From: L' Ermit (lhermit@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Jan 05 2002 - 11:10:39 MST
[Roly Sookias] Hermit, why do you insist on trying to pontificating
endlessly against every subject that is raised!?
[Hermit] Do I? This is your opinion. Fortunately, it is not shared by many
here whose opinions I value. Do you think I should regard your opinion as
being valuable too? If so, kindly share the grounds for your belief.
[Roly Sookias] It was the same with my IAL posts and now you're doing it
again with the vedic maths business!
[Hermit] Reprise - Your "IAL posts" seemed to ignore an awful lot of facts.
Which it seems to me made them less than useful. I pointed out the generic
difficulties with such systems. Most on the list either agreed or were not
interested or did not consider them worth commenting on - or something. For
whatever reason, you garnered no replies. For myself, I didn't think that
the ideas you put forward were particularly valuable. I responded purely
because you whined about being ignored, and any "tone" you detected, was
probably because I was annoyed by the reposting of what seems to me a silly
idea - and the reason I thought it silly was, I think, well articulated in
the original responses - to which you replied by reasserting your original
viewpoints. Hardly persuasive and which does not advance anything.
[Hermit] I have not spoken much on the idea of increasing language density
for a number of reasons - communication theory tells me that there are
fairly tight constraints on what can be achieved there, and the stipulated
underlying reasoning appears tenuous and improbable. Think about it for
yourself. We have a presumed (but unsupported) loss of information due to a
presumed (but unsupported) assumption about the collapse of civilizations
and a presumed (but unsupported) assertion that presumably valuable (but
unsupported) information could be preserved from loss by encoding it into
other materials which it seems are presumed (but unsupported) to be more
likely to survive where the useful information is presumed (but unsupported)
will not. A veritable tower of unsupported assumptions. If people wish to
discuss this they are welcome and I will chirp in if I have something to
contribute or see something interesting happening. Up to now, I have not.
[Hermit] On the other hand, the PI to 32 digit story was and is total
nonsense. An asserted "fact" which was no such thing.
[Hermit] Yes, it is true that the Harrapians were a moderately early
civilization, but it is thought that they developed as an offshoot of the
Sumerians (caused by climatic induced migration) and their early development
and mythos is considered to be a degenerate version of that of earlier
Sumerian cultures. Yes, Sanskrit was a huge step in human development, but
that was language, not mathematical and besides, that step occurred much
later than the Harrapans. Most significantly, none of this speaks to an
underlying mathematical ability - no matter how much the proponents of this
idea wish that it does.
[Hermit] So far as I am aware the Harrapians contributed nothing significant
to mathematics - everything they did had been done earlier by others, and
was in any case abandoned when their civilization ended. Like most early
mathematics - including the Egyptian, they were oriented to solving certain
problems (largely religious construction) and when the immediate problems
were solved, they took it no further. So far as I am aware they worked to
practical precisions (usually two and occasionally three significant
digits), and never identified the nature of PI, instead being satisfied with
crude approximations.
[Hermit] Asserting that "their" works, reduced to writing a long time later,
contained PI to 32 significant digits, is to assert that they did something
hugely significant in mathematics. I rejected that assertion, gave reasons
and supported them. In return I received a barrage of mystical
pronouncements and accusations that the fact that this is rejected is due to
some prejudice or lack of indoctrination. In reality the rejection is due to
a lack of supporting evidence for the suggestion, and the rejection of the
idea that a bronze age civilization eking out a precarious existence leapt
ahead of everyone else without developing the supporting body of work that
everyone else making such contributions appears to have required, and that
having made this vast step, that it was utterly lost without a trace.
[Hermit] My rejection of this stew of mysticism and defense of rational
criticism, including the investment of far more time than it deserves, has
lead to a great deal more expression of belligerent opinion, appeal to
emotion, venting and name calling, but I still don't see any rigorous
support being offered for the ideas which have been expressed - and don't
think that it will be. Bear in mind that I do not have to "prove the
negative" - these are not my assertions. If the people advocating what
appear to be harebrained submissions (including yourself) knew how to argue,
they would have the wit to realize that the onus is upon them to prove what
they claim. But because they are to lazy or incapable of doing this, yet
appear to imagine that they are persuasive, it seemed worthwhile to me to
take the effort to demonstrate why this is not the case. You are welcome to
<em>prove</em> me wrong. As a hint, calling me names - as you attempt here -
is unlikely to be your most effective persuasive tactic.
[Roly Sookias] Your tactics seem to be to blather them into submission!
[Hermit] Strange. If you are ignored, you complain. If you receive negative
feedback you complain. What result are you looking for? Unconditional
approbation? The volume of my replies is due in large part to the sheer
incompetence of the initial material - bearing in mind that the CoV contains
a number of smart people who nevertheless likely need more background
information than subject specialists. I attempt to include such material in
my submissions. This would be unnecessary if the people introducing ideas
were to do a competent job of it.
[Roly Sookias] Why can you not make ANY positive comments or suggestions?
[Hermit] I only make positive comments about things that I have a positive
reaction to. I only make suggestions about things that interest me. Are you
different in this regard?
[Roly Sookias] You remind me of the victorian scientific community portrayed
in a dramatisation of the life of Charles Darwin - obsessed with verbal
scoring and always attacking, always seeking to destroy all new ideas. Yes,
one must always be sceptical, but is not dogmatism a sin!? Charles Darwin,
our only saint, was almost wholly disheartened and discouraged by people
like you.
[Hermit] Skepticism and dogmatism are not congruent. And I suspect that your
knowledge of "people like me" is close to non-existent. So thank-you for
sharing your opinion. Pardon me for ignoring it, but it does not yet seem to
me that you have yet earned much respect for it.
[Roly Sookias] At the time these people may have had most of the public on
their side, but who is remembered and hailed for their contributions to
science?
[Hermit] And what has this to do with anything? Do you really imagine that
progress is determined by popularity polls? How much attention do you think
that a noise-filter will pay to your opinion? Reality is not subject to
being voted upon. It simply is. Then too, progress is much less about
individuals than it is about knowledge and consensus. How many peoples' work
do you think Darwin relied upon? How many of their names do you imagine are
recognizable today? This is not just in science, how many historians do you
know the names of? Finally, it is worth remembering that public opinion is
almost invariably (inevitably?) wrong.
[Hermit] But then the public is so lamentably ignorant.
[Hermit] Which might be part of the reason that they are irrelevant in
determining consensus. Consensus requires explanation, persuasion and the
ability to defend what is advocated - without causing offense. It also
requires that what is proposed connects to what is known, or is able to
explain why it does not. Where a proposal is made to replace what is used by
something new, the something new has to provide the utility of what is being
replaced.
[Hermit] Unfortunately, In my opinion, the examples you have raised have not
had the above attributes, and the styles we have seen deployed here
recently, seem hardly calculated to persuade. Which, you might consider,
perhaps accounts for my lack of enthusiasm? After all, how positive am I
expected to be over what I see as daft and unsubstantiated assertions? And
if I were to become enthusiastic about such, would you still respect me in
the morning? Do you think that your respect would make up for my loss of
self-respect if I adopted this course?
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