Re: Zenkin's paper on Cantor (reply of Dr. Zenkin)

From: David Longley (David_at_longley.demon.co.uk)
Date: 11/21/04 

Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 09:33:29 +0000

In article <2d32ebde5a10d5c2ace3a896341f402b.48257@mygate.mailgate.org>,
Kent Paul Dolan <xanthian@well.com> writes
>"David Longley" <David@longley.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> You don't read what I have written. You've just
>> said it again. You ignore the urls!
>
>David, the debating position "if you find what I
>post in public to be annoying, poorly written
>twaddle, then you _really_ need to read _more_ of
>what I write at these constantly flogged URLs of
>mine; try it, I insist" is completely untenable.
>
>Lose it.
>
>If you cannot learn to write readable news articles,
>debated in a professional and technically competent
>manner there is absolutely _no_ hope for any quality
>in your archival materials, which mostly predate
>your Usenet participation, and indicate that you
>arrived at the Net with your horrible writing habits
>already set in stone.
>
>HTH
>
>xanthian, and *I* _have_ tried to read one of your
>URL offerings, "Fragments". In an amazing display of
>your ability to accomplish the seemingly impossible,
>you somehow made it _worse_ than what you post.
>
>The mind is boggled, simply boggled.
>
>Also, learn how to trim followups to just the
>material still at issue. Constantly lengthening
>posting cascades are a product of mental illness, in
>this case _your_ mental illness.
>
>"Anal retentive behavior" somehow doesn't begin to
>cover the issues involved, but at least it leans in
>the correct direction.
>
>
>

You're making many naive inferences based on limited assumptions and
you're missing the bigger picture. You have to be able to want to see
that bigger picture in order to make any sense of what you read here.
Failure to do that will just result in you creating your own fiction and
misattributing it. There is a subtle difference in the way that the
deluded and the scientist goes about this.

I've explained why that is, and you neglect it to your own detriment. In
fact, your negligence will just reveal your deficits to others (as it
has in posts from Ozkural Harris, Verhey, Zick, Cutman etc). There are a
few posters here who know this and don't make the same mistakes. They,
like me, know that they're fallible, so they know that they make errors.
But they're prepared to learn from them. They know how science works.

If you stopped taking your preconceptions or biases for granted you
might begin to see how and what I say in my first paragraph above must
be so. If you were able to do that, you (we) would, I predict, find that
some of your behaviour changed (and in your (others' better interests).
Sadly, most people (except perhaps through chance) can't do that when
left to their own devices or choices. That's because it's the
environment that selects and manages behaviour.

One day you might come to see that I'm illustrating here is what happens
when such contingencies are very weak (because of all sorts of
constraints conditioned by personal histories prevailing social
unhelpful contingencies, not to mention limited fragments of behaviour
available in media like this - although much of the "real world" outside
controlled conditions is like that).

You can lead a person to writing but you can't make them read and
understand. At least, not under these restricted contingencies. People
will deny that they have done things even when they don't know *what*
they have and have not done, just as they will claim to understand
things that they have no context to understand. Verbal behaviour, like
other behaviour, is like that.

You need to re-examine your portfolio of premises. 

-- 
David Longley
http;//www.longley.demon.co.uk

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Zenkins paper on Cantor (reply of Dr. Zenkin)
    ... >David, the debating position "if you find what I ... that bigger picture in order to make any sense of what you read here. ... unhelpful contingencies, not to mention limited fragments of behaviour ...
    (sci.math)
  • Re: New Cybermen unveiled
    ... > David A McIntee wrote: ... >> and the official BBCi site. ... >> the bigger picture it doesn't. ...
    (rec.arts.drwho)