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I don't need poison. I am my own poison... LOL
Facts in error can easily be defeated with opposing facts, if what I present here about soak times and penetrative vs. scratch hardness is false simply sweep it aside with better facts. But then facts will have trumped “intuition” , or perhaps these facts are merely my intuition, but then they could not be in error since they are mine.
My head is still trying to wrap itself around basic metallurgy and I am still having a hard time at it. Can anybody recommend some books as a starting point? It's always good to have some pages to thumb through, set down when your brain gets overloaded, and come back to later to hopefully absorb the info.
. It never fails- say 100 things that will make you sound like Aristotle and the public will only remember the one thing that sounds most like Homer Simpson 
Tai, this is why I love talking with you, but find debating with you a waste of my time, it is like trying to pick up air in your hands. You feel the safest when dealing with the entirely subjective, thus nobody can pin you down or prove you wrong, your feelings are yours and who can say otherwise? But your feelings have absolutely no meaning to me. You can make up your own meaning for any concept you want and redefine anything to comfortably suit your sensibilities. But if you wish to communicate it to other human beings there must be a common reference point. That is why we invented language and all the technical terms that drive folks like you crazy.
Websters defines intuition firstly as Immediate apprehension or cognition, it mentions nothing about sensory perception or mathematics as that would be reasoning which the other definitions listed precludes. Now you could say oh, there you go again Kevin just regurgitating literal facts, but then I would say that perhaps my definition of intuition is- foot, hailstorm jeet, jeet hoopy and the sound of purple as nonsensical as it is, perhaps that is what I feel when I hear it, it is my intuition and every bit as legitimate as yours! Unfortunately it is completely meaningless to anybody not inside my skull. But is very safe isnt it?
I deal with set concepts with concise points of reference, there is much more risk of getting things wrong, but I think it is worth it to communicate things in a quantifiable way to other people. Unless the good people of this forum have an emotional investment in me and want to hear about my feelings I would prefer not to burden them with such irrelevant pointlessness, I can talk to myself to get in touch with such things. Relativism does have a warm and fuzzy feel when nothing is right or wrong and everybodys feelings are equally valid. But the universe has a nasty habit of not giving a tinkers cuss about our feelings.
I do not hold, claim nor want any authority, but you find the information I present threatening for some reason so you project onto to me the mantle of an authority figure against which you can rebel. This often results in ad hominem attacks for most folks, so am at least grateful for the restraint you have shown.:thumbup:
I see you did pick up on the subtle fact that I used the word truth instead of facts in my signature line. Yes, that was intentional in order not to oversimplify things. You are spot on that I cannot determine any hard facts about somebody elses procedure or products, but I can scrutinize the claims made and seek to see how truthful they may be.
Which takes us to continual error ; continual? Wow that is a pretty big absolute for a guy who doesnt like them. But then one can never be in error if our existence is merely subjective and intuitive. Error can only occur in the presence of definitive contrary facts- there is hope for you after all Tai.
But look at it this way, I like you enough that I just allowed you to consume almost 10 minutes of my day with this nonsense, that does give you some importance to me and this conversation. I will be starting a new thread for Larrin dealing with other factors of heat and I would like to focus on the facts there. It seems every thread as of late has turned to a philosophical debate involving science, religion, the nature of man and his social politics this is the Bladesmithing Forum isnt it?
I doubt I am alone in thinking it would be nice to just talk about what the carbon does inside the blade without worrying of it fits into our psychology of the universal scheme of things. This metallurgy junk is on web sites all over the net, it doesnt seem to be a threat or insult there, that is probably because if you dont like it you just dont go to those sites. I would suggest that if folks find it impractical, irrelevant or intimidating here they just ignore it and go on doing things the way they always have. For years that approach has worked well for quite a few, why change now?
I'm in... and I promise I won't be such a pest next time. Next thread, please...