Am I a crank?
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From: stephen on 2 Sep 2006 15:55 Lester Zick <dontbother(a)nowhere.net> wrote: > On Sat, 02 Sep 2006 12:07:24 -0500, Manny Feld > <Manny.Feldl(a)hotmail.com> wrote: >>Virgil wrote: >> >>> >>> Zick seems to care enough to keep him posting. >> >>Zick's positings are like grafitti scrawled over the accomplishments of >>others. Zick is essentially an intellectual vandal. Unable to create >>anything of worth or value, he attempts to deface the work and value of >>his betters. And that is all I have to say about Mr. Zick. > Well thanks so much for sharing your opinion on the subject. Now > perhaps you'd care to tell us exactly how big infinity is? That is if > you're not too busy casting aspersions on the intellectual talent of > other who can? > ~v~~ You have presented no evidence that you can answer the question. Given your "answers" for other mathematical questions, the likelihood of your answer being at all sensible are rather low. So why don't you just answer the question and see if the OP recognizes it as an answer to the question? The OP afterall should be the one to judge if you can answer the question or not. Remember, he may has his own ideas about what "big" and "infinity" mean, and an answer that relies on different ideas is not likely to satisfy him. Stephen
From: Virgil on 2 Sep 2006 17:39 In article <b0hjf293dundpvf3urb66mms0crtp5mjjs(a)4ax.com>, Lester Zick <dontbother(a)nowhere.net> wrote: > What Zick actually means is that he is fully prepared to deal with > statements which are true, false, or ambiguous and that you are not. Then deal with "What is truth?" > > > which makes "Lester Zick" a non-person, perhaps a 'bot, > >but of no real consequence. > > Just of considerably more consequence than yourself fortunately. Only in 'bot-world.
From: Virgil on 2 Sep 2006 17:48 In article <5dhjf25pla1s873m6snta25ba1lcc5mvf5(a)4ax.com>, Lester Zick <dontbother(a)nowhere.net> wrote: > On Fri, 01 Sep 2006 17:06:06 -0600, Virgil <virgil(a)comcast.net> wrote: > > >In article <eh0hf29bmf3ggmteptu3ofe6mkpq8rsp4e(a)4ax.com>, > > Lester Zick <dontbother(a)nowhere.net> wrote: > > > >> On Fri, 01 Sep 2006 09:49:03 +0300, Aatu Koskensilta > >> <aatu.koskensilta(a)xortec.fi> wrote: > >> > >> >Lester Zick wrote: > >> >> On 31 Aug 2006 10:54:03 -0700, "MoeBlee" <jazzmobe(a)hotmail.com> wrote: > >> >> > >> >>> schoenfeld.one(a)gmail.com wrote: > >> >>>> Definitions can be false too (i.e. "Let x be an even odd"). > >> >>> That's not a definition. That's just a rendering of an open formula > >> >>> whose existential closure is not a member of such theories as PA. > >> >> > >> >> Which really clears things up for us, Moe. > >> > > >> >MoeBlee's answer might be considered somewhat more obfuscated than > >> >necessary. We can rephrase it without reference to all this formal stuff > >> >and simply say that "let x be an even odd" is not a definition, it's > >> >just a shorter version "let x be a natural number and further assume > >> >that x is both even and odd" which is neither a proposition nor a > >> >definition. It's probably the beginning of a - relatively boring! - > >> >proof in which it is established that there is no natural that is both > >> >even and odd. > >> > > >> >Definitions in mathematics often appear in the following forms > >> > > >> > "An X such that P will be called a Q" > >> > "By a X we mean a Y" > >> > "When P(X,Y) we often say that X glurbles Y" > >> > ... > >> > > >> >One might quibble and say that a definition of that kind might be false > >> >if in fact no one will call an X such that P a Q; or if, in fact, the > >> >devious author doesn't really mean a Y by X; or if "we" will not, in > >> >fact, often say that X glurbles Y when P(X,Y); and so forth. However, > >> >such objections ignore the role claims such as above have in > >> >mathematical language, acting as they do essentially as stipulations, > >> >analogously as one might say "let's call whoever it was who committed > >> >this heinous crime 'John Doe'". > >> > >> Is a stipulation a statement? Is a definition a statement? Is a > >> theorem a statement? Then my question remains as to what the > >> difference is between or among statements such that one can be true or > >> false and others not? Obviously the answer is that there is no such > >> difference. > > > >And like many simple and obvious answers, it is wrong. > > > >If it were not wrong, even someone like Zick could come up with ways of > >determining whether an excalmation was true or false or whether a > >request was, or whether a question was. > > > >Until Zick can come up with a reasonable set of rules for determining > >the truth or falsity of "Ouch!" and "Wake up!" and "Are we there yet?", > >he has no case. > > So your answer is what? That stipulations are not statements or that > definitions are not statements or that theorems are not statements or > what exactly? My answer is that exclamations, requests, commands, questions, etc, even when grammatically sentences, are not declarations, and only delarations need be either true or false. If Zick wants to include "not a declaration" under the heading of ambiguous, he might make a case that every sentence must have one of his truth values, "true", "false" or "ambiguous". But it is a lousy case.
From: Virgil on 2 Sep 2006 17:54 In article <okhjf2tprv74k1ruej4fjnoshub42jkccb(a)4ax.com>, Lester Zick <dontbother(a)nowhere.net> wrote: > On Sat, 02 Sep 2006 13:22:56 +0300, Aatu Koskensilta > <aatu.koskensilta(a)xortec.fi> wrote: > > >MoeBlee wrote: > >> Aatu Koskensilta wrote: > >>> MoeBlee's answer might be considered somewhat more obfuscated than > >>> necessary. > >> > >> My purpose was not to give just an informal explanation, but also to > >> explain that, and how, this is formalized. > > > >Why? Do you think the formalism will help Zick? > > Formalisms for "true", "false", and "infinity" might help Zick > considerably if they were true. Zick seems to object to anyone else having an opinion of what "true" means, and to bolster his own Know-Nothing position declines to express any opinion of his own on what "true" means.
From: david petry on 2 Sep 2006 18:16
Robert Israel wrote: > david petry wrote: > > Probabilistic arguments are part of the scientific method, but they > > absolutely must be validated by experiment. If Robert Israel thinks > > there are lots of examples of probabilistic arguments supported by > > experimental evidence which nevertheless lead to wrong conclusions, I'd > > like to see him name one such case. > > I don't know whether there are lots of these, but it seems that one > case is the incompatibility of the Hardy and Littlewood conjecture > pi(k) >= pi(n+k) - pi(n) for sufficiently large n and the prime > k-tuples conjecture (see > <http://www.utm.edu/staff/caldwell/preprints/Heuristics.pdf>). I am > sure the > number theorists in the group can supply more examples. In that article, they authors write: They made this [H-L] conjecture on the basis of very little numerical evidence saying. "An examination of the primes less than 200 suggests forcibly that ..." In other words, that H-L conjecture was based on limited numerical evidence with no probabilistic argument behind it. On the other hand, the k-tuples conjecture does have a probabilistic argument behind it, and is supported by computational evidence, and hence most mathematicians agree that the k-tuples conjecture is probably true and H-L is probably false. |