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COMMENTS ON PLATT ON DIVERSITY

	Well that was a pretty good talk.  In my opinion, it was much
better than the talk he recently gave at Stanford.  The Stanford talk
reflected the influence of recent liberal ideology.  I like 1966
liberal scientific ideology much better than 1973 liberal scientific
ideology.

	 His point about the sociology of science that mediocre scientists
have a tendency to continue doing their PhD theses is quite right.  I also
like his remedy - simply to preach that each scientist examine his
activities and try to do the most important thing he can.  Some people
change their activities on the basis of such considerations, and more
would do so if it were more expressed as a moral imperative.

	I also agree with most of his specific ideas about how effort was
mal-distributed.  However, he leaves out one mitigating circumstance.  Namely,
just because a problem is important does not mean it is ripe for solution
with the tools that are available at the time.  If someone in 1850 had
predicted that fossil fuels would run out in a few hundred years and that
something with the performance of nuclear energy was required and if he
convinced the government and his fellow scientists, that still wouldn't
have produced nuclear energy before an idea appeared.  In the case of
nuclear energy, the idea appeared in 1939 when the possibility that
U235 fissioned when it absorbed a neutron and produced more than one
neutron was noticed.  Because of its obvious importance and because
of the belief that the Germans might be pursuing it, it was pursued with
great energy and singleness of purpose by a large fraction of the
scientists qualified to do so.  This is a very special coincidence of
scientific and political readiness that hasn't recurred yet.

	It is interesting to look at the specific ideas that Platt was
advocating in 1966:

	1. It would be worthwhile to look at Meyer's "Science and
Economic Development".  I bet not much has been done along the
lines proposed.  It is amazing how much the underdeveloped world
owes to a rather small activity of the Rockefeller Foundation that
is responsible for both the new wheat and the new rice.

	2. Automation in organic chemistry and biochemistry is proceeding
rather rapidly.  It is being pursued energetically in universities
and by companies.  Even in 1966, it was being rather energetically
pursued at Stanford.  It wasn't done very well, but neither was or is
on-line computation in any field being done well in many places.

	3. The lack of good ideas in perception has continued to this
day.  There are many people thinkilπ`about it, but none of the ideas
so far proposed excites much confidence.  The perceptron people got
lots of money for a while, because the goal was recognized as important,
but since the ideas didn't work out, they had to stop.  I think our
approach to perception is better, but I wouldn't advocate that 200
laboratories start working in it now.

	4. Geodesic domes have turned out to be useful in some
circumstances, but it is not true that a large fraction of buildings
should be so built.  I don't know about the foam plastic idea.  In
general, there are lots of good technological ideas, and everyone who
has one would like someone else to have faith in it, put money in it,
and put in the hard work to develop it and give the originator the
credit.  Unfortunately, people who can commit themselves to developing
new ideas are rarer than people who originate new ideas.  I have almost
come to the conclusion that unless one is willing to push an idea
oneself, one should keep it secret.  Someone else will think of it
eventually, and he is more likely to push it if he can get all the
credit.

	5. I like his idea about variable warmth clothing.  In fact, I
thought of it myself.

	6. Probably fish farming comes before fish breeding, and this is
being done in a number of places especially Japan.

	7. Cloning of humans has had considerable discussion.  The preponderant
opinion is opposed to doing it.

	8. The idea of finding old viable DNA also occurred to me and
therefore surely to many biologists.  There are two possibilities:
the technique isn't ready yet or no-one has pursued it energetically.
I wouldn't give good odds either way.

	9. His idea that AM radio could be changed by an invention seems
doubtful to me.  It is a product of the commercial situation, the cultural
level of the announcers, and the tastes of the audience.  Giving the highbrows
access to radio stations has not produced something that the lowbrows
will keep their car radios tuned to.  Indeed, even the highbrows won't.
The advent of good rock in 1967 made a large difference, but that wasn't
an invention, and the gold mine has run out again, or so it seems to me.

	10. The idea of getting people to borrow money for education has
become popular.  It is not clear that paying it back is so popular.

	11. As a night person, I agree that it would be good if classes
started late for us.  Mine do.

	12. I am doubtful about the idea that everyone should loaf more.
Maybe students work hard, but I think many of them really don't have
much work to do, but spend a lot of time agonizing about doing it.  That
was my situation anyway.  Let me not think about what I should be doing
rather than hacking this blast.

	13. Well the enthusiasm for machine teaching has declined, but
I am not sure the decline was entirely justified.  Part of it was a shuck
however, and Platt is part of the shuck when he talks about teaching set
theory to six year olds.  What was taught to six year olds in the name
of set theory was not the branch of mathematics of the same name.  It 
merely consisted of making explicit some ideas that six year olds already
have intuitively.  The result was boredom, because the child had no
sense of learning something new.  At least, this was the result when
I tried to teach my daughter Susie out of such a text.  I think this is
also the conclusion of many mathematicians who think about education,
but I don't know what the educators think.  The educators certainly gave
it a good try though.

	14. Platt's idea that the conventional school material could
be learned in much less time seems right to me, and I agree that machines
are probably the key to it.  Regrettably, computers are still much to
expensive, and the ideas of the computer aided instruction researchers
are still too bad for this to be cost-effective yet.  It will be at 
least another ten to twenty years.  The good computers will come
long before the understanding of how they should teach.

	15. Platt's ideas about the reform of education were bad enough
so that had he been given lots of money and authority at that time,
not much would have come of it.  In fact, people with similar ideas
at the time did get lots of money and authority and not much did come
of it.  Well maybe there will be better ideas next year.

	For all my disagreements with some of the ideas of his paper, it
was imaginative, constructive and hopeful.  It seems to me that none
of these things could really be said of the talk he recently gave at
Stanford where the ideas were almost entirely derivative from the
ideas of the currently fashionably pessimists.  There are two possibilities:
The first is that Platt's 1966 ideas contained in some way the seeds of
their own destruction.  The second is that Platt is over-influenced by
what he reads these days.

	I think the truth is a combination of the two.  In the first place,
many of the ideas weren't as good as he thought they were even though
he has more than an average scientist's share of good ideas.  Disappointment
breeds pessimism.  Secondly, the current eco and radical criticism
is propagated by a technique of instigation and manipulation of guilt
feelings.  Susceptibility to this technique was heightened by the Vietnam
war, and new discoveries were made in techniques for manipulating
guilt feelings.  I regard this situation as temporary, and Nixon
deserves considerable credit for deftly getting through the period
even though he evinces little explicit understanding of what the
psychological situation is.

	Finally, a comment on your marginal notes.  The fact that Platt's
paper got to you, and (if this is so) your response to this was to
enter a prolonged stage of career drifting strikes me as having more
to it than the assent to Platt's criticism of physics expressed in
the margin.  After all, high energy physics is better than nothing as
a contribution to humanity even if it does get more than its proper
share of talent.  What about the fact that the competition in high
energy physics is very tough.  Do you really have the ability to achieve
the level of prominence you desired?  (Whatever it was).  Was not
there also a temptation to just follow your husband around or to
find one if you weren't married then?  (The fact that women often
have this option and men don't is often decisive when motivation
to pursue one's work weakens.)

	If you take Platt seriously, you had better form an independent
opinion of whether Spectramed will do something good.  I don't suggest
you take my off-hand opinion based on an analogy with a previous
situation.

	Well, I haven't previously ever expressed my opinion so explicitly
and personally in such matters, and maybe it will work out badly.  However,
you asked for it by giving me the paper with the marginal notes, and
I am trying to avoid work so here it is.