A Pre-emptive Dialectic (to weed out the weaker objections)

Ted wrote:

Smile.

I quite agree with that. If you live up to your display pic, I promise I'll live up to mine (which is Darth Vader mounted on a dashboard and wearing a grass skirt).

I don't recall using either terms, "elegant" or "eloquent."

"Elegant," however, is a subjective, aesthetic term not limited to art.

"Elegance" is one of those subjective standards often applied to the truth-value of a theory. To be elegant, a theory must be simple while at the same time very capable of solving the problem.

I have seen programmers pressuring themselves to seek out elegant solutions to a programming problem when a less elegant one would fit the bill just as well. But for some reason, the elegant ones are much preferred. I guess it has something to do with professional pride and integrity, or looking smart, so they try harder to achieve elegance rather than saving time and energy by falling back on inelegance.

As for the solution to the Last Theorem, I don't know if it's elegant or not. You can look it up online and judge for yourself. But you wanted a more elementary solution that would have been achievable in Fermat's day in order to prove me wrong.

Post 281

Friday, January 22, 2010 - 9:28am

From Robert's post 275, after I repeated Steve Wolfer's questions to him:

So you won't answer direct questions either, Robert? The way to deal with a would be perjuror is to ask him what he denies. You treat a troll like a perjuror

Would you just tell me - no, tell all of us here - what your problem is?

The problem Robert, is that you are a troll and you know it. You are a dishonest evader of direct questions with no true interest in anything other than your repeated claim to know better than Objectivism, as well as doctors, and average people, and so forth, ad nauseam.

Steve asked you three direct questions:

Is there any volition?
Does life offer alternatives that we can respond to with focus and choice?
Are some of those alternatives of different value to the well-being of the person facing them?

If you answer "yes" to those questions, then reasoning itself is a moral issue.

Disingenuously you 'answered':

You didn't say if I had to answer yes to all three or just to any one of them.

So I responded:

So you won't answer direct questions either, Robert? The way to deal with a would be perjuror is to ask him what he denies. You treat a troll like a perjuror. If he fails to answer, then he does not deny what you have asked him.

I ask you these questions, Robert:

(1) Do you deny that men have volition?
(2) Do you deny that life offers alternatoives to which we cand respond with focus and choice?
(3) Do you deny that some choices will benefit a person's own flourishing better than others?

You will find you have answered these questions whether you wish to or not.

And, you did exactly as I predicted, you expressed false outrage, attempted to avoid the question altogether, and buried the thread in posts, once again demonstrating your troll nature. (What was it Churchill said, something like you faced either defeat or dishonor, you chose dishonor, and you will have defeat?)

And you have the nerve to say such things as "I have observed that Objectivism only feeds this tendency toward intellectual mediocrity."

By your own evasion you do not deny that men have volition, you do not deny that life offers alternatoives to which we cand respond with focus and choice, and you do not deny that some choices will benefit a person's own flourishing better than others. Yet you maintain that reason and morality are divorced: "Can it be proved that failing to focus on the truly relevant parts of the breast-cancer problem is someone's moral fault?"

You should read Adam Reed's Please Don't Feed The Trolls. From your evasion of direct questions to your use of brute force (note the long excerpt in 278 above) he's got you pegged.

(Edited by Ted Keer on 1/22, 9:35am)

Post 282

Friday, January 22, 2010 - 9:32am

Oh, and since we cross posted, I don't have to provide anything to disprove you, your claim that you know Fermat was wrong to claim to have had a proof is arbitrary.

And the word smile was Merlin's. That was sloppy.

(Edited by Ted Keer on 1/22, 9:37am)

Post 283

Friday, January 22, 2010 - 9:49am

Ted wrote:

Yes, the word elegant is usually used. My choice was considered, and, if one cares more about the meaning of words than the habit of tribes, superior.

Little touchy today, Ted? Since when does an occupation, especially mathematician, make one a tribe member?

Superior? "Eloquent" pertains to speech or writing that is "vivid, forceful, fluent, graceful, and persuasive" per one Webster's dictionary. I don't see concise or insightful in that list.

I think that a proof that could almost fit on the margin of one page would speak more clearly than a proof that takes two hundred pages.

Where did you get the notion Fermat's alleged proof "could almost fit on the margin of one page"? Fermat's marginalia (translated) is: "I have discovered a truly marvellous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain."

Edit: I recommend editing post 279 to distinguish my words from yours.

(Edited by Merlin Jetton on 1/22, 9:56am)

Post 284

Friday, January 22, 2010 - 10:22am

Merlin,

Where did you get the notion Fermat's alleged proof "could almost fit on the margin of one page"? Fermat's marginalia (translated) is: "I have discovered a truly marvellous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain."

Fermat lied.

Post 285

Friday, January 22, 2010 - 10:40am