Monday, July 12, 2010
JSH: Trying to be fair
I point out how I use Usenet as I think it's the right thing to do. Posters may order me to behave a certain way and I'm not going to do it. But at least I can let you know what my methodology is. And yes, insults do fly at times, but I get insulted a lot, and I insult back, or I don't. But I also am dealing with what I can prove is the recalcitrance of people who have broken their own rules, refused published proof—killing a mathematical journal no less—who are relying on flawed math for their livelihoods, or for their delusions of value in their own "research".
Social structures can be powerful.
It doesn't mean they are right about mathematics.
Time is the best judge.
As time has gone by I've been privileged to watch new technologies render hostiles who inflict verbal abuse upon me—shift it to Google, as they proclaim Google search results mean nothing.
Why? Because I've seen my research rise in Google search results, and rise in search results across search engines, so for them, there is no choice, I guess. You might think the truth is a choice. I thought so too but then again, years ago I thought all kinds of things before learning better.
People can quite deliberately choose to be wrong. And ignore all evidence.
I try to be fair. I have the best seat in the house. For me it is a world away from where I was years ago arguing on this newsgroup, wondering if I'd ever find anything valuable. Hurting from my failures, questioning myself, wondering why I bothered, or couldn't just stop. Wondering why there were people who wanted to say so many nasty things to me—night and day, day and night.
Then it got harder. I didn't ask the ring of algebraic integers to dispute the field of complex numbers. It did so before I was born. It can't help doing so, it will do so until the end of time. To me, the refusal to accept that is so much about how our world can have so many problems that are solvable as people who are invested in being wrong do not care about the correct answer.
If mathematicians can sit back, and keep doing what they're doing when it's EASY to show a deep error, and an astounding conflict between ideas, then there is no puzzle about how people in harder areas to find truth can do so many of the things they do.
The truth will not change.
There is a sadness though when you see people who have invested so much in error when it wasn't their fault, who decide that they'd rather be wrong when the error is revealed—they did not know before but how can they continue in error after?—and I'm not the best person though to appreciate that feeling as of course I can say the above knowing that my job was to show that error. Knowing that I get to be right.
So I get to be the lucky guy, right? So lucky. Petty arguments don't change much for me.
But what I can do is warn you. There is no reason to argue with me to make your place in history as one of my foils. I have a method that I've used for years. It is honed by years of practice.
Denial of that reality does not change what happens.
It merely give me more people willing to work to insult me for a while, but work them I do. I think a lot of them actually don't do a bad job. But at the same time to be fair I need it out there so this message is like so many before explaining that I use Usenet.
You have been told yet again.
Social structures can be powerful.
It doesn't mean they are right about mathematics.
Time is the best judge.
As time has gone by I've been privileged to watch new technologies render hostiles who inflict verbal abuse upon me—shift it to Google, as they proclaim Google search results mean nothing.
Why? Because I've seen my research rise in Google search results, and rise in search results across search engines, so for them, there is no choice, I guess. You might think the truth is a choice. I thought so too but then again, years ago I thought all kinds of things before learning better.
People can quite deliberately choose to be wrong. And ignore all evidence.
I try to be fair. I have the best seat in the house. For me it is a world away from where I was years ago arguing on this newsgroup, wondering if I'd ever find anything valuable. Hurting from my failures, questioning myself, wondering why I bothered, or couldn't just stop. Wondering why there were people who wanted to say so many nasty things to me—night and day, day and night.
Then it got harder. I didn't ask the ring of algebraic integers to dispute the field of complex numbers. It did so before I was born. It can't help doing so, it will do so until the end of time. To me, the refusal to accept that is so much about how our world can have so many problems that are solvable as people who are invested in being wrong do not care about the correct answer.
If mathematicians can sit back, and keep doing what they're doing when it's EASY to show a deep error, and an astounding conflict between ideas, then there is no puzzle about how people in harder areas to find truth can do so many of the things they do.
The truth will not change.
There is a sadness though when you see people who have invested so much in error when it wasn't their fault, who decide that they'd rather be wrong when the error is revealed—they did not know before but how can they continue in error after?—and I'm not the best person though to appreciate that feeling as of course I can say the above knowing that my job was to show that error. Knowing that I get to be right.
So I get to be the lucky guy, right? So lucky. Petty arguments don't change much for me.
But what I can do is warn you. There is no reason to argue with me to make your place in history as one of my foils. I have a method that I've used for years. It is honed by years of practice.
Denial of that reality does not change what happens.
It merely give me more people willing to work to insult me for a while, but work them I do. I think a lot of them actually don't do a bad job. But at the same time to be fair I need it out there so this message is like so many before explaining that I use Usenet.
You have been told yet again.
# posted by James Harris @ 23:20 
