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The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (1939) [pdf]

by jxmorris12 on 7/23/2026, 12:58:02 PM

https://faculty.lsu.edu/kharms/files/flexner_1939.pdf

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7/27/2026, 1:47:05 AM


by: niraj-agarwal

"The mere fact that they bring satisfaction to an individual soul bent upon its own purification and elevation is all the justification that they need."

7/27/2026, 2:50:09 AM


by: oliculipolicula

This is by the founder about IAS (aka <i>(Turing&#x27;s) [*Bazaar-]Cathedral</i>) founding between war &amp; depression, while it was still at 20 Nassau St<p>Further Quaker background by Freeman Dyson&#x27;s son George who wrote that book having grown up there<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ias.edu&#x2F;ideas&#x2F;2009&#x2F;george-dyson-tavern-and-meeting-house" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ias.edu&#x2F;ideas&#x2F;2009&#x2F;george-dyson-tavern-and-meeti...</a><p>*IAS was an open-maxxed Bell Labs<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.embeddedrelated.com&#x2F;showarticle&#x2F;700.php" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.embeddedrelated.com&#x2F;showarticle&#x2F;700.php</a><p>&gt;<i>Dyson misses the point somewhat about virtual machines and cloud computing, which are much more about relocatable and rescalable computing — rather than having to house and maintain computers to handle the peak computational load, we can run software remotely as a service, and purchase resources on an as-needed basis; the providers of these services can reroute and reallocate resources in real-time without any intervention by or impact on their customers. There’s something here in Dyson’s statement alluding to parallel processing...</i><p>Paradoxes for outwitting the uni-context..

7/25/2026, 3:05:24 AM