more intelligent faster and more talented in winning a debate. To my opinion you performed well but didn't win the debate, that man believes in freedom at least as much as you do, and this is why he was preaching on the sidewalk. Believing in God doesn't make him inferior to you, you probably also believe in some mad ideas.

More than likely you were more intelligent faster and more talented in winning a debate. To my opinion you performed well but didn't win the debate, that man believes in freedom at least as much as you do, and this is why he was preaching on the sidewalk. Believing in God doesn't make him inferior to you, you probably also believe in some mad ideas.

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Never said I won. I just made his antics entertaining and something that people didn't feel put off by. I wasn't making fun of him by any means. Just using his own knowledge of the scriptures to point out flaws in his logic of what was to be judged good, bad, right, or wrong and by whom.

To judge me a bad person because I just walked out of a casino without knowing the first thing about why I came out that door or where I was before that or how I live my life and claim its gods will for him to judge me in such a way by his own flawed perceptions didn't sit well with me.

Basically I just played it along that he was in no position to be standing in a public judging strangers based on his own standards and perceptions and it just happened to come off funny enough to start getting peoples attention in a different less confrontational way.

Personally I think if I had lived in Las Vegas back then I probably would have worked up a bit of a street preacher heckling routine just for giggles and maybe passed a hat around for a good will offering out of spite while doing it.

tcmtech said:

Personally I think if I had lived in Las Vegas back then I probably would have worked up a bit of a street preacher heckling routine just for giggles and maybe passed a hat around for a good will offering out of spite while doing it.

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During the last few weeks I read your posts about general topics and I liked most of your opinions. I noticed that you have strong conviction in your beliefs and ideas, you take no rubbish from anybody and you take no prisoners. Yesterday I made the assumption that you confronted the guy in Las Vegas because you didn't like his ideas. Now I know that the religious guy was in the wrong harassing you, it was good of you to teach him a lesson.
This could be another example for wrong assumption made by me.

moty22 said:

It is unfair to put preconditions to a debate. If you can prove your point using only your rules then your point is useless

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I disagree. If you don't have agreed Rules of Engagement, then War Crimes will exist.

If you dont have rules for debate then bad arguments and BS will prevail.

All arguments must fall under the scrutiny of rules of fallacy and making a point using fallacy is just bad reasoning. It is wise and critical thinking skills that will follow if this is used.

The Legal System tries to follow a subset of this called Black's Rule of Law.

So I say it is reasonable to agree on reasons for invalid assertions or logic. otherwise it becomes noise.

Sunnysky said:

I disagree. If you don't have agreed Rules of Engagement, then War Crimes will exist.

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I like and I agree with everything you said.
I'm for rules for a debate. Rules can stop "war crimes" as you put it. It doesn't conflict with what I said to Tony, I disagreed with Tony because he wanted the debate to follow his rules, I still think it is unfair. Ideally we want rules for the behavior of the opponents and not rules that dictate to any of the sides what to say or what philosophy to follow. It is also better if the set of rules is acceptable to all sides and not only to the strong side.

Awareness of Fallacy and that Beliefs are not Facts just because they are written is essential before any debate. Otherwise violations will lead to arguments about logic and demands for proof of assumptions.

In the end everything outside the Laws of Physics are Beliefs based on perception and experiences.
Even the Laws of physics are being questioned for validity by some, rightly so, will only have merit if they can offer proof, explain the past and predict the future.

Such as ; How much impact does global consciousness have on morality and does Physics play a role?
And ; What is more powerful? GDP & Military Power, Sanctions, Control of Oil Reserves, will of the people?
And how much are we not told and misinformed in the Media and why?

My view is that he who controls Energy Reserves and uses them for gain has the most power.

Sunnysky said:

In the end everything outside the Laws of Physics are Beliefs based on perception and experiences

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My rule is that if you are not the physicist or the scientist that carried out the experiments and reached those conclusions yourself, then you are a believer only. You chose to believe the scientist and what they teach you in school. You are no different to a person who believes in something else.
The powerful people who control the Energy Reserves have a strong interest in you believing in science and rejecting religion because they can easily bribe scientists but they can't bribe God.