Wayne D's Blog

I don't believe anything I read on the Internet and I blame that on the training I received as an undergrad. I was trained as a physicist and one of the few pieces of knowledge that has stuck with me is the scientific method, or at least my understanding of it. Create a hypothesis, design an experiment to test said hypothesis and then draw your conclusions. I remember doing a lab where the goal was to measure the speed of light using spinning mirrors and a laser. The point wasn't to measure the speed of light, the actual number was probably in most of my textbooks but was to help inculcate a healthy scepticism of what we read in books. This attitude has continued to this day.

Last week I challenged some people I work with to prove to me that Gimp was not as good as Photoshop. One person attempted to make the argument based on some things he had read on the internet. I was not impressed and told him so. I'm not competent to make an assessment because I am not familiar enough with what the requirements for this type of software is. What I was hoping for was for someone to try both of them and give me their studied opinion. A guy who's comments I read on the Internet has no credibility with me. I don't know what axes he has to grind or his biases. All he can offer me is directions on where to start my own evaluation. It's intellectual laziness to believe what you read and not to question the conclusions yourself.

If someday you run into me and get into what I consider a lively debate and you think is me being obnoxious and mean. don't blame me, blame my undergrad profs.