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Old 04-04-2011, 11:51 AM   #227
Walter Martindale
Location: Edmonton, AB
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 802
Canada
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Re: The fact that you believe a nuclear plant can explode....

Quote:
Tenyu Hamaki wrote: View Post
Walter

Mary's not an 8 year old. She's an adult capable of learning on her own. I'm giving her the resources to do so if she wants. I'm very willing ‘to teach' anyone within reason on topics that aren't available elsewhere, but that's not the case here. What I have to share that's unique is my experience with martial arts which I've posted quite a bit of already. If you have questions specific to Aikido or Aikibodo technique then feel free to ask me in another thread.

What does superiority have anything to do with experience or knowledge?
?? superiority? Huh?

The point (as Mary has noted, and she definitely doesn't need me defending her) is not that she's an 8-year-old. Rather if YOU explain YOUR definition/concept of "nature" in such a way that any 'normal' eight-year-old could understand, all of us reading this thread could understand what you are using as your concept of nature. I shouldn't really be taking this much time away from my job to blab on about this, but what time I do have to spend here would be better spent if your definition of "nature" were typed out, so we could read it here instead of in some book to which you refer and which I have neither the time nor the inclination to read in search of a reference.

Whether you share that concept with another author is less relevant than whether you can explain, in plain language (on this forum, English) what you are talking about... What you have been doing with respect to your references and citations is saying "I agree with this guy - go read his book" instead of saying "this is what I understand to be (insert topic here), here's my understanding of it (insert explanation here), and here's where I get my background information (insert any number of citations here, and have a list of references at the end of your article)."

Essentially, if you were defending a thesis in university, you would have to be able to explain and define all of your terms, if asked, in such a way that the examining committee chair's eight year old child could understand the terms, and then you'd have to be able to explain all of the work in those same, clear, precise terms. Citations could be "as shown by so and so" but YOU would still have to be able to explain it on the spot.

I have defended a master's thesis - a long time ago now - and any time I used any 'jargon' that I hadn't already defined, I was asked to define the jargon and explain what it actually meant in plain language. And the people asking me to explain knew very well what I meant - they wanted to know that I knew what I was talking about and not just blabbing words that I'd heard someone else use. Sometimes these are "operational" definitions that only apply to the specific work being discussed, but they need to be defined, nonetheless.

That's all that's being asked.
I must bow out of this conversation - having written all this, I find that I care very little about the outcome.

Walter

Last edited by Walter Martindale : 04-04-2011 at 11:54 AM.
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