Re: JSH: Questioning certainty

James Harris wrote:

It's all part of extreme mathematics.
That's a lot of what makes it extreme.

I see... so "extreme mathematics" consists of writing crap and then
insulting people who disagree with the crap you write. Wow, that's a
great way to make progress in mathematics. Much better than those
medieval techniques used by today's mathematicians, such as reading
books and going to classes, thereby preventing them from having such
brilliantly creative insights as "an integer is an irrational" in the
first place.

Clearly you have your continuing need to try and find some way to
insult me for doing exactly what I've described I do.

But James, my insulting you was all part of the brainstorming process.
It's "extreme posting".

I brainstorm.
The critical mechanisms are relaxed. You just kind of go with the
flow, even if that flow means you are thinking something very wrong.
The process is skewed here on newsgroups because of people like you who
come in with harsh criticisms, so you are critical where the point of
the process is not having a lot of critical feedback early on.

Except that this is not "early on"; you've been spouting the same ***
for *years*.

But whether you like brainstorming or not, it is a known technique in
MODERN problem solving, and the way posters like yourself go on and on
despite my talking about it so much, you clearly do not do modern
problem solving.

Au contraire: I privately brainstorm all the time when I'm doing
physics. Mostly when a certain approach to a problem doesn't work I can
figure that out myself and discard that approach. Sometimes I will
subject other people to my ideas and they will give me reasons why
those ideas do not work. What doesn't happen is that I immediately post
every thought to usenet and then call people liars and threaten them
with secret trials or death at the hands of angry mobs when they point
out that my thoughts are worthless.

And why should you? The academic math world today is a dinosaur that
refuses to accept that it should be extinct, so it blunders on.

I am not part of the academic math world.

The way posters got excited about some error of mine despite my already
having talked about brainstorming is an excellent demonstration of how
alien modern problem solving is to math people of today.
To you mistakes are all that matter.
To me, mistakes are just along the way...

You are *still* missing the point. Yes, everyone makes mistakes.
However, not everyone behaves in such an obnoxious manner when their
mistakes are pointed out to them. See for yourself; if you were to read
usenet threads other than your own, or even read the whole of your own
threads, you will find that, when one of the mathematicians has a
mistake pointed out, he or she will typically respond by /thanking/
whoever pointed it out. This is exactly as one might expect, of course.
Real mathematicians would rather have a mistake pointed out quickly
than make a tit of themselves by letting it stay in their work. You, it
seems, would much rather make a tit of yourself indefinitely. And
you're doing a very good job of it.

-Rotwang

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