Re: JSH: Perspective is weird
- From: "Rupert" <rupertmccallum@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 25 Dec 2006 01:38:56 -0800
jstevh@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
One of the odder things that has emerged recently as I have expressed
my opinion of posts with ratings on Google Groups as they give that
option is that people who replied to me so obsessively actually care
about getting an honest assessment of the reality of how much their
posting is valued by both the number of ratings they get--few--and the
reality that there are maybe 3 or 4 other people who try to combat my
low ratings.
It gives them some perspective on their real social ranking on the
newsgroup.
I couldn't care less what ratings my posts get. If ratings give an
insight into "social ranking", then what can we conclude from the fact
that your posts constantly get low ratings and your regular critics
usually get high ratings? But your "social ranking" is obvious anyway,
we don't need the ratings system to determine that.
Before, they must have just looked at replies, where as I've noted,
maybe 3 or 4 people can make it look like there is a LOT of support for
them by replying a lot in a thread, but the ratings tell you how many
people are rating and give you some idea of how it goes.
The people who reply, reply. The people who rate, rate. That's all
there is to it. And the objective fact is that most of the replies you
get are critical, most of the ratings you get are low, and most of the
ratings your opponents get are high. So if it's a popularity contest,
you lose. But this is all irrelevant anyway. What matters are the
merits of the arguments. You need to develop sufficient powers of
self-criticism to be able to see that the arguments you're currently
defending, to the extent that you argue your position at all, are
rubbish. Until you manage to do this, there is no hope for you.
I am highly critical, not surprisingly, so I mostly give out 1 star, as
I see a lot of crap posts and rate them accordingly.
You give out 1 star without rhyme or reason. For example, I helpfully
posted a characterization of the quadratic integers for someone else
and you gave it 1 star. If this is another example of you thinking
accepted mathematics is false you should post your argument against the
theorem. However, I suspect you don't really have an opinion about the
theorem, possibly didn't even bother to think about it, and just gave
me 1 star because it was me. It's childish and silly.
Their supporters, all three or four of them, come back to give them 5
stars, an outlandish overrating as their posts ARE crap, but still it
seems to settle in that hey, they are not the newsgroup celebrities
they thought they were.
You're projecting your own concerns onto others. No-one else cares
about being a "newsgroup celebrity". People just care about the maths.
You may think their posts are crap, but evidently there is no-one who
both agrees with you and can be bothered to give the posts a low
ratings. Whatever. The ratings are irrelevant. What matters are the
actual merits of the arguments. As a matter of fact, you're mistaken in
thinking our posts are crap. And if you studied our arguments with an
open mind, you'd see that.
These people didn't know where they actually stood.
No-one cares about where they stand. See, unlike you we have the
capacity to judge the merits of mathematical arguments for ourselves.
We form our opinions and post them. We're know that we're right about
the essentials. Every now and again someone corrects us on a minor
point and we accept the correction. But, basically, we know we're right
and that's all the justification we need for posting. We don't care
about "where we stand". If I were the only person in the world who
thought your work was rubbish it still would be.
But my guess is they thought they were very popular with most of the
newsgroup,
I have no way of knowing who among the readership likes me and who
doesn't, and I don't care. Most of the people who post here seem to be
friendly enough. I admit I was surprised to receive low ratings, and
eventually I figured out, big surprise, they all came from you! So that
cleared up that little mystery. You even bizarrely gave me a low rating
in a non-JSH thread about something you couldn't possibly have known
anything about.
of which they seem to believe there are a few hundred
readers with a few dozen regular readers based on the posts they
notice.
Whatever. Who cares? If the readership is large, there's probably a
significant proportion of it who can't understand the maths anyway.
Weird, but from what I've read from these people in the past,
consistent with their gut feeling of the size of the sci.math
newsgroup.
In contrast I measure my impact off of the newsgroup and don't count
replies to my posts because I know there are a few very obsessive
people who skew things to the negative because they think they are some
kind of stars or something posting negatives the newsgroup wants to
see.
Here's the situation. We know you're wrong. So we tell you so. Read
that again. It's important.
But they are actually minor hanger's on, drawing attention to
themselves at the expense of my research
Here's something else you need to understand. If research has value,
then criticism can't hurt it. If you were right, you could prove you
were right to the satisfaction of qualified people. That's how maths
works.
which I can measure as having
an ever growing worldwide impact
Once again your need to evade reality leads you into crazy talk.
by using a lot of tools, which yes are
mostly as a result of Google, that tell me what the real impact is,
versus the skewed view you'd get from posts on the newsgroup.
Can you name someone other than yourself who thinks your research has
any value?
Perspective is weird that way. Most people have no clue about their
worldwide impact and in a situation where there is worldwide
attention--like here--they just screw up figuring out where they stand
as they don't take the proper view that it takes work to figure out
what is going on.
Neither you nor I have any worldwide impact. No-one cares about these
conversations except a handful of readers of sci.math, and they don't
care much, with the exception of you.
Especially in a world like ours does it take work.
Like how many of you have the slightest hint of a clue how many people
are likely to read this post in the next 24 hours?
How many of us care? You obviously have a strong desire that a lot of
people pay attention to you. Most of us, if we wanted attention, would
hope it wouldn't be the kind that you receive.
Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?
Or in how many countries?
1? 2 or 3? 20 or more?
If you accept that your answer is you do not know, then maybe you are
on the path to realizing that unlike me, you have no clue what is
actually going on.
No, I don't know and I doubt you do either, and most of all I don't
care.
James Harris
.
- References:
- JSH: Perspective is weird
- From: jstevh
- JSH: Perspective is weird
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