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To: b_sharp
I knew you'd do this to me, you're going to make me tear into that article paragraph by paragraph aren't you.

At least enough to justify what you've claimed so far. I'm very interested to find out how such a flawed piece made it past the Wiley editors. If you're right, I'm going to have to throw out all my Wiley texts and recommend the same to others.

If you like, you can just focus on the biggies.

BTW, your point about the "complexity" issue is interesting, though I take issue with your imputation of corrupt motives regarding his overly casual use of the notion; the term has an intuitive meaning and one could argue that he saw fit to stick with this intuitive meaning.

If I take my wristwatch and smash it with a hammer, the arrangement of cogs, etc., will be just as unlikely as the arrangement they have right now, as you said in the other context, except out of the complete set of all possible arrangements, the number of arrangements that make up a working watch is miniscule. Is the "working" arrangement of higher complexity (and lower entropy) than the more distributed, post-hammer arrangement? You can argue that it is arbitrary to impose our utilitarian notion of "working" on the system in order to declare it more complex, but I don't think you're going to get anyone's tenure revoked by pursuing that angle.

939 posted on 12/30/2005 7:21:09 PM PST by jbloedow
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To: jbloedow
If you're right, I'm going to have to throw out all my Wiley texts and recommend the same to others.

Why?

They are merely booksellers...

1,024 posted on 12/31/2005 5:19:16 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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