Re: Should this group be split?

On Mon, 26 Nov 2007 16:32:50 -0500, quasi
<quasi@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

You read way too far between the lines on my reply.

Kind of presumptuous.

That's funny, I deludedly imagined that I had just explained,
politely and reasonably, why I thought somebody's suggestion
might be a good idea, while you seem concerned to dismiss it
out of hand and won't expand on your reasons even when asked.

I still have no idea exactly what you had in mind. You wrote:

what makes you think the foundation oriented posters would post
only there and not also to sci.math? Wishful thinking.

I still cannot see any interpretation of those words which does
not presume that "foundation oriented posters" are a nuisance
in sci.math. (Otherwise, why would it be "wishful thinking" to
imagine that they might post elsewhere?) Yet I know that you
are willing to spend time debating with e.g. tommy1729 (whom
/I/ find too annoying!), so it hardly seems likely that this is
really what you meant. (Unless tommy1729 comes into some other
category than "foundation oriented poster" - having killfiled
him, I cannot tell.) So I added, without irony:

Or was that not what you meant to imply?

to which you only respond that I am being "kind of presumptuous"!
Am I supposed to continue this guessing game, or just to shut up?
If the latter (which is my guess - sorry, my presumption), how
have I given offence, and to whom (other than JSH and tommy1729!)?

I'm not on some big campaign here! It was somebody else's suggestion,
to split sci.math, and I was just expressing mild support for one part
of it. I'm not at all enthusiastic about getting involved in making
any changes around here; I just thought it was a good idea in principle,
and nothing I have read in this thread has explained to me why it isn't.

(I agreed with your arguments against splitting sci.math by topic:
that was my opinion, too, and you saved me the bother of expressing
it. But the foundations of mathematics are not just another topic
within mathematics, and it is very easy to separate the business of
getting on with doing mathematics from the business of thinking
about what mathematics is. The split is a natural one, and it
seems reasonable to formalise it.)

(Ken Pledger's list of other newsgroups on mathematical topics does
not include any where the discussion of the foundations of mathematics
in general is on-topic. sci.logic is of course the closest, but, FWIW
- I neither read nor post to sci.logic - they have similar problems to
sci.math, and would, quite reasonably, prefer to focus on logic and set
theory as technical mathematical disciplines. Is that not so? And do
they in fact have discussions of foundations which (a) don't spill over
into sci.math, and (b) aren't merely part of the "crank wars"? If so,
I might subscribe.)

I have already agreed that it might not work. I don't understand
why you think it isn't even worth trying.

(If you think this conversation is tiresome, I agree! sci.math
has always been a very tetchy place, and I've never understood
why. But you've never struck me as particularly tetchy, so I'm
a bit hurt and puzzled by your response.)
--
Angus Rodgers
(twirlip@ eats spam; reply to angusrod@)
Contains mild peril
.

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