XPost: comp.theory, comp.lang.c++, comp.lang.c   
   From: 643-408-1753@kylheku.com   
      
   On 2025-09-26, olcott  wrote:   
   > On 9/26/2025 12:05 PM, Richard Heathfield wrote:   
   >> On 26/09/2025 16:56, olcott wrote:   
   >>   
   >>    
   >>   
   >>> Two other PhD computer scientists agree with me.   
   >>   
   >> That's an attempt at an appeal to authority, but it isn't a convincing   
   >> argument. There must be many /thousands/ of Comp Sci PhDs who've studied   
   >> the Halting Problem (for the 10 minutes it takes to drink a cup of   
   >> coffee while they run the proof through their minds) and who have no   
   >> problem with it whatsoever.   
   >>   
   >   
   > And of course you can dismiss whatever they say   
   > without looking at a single word because majority   
   > consensus have never been shown to be less than   
   > totally infallible.   
      
   Consensus in mathematics /is/ pretty much infallible.   
      
   Mathematicians are a very careful bunch; they generally know when they   
   have a conjecture and when they have a proved theorem.   
      
   Some of their proofs go for hundreds of pages. Peer reviews of such   
   proofs are able to find flaws.   
      
   You are not going to find a flaw in a massively accepted, old result   
   that, in in most succinct presentations, takes about a page.   
      
   You might as well look for a dry spot on a T-shirt that was loaded   
   with rocks and is sitting at the bottom of the ocean.   
      
   > The economist J.K. Galbraith once wrote, “Faced with a choice between   
   > changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost   
   > everyone gets busy with the proof.”   
      
   That's a thought-terminating cliche, just like, oh, the idea that the   
   more someone protests an accusation, the more guilty he must be.   
   As if someone innocent would not protest?   
      
   Are you saying that the concensus is /never/ right? Everyone   
   who-so-ever has a contrary opinion to a mathematical consensus is right?   
   Merely the possession of a contrary opinion is evidence of having   
   outwitted everyone?   
      
   > What's going on here? Why don't facts change our minds? And why would   
      
   You've not presented any facts, see. And your approach to a problem   
   in logic is to try to redefine it in some handwavy "extralogical" way   
   and then simply insist that anyone having to do with the original   
   problem should drop that and make the replacement one their agenda.   
      
   You are not able to earnestly engage with the subject matter in its   
   proper form.   
      
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