Result from Foreign Dictionaries (2 entries found)

From Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) [jargon]:

  gedanken
   /g@.dahn'kn/, adj.
  
     Ungrounded; impractical; not well-thought-out; untried; untested.
  
     `Gedanken' is a German word for `thought'. A thought experiment is
     one you carry out in your head. In physics, the term gedanken
     experiment is used to refer to an experiment that is impractical to
     carry out, but useful to consider because it can be reasoned about
     theoretically. (A classic gedanken experiment of relativity theory
     involves thinking about a man in an elevator accelerating through
     space.) Gedanken experiments are very useful in physics, but must be
     used with care. It's too easy to idealize away some important aspect
     of the real world in constructing the `apparatus'.
  
     Among hackers, accordingly, the word has a pejorative connotation. It
     is typically used of a project, especially one in artificial
     intelligence research, that is written up in grand detail (typically
     as a Ph.D. thesis) without ever being implemented to any great
     extent. Such a project is usually perpetrated by people who aren't
     very good hackers or find programming distasteful or are just in a
     hurry. A gedanken thesis is usually marked by an obvious lack of
     intuition about what is programmable and what is not, and about what
     does and does not constitute a clear specification of an algorithm.
     See also {AI-complete}, {DWIM}.
  

From German-English Freedict dictionary [fd-deu-eng]:

  Gedanken [gədaŋkən] (n) , pl.
     cogitations
  

Are you satisfied with the result?

You can...