The 'nothing to hide' argument is quite prevalent. Is there a way to respond to this argument that would really register with people in the general public?
Whenever someone gives me that argument I get up and start rifling through their personal stuff -- desk, purse, closet, whatever. When they object I tell them they have nothing to worry about if they have nothing to hide.
Larry Stark, a professor at Berkeley, tells the story of sitting around with a group of other researchers including Warren McCulloch (of the McCulloch-Pitts neural net model), who was expounding on his current research ideas. At one point Larry broke in and asked "Warren, why are you telling us all your ideas? Aren't you afraid someone will steal them?" to which McCulloch snorted "Steal them?! I can't force them on my own graduate students!"
Well, not me, but my old roommate was. He thought this type of job would help him get into med school (it didn't). His biggest complaint was people who turned in tightly-sealed (naturally) peanut-butter jars packed full of the stuff, which would (naturally) decompose producing gas, causing a literal shit-storm when opened. He only needed about a teaspoon-full to do the analysis.
I suggest your best answer is "Who cares?!"
Really, why does it matter why we do it? So he can evaluate the answer and decide whether we deserve to be allowed to continue? Do we really have to justify sharing knowledge? This is a classic power-play question. Throw it back and ask him what part of "sharing knowledge" he has problems with.
For a look at a different solution to this problem check out Yosi Bar-Cohen's article on surface wave motors at http://www.nasatech.com/Briefs//Dec00/NPO20735.htm l
This type of motor -- sometimes called an ultrasonic motor -- has the advantage that it's hard to backdrive, even under low or zero power, because the rotor is actually touching the stator. They produce a lot of torque for their size. In robotics the application is obvious: the motor is the joint. These motors work best at low rpm so the ball-and-socket joint could actually drive the arm. Imagine a dancing skeleton.
Moore himself has proclaimed this Moore's Second Law: The limiting factor is fab facility cost.
Five years ago a single Pentium fab facility cost $2 billion. The entire fab has to be suspended from pillars to isolate it from traffic vibration. Each generation of fab is getting more and more expensive to build, and this will ultimately limit device density, not the physical limits on the chip. Is Intel going to build $20 billion dollar fabs? $50 billion? $100 billion?
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Larry Stark, a professor at Berkeley, tells the story of sitting around with a group of other researchers including Warren McCulloch (of the McCulloch-Pitts neural net model), who was expounding on his current research ideas. At one point Larry broke in and asked "Warren, why are you telling us all your ideas? Aren't you afraid someone will steal them?" to which McCulloch snorted "Steal them?! I can't force them on my own graduate students!"
Well, not me, but my old roommate was. He thought this type of job would help him get into med school (it didn't). His biggest complaint was people who turned in tightly-sealed (naturally) peanut-butter jars packed full of the stuff, which would (naturally) decompose producing gas, causing a literal shit-storm when opened. He only needed about a teaspoon-full to do the analysis.
Just curious. How does A New Kind of Science fare?
1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media. Check.
2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work. Kinda. Give it half a check.
3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection. Hard to say. We'll have to let him go on this one.
4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal. Hmm. I guess a run of a computer program qualifies as anecdotal. Check.
5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries. No! (Phew!)
6. The discoverer has worked in isolation. Whoa! Off the scale here! Gotta give him a check and a half for this one.
7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation. Ding! Rung the bell on this one, too!
Using Mathematica to add these scores up, I get 6/7.
I guess A New Kind of Science isn't A Real Kind of Science.
I suggest your best answer is "Who cares?!"
Really, why does it matter why we do it? So he can evaluate the answer and decide whether we deserve to be allowed to continue? Do we really have to justify sharing knowledge? This is a classic power-play question. Throw it back and ask him what part of "sharing knowledge" he has problems with.
For a look at a different solution to this problem check out Yosi Bar-Cohen's article on surface wave motors at http://www.nasatech.com/Briefs//Dec00/NPO20735.htm l
This type of motor -- sometimes called an ultrasonic motor -- has the advantage that it's hard to backdrive, even under low or zero power, because the rotor is actually touching the stator. They produce a lot of torque for their size. In robotics the application is obvious: the motor is the joint. These motors work best at low rpm so the ball-and-socket joint could actually drive the arm. Imagine a dancing skeleton.
Moore himself has proclaimed this Moore's Second Law: The limiting factor is fab facility cost. Five years ago a single Pentium fab facility cost $2 billion. The entire fab has to be suspended from pillars to isolate it from traffic vibration. Each generation of fab is getting more and more expensive to build, and this will ultimately limit device density, not the physical limits on the chip. Is Intel going to build $20 billion dollar fabs? $50 billion? $100 billion?