XPost: comp.theory
From: polcott333@gmail.com
On 11/16/2025 4:20 PM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> [ Followup-To: set ]
>
> In comp.theory olcott wrote:
>> On 11/16/2025 2:49 AM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>>> Tristan Wibberley
>>> wrote:
>>>> On 15/11/2025 11:59, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>
>>>>> Very clever people have attempted to show
>>>>> inconsistencies in the mathematical foundations, without success. Less
>>>>> clever people don't have a chance of doing so.
>
>>>> That's /much/ better politics but still sorely lacking. It leaves open
>>>> the avenue that the clever people did indeed show the inconsistencies to
>>>> themselves and to some others but they didn't show them to /you/.
>
>>> That's not the way the world works. Such results would have been
>>> published in a mathematical journal, and immediately attracted scrutiny.
>
>> That is not the way that the world works. A brilliant
>> tenured PhD computer science professor could have been
>> fired merely because he brought up the idea that the
>> halting problem might be wrong. No one bothered to look
>> at any of the words that he wrote. The fact that he
>> challenged conventional wisdom was considered blasphemy.
>
> I put it to you that this has never happened. Tenured professors don't
> go around asserting falsehoods in their own field.
It is not a falsehood. It is a truth that you
utterly will not pay attention to because you
are too damned sure of yourself.
> It they do, they are
> a danger to their students, and should be removed. It is common
> knowledge that Wolfgang Mückenheim, who teaches at Augsburg, asserts
> falsehoods on sci.math. It is generally agreed there he should be
> dismissed.
>
People utterly refused to look for any errors in his
reasoning. They assumed that he must be wrong entirely
on the basis that he challenged conventional notions.
He has many papers published in JACM.
> If a geography academic were to promulgate the notion that the Earth was
> flat, he should likewise be fired. Those in authority that assert and
> teach falsehoods should not have such positions.
>
> Again we're not talking about "conventional wisdom", we're talking about
> firmly established knowledge. "Conventional wisdom" is much weaker than
> established knowledge, and it is often false.
>
>>> Something like this did happen some years ago, I can't remember the
>>> exact details, but I think it was a "proof" that integer arithmetic was
>>> inconsistent. An even cleverer mathematician (I think it might have
>>> been Terence Tao) found flaws in the proof, and the paper was withdrawn.
>
>>>> That leaves open to the recipient of your message the possibility that
>>>> they're merely reading a message from the wrong person. Especially in
>>>> dead-usenet they can expect it to be true.
>
>>>> Also, it's /literally/ a mere appeal to received doctrine which is a
>>>> famous fallacy, one of the famous ones.
>
>>> Not "received doctrine", but established knowledge. You don't call it
>>> "received doctrine" when you rely on the abilities of a car mechanic to
>>> service your car or a doctor to service you.
>
>
>> No one in any technical field: computer science,
>> mathematics, and logic can tolerate challenges to
>> the foundational assumptions of their field.
>
> No, mathematicians can't tolerate cranks telling them that 2 + 2 = 5, or
> an arbitrary angle can be trisected by ruler and compass, or that the
> halting theorem is wrong. Academics hate lies and falsehoods.
>
> By "challenges" you mean ignorant cranks disputing established knowledge.
>
You probably don't even know what the term
[foundational assumptions] means. I will give
you a concrete example ZFC overturned the
foundational assumptions of naive set theory.
>> Everything has been proven to work correctly within
>> those foundational assumptions over many decades.
>
> Indeed, yes. One such foundational assumption is that if you drop
> something it falls. Some people high on LSD decided that assumption was
> false and jumped out of windows with tragic results.
>
In other words you are saying that you are still
dumb enough to accept the Russell's Paradox is sound?
Is ZFC crack-pottery?
>> Only Philosophers in those technical fields can
>> have sufficient open mindedness to objectively
>> consider alternatives to the foundational assumptions.
>
> Wrong. Philosophers are insufficiently competent in the technical fields
> to be able to evaluate them effectively. Only technical experts are able
> to do this. The example you sometimes cite, of the new set theory ZFC,
> was not formulated by philosophers.
>
It is extremely rare that a single person will
be sufficiently open minded and technically competent.
I operated on the basis of the intuition that if
the class of self-referential undecidable decision
problem instance were sound then the notion of
true on the basis of meaning expressed in language
is itself broken.
*KEY BASIS OF EVERYTHING THAT I HAVE SAID FOR 28 YEARS*
It turns out to actually be the case that true on
the basis of meaning expressed in language is
simply a semantic tautology expressed syntactically.
You could probably figure out what that means on the
basis of the meaning of the terms that comprise is.
--
Copyright 2025 Olcott
My 28 year goal has been to make
"true on the basis of meaning" computable.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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