Path: ...!news.mixmin.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: David Brown Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Is Intel exceptionally unsuccessful as an architecture designer? Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2024 08:50:06 +0200 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 41 Message-ID: References: <86jzf4829c.fsf@linuxsc.com> <20240925104320.00007791@yahoo.com> <40853b34aae592d6cd8a19f017e3f7eb@www.novabbs.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Wed, 02 Oct 2024 08:50:07 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="c42395f5fe3fe419d34db268459be31b"; logging-data="3307338"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX182SYUxoKmlqUeZw7C0QhyCZKpGHZ85BwU=" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/102.11.0 Cancel-Lock: sha1:o1MFEkUE8g25yMSfpLbSJ7ysHq4= In-Reply-To: Content-Language: en-GB Bytes: 3955 On 01/10/2024 23:11, MitchAlsup1 wrote: > On Tue, 1 Oct 2024 18:56:46 +0000, David Brown wrote: > >> On 01/10/2024 20:20, MitchAlsup1 wrote: >>> >>> The colloquial person thinks theory and conjecture are >>> essentially equal. As in: "I just invented this theory". >>> No, you just: "Invented a conjecture." you have to have >>> substantial evidence to go from conjecture to theory. >>> >> >> I think you need evidence, justification, and a good basis for proposing >> something before it can even be called a "conjecture" in science.  You >> don't start off with a conjecture - you start with an idea, and have a >> long way to go to reach a "scientific theory", passing through >> "conjecture" and "hypothesis" on the way. > > I do not disagree with that. Sorry if I implied anything else. > I read your post as saying that if someone says "I have a theory that the moon is made of green cheese", it is actually a conjecture, not a theory. I fully agree that it is not a theory - at least, not a scientific theory. But I would also not even call it a conjecture since it is has no justification or basis, and is easily disproved (if the moon is made of cheese, it is /grey/ cheese, not /green/ cheese!). It is no more than an idea or claim - to be a "conjecture", it needs to have a viable path towards a theory (though it may fail along that path). But we absolutely agree on "theory". The issue turns up regularly with Bible literalists who think the theory of evolution is "just a theory", and should have no more place in school curriculums than the so-called "theory of intelligent design". They are mixing up the scientific term "theory" with the colloquial non-scientific usage - and the same bad reasoning suggests that alongside the "Newtonian theory of gravity" we should be teaching the "theory of intelligent falling".