r. e. Oceania

Wolf, I thought that you of all people would have gotten the 1984 revisionist history reference. I assume you deliberately ignored it :-)

Even I am getting tired of hearing myself repeat myself so I’ll try to summarize my thoughts on this.

GC is a good and important tool. How good and how important will vary between individuals based on their experience, interest, taste and ultimate goals.

GC in isolation is not a magic ‘make good render’ solution.

Comparing what is pleasing to the eye with what is physically correct is probably a bad tack to take with artists. Not an invalid argument, just an unfortunate confluence because what looks good is going to beat what is correct seven ways to Sunday with artists or even non-artist viewers. If you’re talking Homeland Security trying to deduce explosive components from the light spectrum of a blast, then yeah, but Vicky, not so much.

The notion that science can, will or necessarily should influence the real world based on objective truth alone is naive. Politics have an influence even inside the laboratory and they have a profound effect outside of it. Politics is all about presentation and persuasion and to say that the way science is presented is irrelevant is simply wrong. It is wrong that is, if your goal is to win people over to your point of view – see vaccines, climate change etc. You can’t use dismissive, dogmatic or arrogant rhetoric in support of your position and then express dismay that people don’t buy what you’re selling. You can say that presentation shouldn’t matter when you have truth on your side, but I’m sorry, it does matter – it matters a great deal.

There has to be a medium between overawing people with numbers and essentially saying ‘if you don’t understand that then just trust us and do it or your work is bad.’ If Stephen Hawking can explain cosmology in a manner accessible to the reasonably intelligent layman, it can be done. In my experience, the people here are of above average intelligence, though not all are mathematically inclined. They are passionate about art, curious and certainly willing to learn new techniques. Most of them however don’t like being talked down to or having their questions or ideas dismissed out of hand. None of us are perfect on that score but sometimes it goes a little too far – acknowledgements appreciated.

If you don’t want to influence anyone, don’t care how your ideas are perceived and think that politeness is a synonym for weakness or capitulation then certainly ignore all of the above. Good ideas have a way of prevailing even when [their] proponents are sometimes their own worst enemies.

I don’t know that I learned a whole lot more about GC, but I have been motivated to look at it more and in that sense this has been more valuable than most of the other threads on the subject. So I thank everyone for a fun, interesting and civil discussion.

*“*A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be.” - Rosalynn Carter

 

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken