Misplaced Pages

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Archive1

Bell's theorem

Issues...

From the previous message: Whatever does this mean?

"Thus, the group Z/Zn is abelian, the ring Z/ Zn is not."

Z is a commutative ring then so is any quotient. (I'd better have a look at that article). Also the Chinese remainder theorem is a theorem about rings. And abelian groups are called abelian because of Abel's contributions to the solvability of equations. Hmmm. CSTAR 04:37, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for reading my talk page. You did not see the complete story, because the talk moved on the page of the person stating the above. I did some mistakes in dealing with that person. But in short, that person cooled down after I pointed out that unlike that person thought, not any finite group of order n is isomorphic to Z/nZ, and a quotient of a polynomial ring is not polynomial ring anymore.

That is to say, there were much bigger blunders by the other person than what you saw. Oleg Alexandrov 05:25, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

PS Your page is kind of large. Might need some archiving. Oleg Alexandrov 05:25, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Away from logic

Hi CSTAR: sorry to drop out of our conversation about interpretations of quantum mechanics, but I got involved in two issues that became very live at that time: far-right attempts to use Misplaced Pages in their moral equivalence claims between the holocaust and the Dresden bombing, and a little storm that's been brewing for a while around Islamophobia. In short, I think what you write about instrumentalism is OK; I have some minor comments which I will raise on the talk page in due course. ---- Charles Stewart 13:30, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Bell inequalities

What are your opinions on CT's new round of editing ? It's a pity that qualified authors have waste time watching these articles. --Pjacobi 11:01, 2005 Feb 17 (UTC)

Wave-particle duality

Thanks for your comments on my French talk page (btw, "duality" is "dualité", otherwise your French is perfect).

I think there is a misunderstanding about the aim of the metaphor (and the choice of the word metaphor is not neutral in the section title). It is an analogy on only some of the aspects, not all. I will make a kind of quiz on the article talk page to make things clearer.

Cdang|write me 08:45, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The quiz is ready. I would like another comment on your message: in the wave-particle duality, you have of course the "wave point of view" (a particle arising from a wave, which is the analogy) and the "particle point of view" (the wave function whiwh wavelength can be calculated from the impulsion ofthe particle).

As you pointed out, the analogy only presents one point of view, and it never claimed to do anything else. This is a lack which I will write in the dedicated sub-section. If you have an idea, a macroscopic analogy for the particle point of view, it will be welcomed by me.

Cdang|write me 09:24, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Possible-world metric

Hi CSTAR.

You wrote to me:

Please look at my comment (question) in the talk page Talk:Possible worlds on defining the metric between possible worlds.

We could call that metric a "logical-space metric", could we not? I am looking through that talk page and will shortly post something there. But I don't think I can help with your question, since it is not in my main area of expertise relevant to the article. (My thing is more purely the metaphysics of modality, particularly the ontological status of possible worlds; and also modal epistemology and the taxonomy of modalities.) Sorry I can't say more! --Noetica 09:02, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Tree images

Hi! Thanks for uploading Image:IMG Tree.jpg and Image:IMG binding.jpg. I notice they currently don't have image copyright tags. Could you add those to let us know their copyright status? (You can use {{gfdl}} if you release it under the GFDL, or {{fairuse}} if you claim fair use, etc.) If you don't know what any of this means, just let me know where you got the images and I'll tag them for you. Thanks so much, – Quadell 15:10, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

Grammarbot

I have unblocked the Grammarbot (I am not the person running it).

In cases like Poincaré-Birkhoff-Witt theorem where the bot modifies "A ,B" to "A,B", this is not an error (it's no worse than the original error). A further fix to "A, B" should be made, but that's beyond the scope of the Grammarbot to fix automatically.

From your contributions, I didn't see any other Grammarbot reverts or discussion of other possible Grammarbot errors, so I have done the unblock. -- Curps 19:02, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Looking at the list of reverts at http://r3m0t.geniushost.net/cron/stuff.php , most of these are false positives. Only two or three pages using ASCII art seem to involve a genuine revert. -- Curps 19:14, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You are right about Inner product space, but the edit at Archimedes Plutonium was perfectly valid (both reverts were in error). -- Curps 19:32, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't agree that the bot is creating more work than it's worth. It's performing a very useful function, and I'm aware of only four genuine reverts so far, out of probably thousands of edits. For what it's worth, there's a human editor who creates an enormous amount of work for people by refusing to use spaces after commas and periods (full stops), and he hasn't been blocked yet. -- Curps 19:37, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Surely you're not saying that this typo in the original Usenet posting needs to be preserved religiously? There are many cases where typos or spelling changes in even Shakespeare and other authors have been corrected by modern editors. Should we edit Jane Austen and change the title of her book to Love and Freindship because that's how she originally wrote it in her idiosyncratic spelling?

In any case, you can't fault the bot for making this edit, because a human (namely me) would have and did make the same edit... that is, even if you consider it an error it's not a bot-type error that a human editor would not make. -- Curps 19:48, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your notice on my talk page that you blocked the grammarbot. Unfortunately, I do not quite agree. Some edits of the bot are indeed mistaken. However, I find the ratio between correct and incorrect edits quite acceptable. -- Jitse Niesen 16:41, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

xfig guidance

Hey, you were adding xfig diagrams to some article at some point, weren't you? I need to make some diagrams myself, and I don't know how, and I was wondering if I could ask you for a little guidance...

Do you have the book Geometry Topology and Physics by Nakahara? I need to make something sort of like figure 10.2 in his second edition. It's like, some maps between fibre bundles, indicating the fibres and maps and sections pictorially. I would also like to make a lattice with some vectors. and maybe the moduli space for the torus H/PSL₂(Z).

So first, can I ask you, in your opinion, are these sorts of diagrams best or easiest done in xfig? Would I be better off using latex picture environment? If so, which one? Second, I have xfig loaded on my machine, and I'm fooling around with it, and it seems like I'm kind of limited by the accuracy of my hand/eye coordination moving the mouse. Are there precise commands for things like: parallel/perpendicular lines or graphing functions or plotting points with coordinates? Can I produce tangent vectors to curves, or do I have to eyeball it? And how do I put latex math symbols in the text areas?

My first foray into illustrating my own work is a little rough. I hope you don't mind me bugging you, and if I'm barking up the wrong tree just throw something at me and I'll go away. Thanks. Lethe | Talk 00:12, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

I'm getting better at the diagrams. It took me a while to discover the "depth" feature, but when I did, that helped a lot. But I'm having a hellova time trying to get this latex export business to work. It seems like maybe my tex installation isn't set up right, because I keep getting annoying file errors. Grrr... But I'll show you what I've got so far if you like. Thanks again. Lethe | Talk 04:39, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Old/To close

Hi. Just dropping a note... I thought this might be useful to you: Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Old/To close. -- AllyUnion (talk) 23:44, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Asher Peres' book and the Bell inequalities

Re your comment in Miguel's page, I wonder if Peres' published work can be described as unbiased? In http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9905084 he writes:

"The problem is not whether the validity of a Bell inequality can be salvaged by invoking clever loopholes, as some local realists try and trick us into, but whether there can be any local realist theory that reproduces the experimental results."

Why assume we are trying to "trick" anyone? I agree, of course, re the need to reproduce experimental results, but disagree violently with his approach in the above paper of investigating only the ideal cases, not the actual experiments with all their various defects.

Peres, incidentally, is another theorist with whom I have had some correspondence. I wonder if possibly he may by now have changed his mind slightly? Perhaps you could ask him -- I can give you his address if you want. His book, I note, was written in 1993. My correspondence was mostly in 1999. Caroline Thompson 10:26, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely, Peres did change his mind. He's dead.CSTAR 14:00, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Semi-off-topic remark: http://meta.wikimedia.org/MPOV --Pjacobi 14:21, 2005 Mar 18 (UTC)

no, YOU wait a minute

I have no interest in getting bogged down in this dispute between Catherine Thompson and the rest of you, and I think it is inappropriate to use my user space to debate issues unrelated to me. Besides, you should know better than to assume I'm going to just listen to her (or anybody) and jump into the articles undoing everyone's work. Finally, you might want to read my reply to CT. — Miguel 12:41, 2005 Mar 18 (UTC)

Reply to Miguel

Miguel

OK, I'll respond here (in the off chance that you'll read this). I understand why you do not want to get involved in this dispute at all. Indeed it is stressful and time-consuming. It is also understandable that you were annoyed at someone's using your user page for posting messages (for the record: that someone was not me). However, as far as user talk pages, I thought they were part of the public forum that constitutes wikipedia and that it was legitimate to "but into" an exchange. Others have done it on my talk pages, frequently, and I never thought much of it.

Clearly now that you have stated that you don't want it used "to debate issues unrelated to me" I'll be very careful in the future about posting anything there.CSTAR 14:37, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Feel free to debate me on any issue, but I don't like your debate with CT spilling into my user space. — Miguel 18:12, 2005 Mar 18 (UTC)

OK fine. But please for the record I would like to keep this episode in proper perspective. If someone else uses (what I had hitherto assumed to be a) a largely public space (a talk page) to represent to you one side of an issue that is of direct concern to me, it is natural that I use that same space to try to present another side of the same issue; this of course, provided certain standards of civility are observed. Please tell me, did I fail to observe these standards?

Excuse me—I was actually out of line here myself.

However, now that you clearly have stated your position, i.e., that you consider this usage of your talk page, to be abusive, fine, I'm perfectly happy to respect your wish.CSTAR 19:21, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's just that I don't get to spend all that much time on wikipedia any more, and I hate to get involved in a debate like this with the little time that I do have. CT scores quite high on the crackpot index and I replied on her talk page and did not touch any of the relevant content pages, just her own talk page. You should have known better from our past collaborations and not find it necessary to launch a preemptive strike on me like that ;-) — Miguel 22:14, 2005 Mar 18 (UTC)

Yes I suppose, stumbling on a fully developed polemic on your talk page can be unnerving. CSTAR 02:34, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The drive to make Logic a featured article

I posted this message to Mel Etitis's talk page, which is a summary of some things I thought he could help us with.

I've started a page in my user space User:Chalst/logic drive to summarise what I think needs to be done. --- Charles Stewart 09:10, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Possible impostor

I've been doing some impostor hunting lately, and you got the following hits: Cstar (talk · contribs). Of course, this may be nothing, but I thought I would let you know. – ClockworkSoul 02:37, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

• My pleasure. I'll be finding more as time goes by. – ClockworkSoul 03:31, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
• This impostor enjoys trying to take advantage of our sans serif font to trick us (noted at Misplaced Pages:Vandalism_in_progress/Long_term_alerts#.22DoppeIganger.22). You'll notice if you look closely that the lower-case 'L' in Plek was swapped with a capital 'I'. – ClockworkSoul 14:00, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Quantum reverts

Hi, please don't revert the categorization of the quantum articles. This category had more than 200 articles in it, and they did not fit into one wiki page. I whittled it down by moving 30-odd articles to a category called Category:quantum measurement. If you don't like the category name please say so, but don't revert without discussion. Yes, Category:interpretation of quantum mechanics may have been a better name, in retrospect. linas 03:14, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Nuclear option

"the usefulness of that article has decreased since the recent edits of User:Hbomb and User:Ed Poor"

Yeah, they want to make it an article about some boring, obscure, unimportant senate rule about internal procedures, about democrats who apparently are going to great pains to filibuster 7 nominees for no good reason other than their joy to "obstruct", and that 51 out of 100 is just as good as 60 out of 100 when it comes to democracy. The intro makes it sound like the nuclear option is a big deal over nothing. And every attempt to give an honest appraisal of the Democrat's side is modified to cast it as mere assertions, opinions, and allegations. Wouldn't it be better if judges were supported by a large majority of the senate, rather than by a partisan group representing only half the nation? I can't even quote a newspaper without hbomb rewriting it into assertions and opinions. shheeesh. FuelWagon 20:31, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Move FOPC to FOL

There's a consensus (myself, User:Nortexoid, User:Dcoetzee) for a move of First-order predicate calculus to First-order logic (the latter is currently a redirect to the former, so the latter needs to be deleted first: it has no intersting history/talk content attached). Would you do the honours? Cheers! --- Charles Stewart 16:33, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Done. Were everything in WP so devoid of controversy

Thanks. I'm getting back into WP editing after getting rather worn down with editing articles on pet topics of neofascists (Dreden firebombing, Russian atrocities in East Prussia): simply ghastly. I'm mostly sticking to logic now. --- Charles Stewart 16:46, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Complementarity

Dear CSTAR, I am not sure whether you're serious when you write that SA is a competent experimentalist. He's a textbook example of a crackpot that was completely uncapable to finish the master degree (he has a Bc only and he could never get a job in physics), but he is convinced that he is another Bohr or perhaps Einstein and he depends on editing Misplaced Pages in such a way that he intends to convince others that he is a genius or at least a physicist - which was a clear success in your case. He is no experimentalist at all - this is another thing that you've totally misunderstood. He's never studied anything such as experimental physics and he has absolutely no skills in doing this job. Before quantum mechanics, he was trying to show he was a genius by inventing a new theory of relativity which was a similar kind of crap. I included the link to Satanic verses because these two beliefs of him have identical roots, and he uses the same kind of threats as Khomeini did. It's a completely irrational belief in his own special position in the Universe - a belief that is critical for his life. All the best, Lubos --Lumidek 15:58, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

(This is in response to a posting CSTAR put on my page and the above). First of all, I think Misplaced Pages policy needs to be followed by all sides in this debate. If we can find references to Afshar's previous work, or references to the fact he never got a master's degree in Physics (then how did he end up teaching at Rowan), this is probably relevent and can be incorporated in to the article. On the other hand, there is a no personal attacks policy on Wiki. More to the point with the Afshar experiment article, there is a no original research policy at Misplaced Pages. Samboy 19:27, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Experiment

You really misunderstand the very basics of this story. Of course that Afshar did not fake the experiment. His experiment is a completely standard 19th-century style interference experiment, the kind of experiment that every freshman physics student must do (at least in Prague) and understand. The experiment of course agrees with classical electromagnetism; one does not really need anything "quantum". Quantum theory in this completely classical limit is fully reducing to the predictions of classical electromagnetism. The whole problem is only philosophy - he incorrectly interprets the experiment. I apologize but if you really believe that Afshar has done something important, then you are the kind of dumb people who can easily be manipulated by equally ignorant journalists. Best, Luboš --Lumidek 11:58, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

If the previous remark by Lumidek proves anything, it's that Lumidek did not read my remarks. Of course the "the whole problem is only philosophy - he incorrectly interprets the experiment.", and that was precisely my point. Weird. --CSTAR 12:32, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Correlation dimension

Any assistance you can give on the correlation dimension article would be welcome. PAR 22:15, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Indeterminacy in computation

I'm a bit weary to put what I'm going to say next on the Talk:Uncertainty principle page for now, so I put it here for you to be able to give your opinion first.

I think Indeterminacy in computation should be removed from the Uncertainty principle article. However, I fear a bit that if I make this change I'll end up in a revert war, which is obviously not what I want. The problem is that CarlHewitt seems to be adding references to the Actor model quite a number of other articles (mostly computer science related) in such a way that the actor model seems relevant, but ignoring most or all other revelant models. This all very much appears to be vanity from my point of view. I already tried to revert some of these changes, reasoning in the edit summary that either the actor model does not provide more insight in the topic discussed in the article or that the actor model is reachable via the relevant category anyway. Unfortunately this already resulted in a revert of some of my reverts (CarlHewitt did try to add some motivating text in these instances, which are not very convincing from my point of view).

The Misplaced Pages way is not just to delete other peoples' work. Simply asserting that their work does not provide insight to you is not good enough. It is better to add motivating text and discussion of alternatives.--CarlHewitt 2005 July 6 18:22 (UTC)

In addition I find the Actor model article very inaccessible Koffieyahoo 6 July 2005 14:34 (UTC)

I am sorry that you find the article inacessible. Any suggestions for improvement?--CarlHewitt 2005 July 6 18:22 (UTC)

Excuse me? Why are you telling me this?

The Misplaced Pages way is not just to delete other peoples' work. Simply asserting that their work does not provide insight to you is not good enough.

I deleted (once) in good faith a link you put in, (and please note that I explicitly asked you about that link). I have not modified in any way the comments you placed in the uncertainty principle page, although I have given reasons why I think they are inappropriate. Thanks.--CSTAR 6 July 2005 18:40 (UTC)

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I was not referreing to you. Instead I was replying to the remark above mine on your page by Koffieyahoo.--CarlHewitt 2005 July 6 19:03 (UTC)

Summary for pedagogical purpose

Dear CSTAR,

I was a bit surprized you simply deleted my contribution to the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics "Summary for pedagogical purpose". I agree this contribution was not perfect but I believe the wikipedia is an iterative process.

My point was that I had the feeling the article was getting a bit technical and lengthy. I think it is not readable by students attending their first semester in quantum mechanics or quantum chemistry. If such a student want to understand this topic from the wikipedia I am affraid he or she could be very fast frustrated. I therefore intended to contribute with some introductory part at a very low level.

If you believe the article "mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics" belongs to you only, I am sorry but I will not touch it anymore. But if you believe it is not I ask you to put my article back to the wikipedia and of course amend it how you want.

Sincerly yours

quantum mechanical version

Thank you for editing my "quantum mechanical version" of the spectral theorem. You are right when you say that the title was misleading. You have replaced the term analytical function by Borel function. The problem is that I don't understand what is a Borel function. In physics text books one finds analytical function and most physicists know what it is. The physicists define ${\displaystyle f(H)=f(0)+f'(0)H+{1 \over 2}f''(0)H^{2}+...}$ using the Taylor expansion of f. Is the Borel function somewhat equivalent to this? I mean something which allows us (in principle and in practice) to understand how to apply f(H) to an element of a Hilbert space.

I also in principle agree with the fact that you suppress the summation over the discrete space but I think this is not very pedagogical for the people coming from the quantum physics or quantum chemistry community. I am teaching to chemists. I know what I am speaking about. I think this is an encyclopedia and one should take care that when possible it should be readable by people who don't want to cope with the whole functional analysis but nevertheless want to understand some key concepts they are using in their own field on a daily basis (see for example the article variational method (quantum mechanics)).

Moreover I am persuaded you are right when you say both version of the theorem are the same. But I am very sorry but I don't understand really why and how. Do you think you could make some notice explaining why both version are equivallent? Thank you very much.

I think you should keep in mind the good willing chemistry student who looks at an article like variational method (quantum mechanics) and clicks on the link to the spectral theorem. I think he will even not understand why both topics are linked to each other.

Bell

I think the new editor's apology is sincere, and that he is willing to make constructive additions to the page. Let's go with it. Stirling Newberry

Pseudoscience

FYI, I just learned today that there is a Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Pseudoscience; I thought you might be interested. linas 13:47, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Autodynamics

I just deleted your sentence about the full text search of the preprint server on autodynamics for two reasons:

1) the preprint servers are not a good place to examine for "mainstream" science:

A) The articles are not peer-reviwed and so they attract many cranks.

B) the preprint servers are used by a small and narrow cross-section of the physics community, although this includes the most relevant researchers for autodynamics

2) I am new here, but it seemed to me that it was very close to original research. If I'm wrong, might I suggest something like:

"For example, a search of the Web of Science citation database, yields not articles, except those by Carezani, on Autodynamics, or citing autodynamic articles." Salsb 14:37, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

I'll defer to your judgement, I had placed my citation results on the talk page because I didn't know if that would be acceptable in an article. thanks for the advice. I would keep in mind though that anyone can upload a preprint to the server, and while using the preprint server is customary in GR and HEP research, they are not used by most physicists outside of these fields. For example, in my department only ~20% of the faculty -- precisely those in GR and HEP research -- post to the preprint servers. Salsb 17:02, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the above discussion is about, but thought I'd mention that I got cranky and vented some steam about citations and citation databases in Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject_Pseudoscience#Crank_science_in_legit_journals linas 00:35, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

I noticed, and I pointed out that google scholars is horrible. When I say citations, I mean a real citation database Salsb 00:47, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

quantum question

I was wondering if perchance you'd ever seen a treatment of an entangled state in terms of some integral over (possibly) geodesics (or other paths) over some (low-dimensional) (possibly symplectic) manifold? Not a general "gosh QM is a feynman path integral" but something narrower and more precisely worded? linas 16:22, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Hmm offhand no. Entangled states can be regarded as a compact symmetric space in an obvious way (see Bloch sphere) but I'm not sure I see how to do what you are asking.--CSTAR 17:56, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, it was a wild hypothetical question. I didn't want to ask it. I'm sort of generally trying to build bridges between sums over sets of points or curves and representations of the same as various hilbert spaces. Its all very vague and hypothetical. I've got all the standard textbook background; I'm in semi-uncharted waters. I just thought I'd try a long-shot question. linas 00:50, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Re: the Bell article, yes, I'm done. I have no emotional investment in it, whack at it as you wish. See also Talk:Can Bohr's complementarity be tested? which I think I want to VfD. I'm not sure why I bother. linas 00:50, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

game theory?

Hi there - I noticed you were a substantial contributor to payoff matrix at one time. I've been thinking about starting a wikiproject on game theory to handle some standardization issues and present a place to coordinate efforts. Would you be interested? --best, kevin ···Kzollman | Talk··· 06:22, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

Cindy Sheehan

CSTAR, I strongly object the removal of important events in the course of this story from this article. Please restore the sections you removed. They are important for the timeline of the evolving story. Kgrr 16:22, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

CSTAR, I'm sorry. At first I did not know whose side you were on. I perceived your deletions as part of a vandalism attack. Please excuse my behavior. I'm fairly new at this. Kgrr 05:41, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Dear CSTAR, very sorry to bother you, but, unbelievably, this person is back to his/her mischief on "Cindy Sheehan," with another (fourth!) IP address; all have begun with 4.228 and originated in the Denver area. 4.228.216.125 Thanks for this. Badagnani 21:59, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

CSTAR, are you able to help with this? The anon IP (this time User:4.228.213.151) is on another rampage at Cindy Sheehan, 10+ reverts in just a few hours' time. Many thanks. Badagnani 09:15, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Many Thanks

Thanks for supporting my RFA. It couldn't have happened without your effort. FeloniousMonk 18:08, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Game theory again

Hi there again. I'm sorry to here that you've had a trying time recently. I hope that all is not lost. If you would like to come by and hang out with a friendly group of folk, I have started Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Game theory. I have enough regular contributors to justify a wikiproject, so don't feel obligated. --best, kevin ···Kzollman | Talk··· 23:57, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

This template must be substituted. Replace {{Template for discussion ...}} with {{subst:Template for discussion ...}}.

Image:NSAhyppereals.jpg has been listed for deletion

Historical inaccuracies?

Hello User:CSTAR,

I have seen very recent comments from you about historical inaccuracies in my work. Now I am the first to admit that my work can be improved! However, it would help greatly to have some examples of what you hand in mind. I have asked for this before but can't seem to find where you have answered. Since your comments are recent, I would appreciate concrete examples in current articles.

Thanks,

Carl

BTW Thanks for your help and support wrt the recent controversy.--Carl Hewitt 16:14, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Archive of discussion of relativistic information science

The category was deleted on September 22. The often vitriolic discussion was also removed, but it can be found here:

Relativistic information science.

Cindy Sheehan

Thanks for your note. BTW you lost your picture in your user:CSTAR. My plans for the chronology was first to have a place to record the day to day happenings so that at a later date I could glean the bigger picture. What that means is that I would like to consolidate the days at the ranch into a smaller, more concise paragraph. I will do much the same for the bus tour next.

Kgrr 12:13, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

RfC for specified complexity

I noticed you put an RfC on specified complexity, with particular reference on my edit, which asserts:

When Dembski's mathematical claims on specific complexity are interpreted to make them meaningful and conform to minimal standards of mathematical usage, they usually turn out to be false.

Do you believe this to be false? Though this statement is not a direct quote, it is a fair assessment of professional physicists and mathematicians that have read Dembski's work (with the possible exception of Robert Hermmann). If you are looking for a dispute here, well go ahead. But if you are searching for truth, then perhaps you should pick another battle.

Thanks. --CSTAR 17:17, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

For the record, my full request for comment is as follows:

"* specified complexity. Much work was recently put into the article by User:CSTAR . This request if for statements such as "When Dembski's mathematical claims on specific complexity are interpreted to make them meaningful and conform to minimal standards of mathematical usage, they usually turn out to be false," and the math in general, to be reviewed by peers (although WP:PR isn't appropriate since I don't intend to submit it for WP:FA).10:17, 10 September 2005 (UTC)"

As implied by the posting, my intention was simply to get more mathematicians to review it—not to initiate a dispute or battle. But since no edits have been made to the article since September 4, it obviously hasn't helped. Looking at it now, it seems to me that the reason I mentioned that particular statement is that it's not NPOV. To be NPOV it should be reworded to something like:

"Most professional physicists and mathematicians who have read Dembski's work claim that when his mathematical claims on specific complexity are interpreted to make them meaningful and conform to minimal standards of mathematical usage, they usually turn out to be false."

A few of footnotes for the statement, pointing to appropriate examples would also make the article more useful to the reader.--Johnstone 00:09, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I've been through this "it's not NPOV" discussion regarding other issues in physics. Based on that (sometimes painful) experience I don't think you've got much of a case here. Indeed, as is noted by various authors, Dembski confuses types to which particular numerical measures (such as information and Kolmogorov complexity) apply. But if you want to make an issue out of it I can't stop you.--CSTAR 00:21, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I can't find anything wrong with the maths in the article, but it doesn't have much maths so that's not surprising. The statement seems fine to me and supported by the references in the article; is there any evidence for anybody who thinks that Dembski's claims are mathematically meaningful and right? Johnstone, it is my impression that an RfC is to be used if you have already had a discussion on the talk page but couldn't reach a consensus — is there any specific discussion that you wish to be reviewed? -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:17, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Uncertainty principle

Hi CSTAR!

Just thought I would let you know that I intend to try to improve this already very good article by trying to make it flow. I hope you dont mind. I think a pair of fresh eyes on it maybe beneficial. Of course if you find I have changed the meaning or made it worse in your opinion, then please let me know and we'll come to some agreement. I'm just an amateur physiscist (ex EE), so if I can change it so that I can understand it better then I think it should benefit the casual reader and WP generally.--Light current 01:38, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Multiverse

Good rewrite and does put the Cardinal's words in perspective. Gee, isn't great when reasonable people can come to a consensuses without it turning into a scrap?

Please vote on list of lists, a featured article candidate

Please vote at Misplaced Pages:Featured list candidates/List of lists of mathematical topics. Michael Hardy 20:23, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Many-minds & Quantum mind

I'm working on Many-minds interpretation and Quantum mind as they are in dire need of cleaning up, as Multiverse was before we beat some order into it. I would very much appreciate your input on these other two articles as well. I have made some major changes but I'm at the point where I can't always see the trees for the forest. DV8 2XL 03:16, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

• "Quantum minds seems like Deepak Chopra stuff and of highly dubious worth." Well I had to mention Chopra it's true; but only in passing, and even then as dismissively as NPOV would let me. There has been a lot of work done on this subject by a wide cross-section of the scientific community, and I listed most of them (I think) and while most of them are wrong (since only one of them can be right!) I don't think as encyclopedists we can dismiss the whole field out of hand. In other words: I personally doubt that consciousness is mediated by quantum effects, but if this were proved true I wouldn't be shocked.

Hi CSTAR, I am only now starting to realize that you watch most all of the quantum articles. My condolances. :-) All of this arguing makes my head spin, I don't know how you can stand it. Anyway, wanted to say 'hi'.

BTW, did you ever read Stuart Hameroff about quantum computing in parmecia, ameoba? I rather liked it, as I remember been a teen in high-school, watching those movies of ameoba under a microscope, purposefully going off and moving and eating things with clear intent. And, of course, some other kid in the back raises the hand asks, "how does it do that? it doesn't have a brain?" I have to admit, Hameroff was the first person I ran across who didn't mindlessly hand-wave away those old movies with the unbelievable "nah, its just random chance" argument. linas 04:49, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Earle

Looks like Long John Silver / Honest Abe / etc. is back to his old tricks. --Gorgonzilla 18:57, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

He violated the 3RR this morning on the Earle piece using the DEastman sock. Please revert, I used my three. Also as a previous offender perhaps a block. Also need someone to second the RfC --Gorgonzilla 22:22, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for showing me the page. I re-worked the external references. In the process, I found a few bad references, which I feel should be removed. Please advise.  kgrr 13:01, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Quantum indeterminacy

Hi CSTAR,

You might find this document useful for a section on misconceptions, should you want to put one in.

Common Misconceptions Regarding Quantum Mechanics

See esp. part III " Misconceptions regarding measurement"

DV8 2XL 00:13, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Actor model, mathematical logic, and quantum physics

I have put this article up at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Actor model, mathematical logic, and quantum physics

Please consider voting Thank-you. DV8 2XL 01:47, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

• You must excuse me as am a Francophone and sometimes I am told, this leaks into my English prose.

I put this article up for deletion because it richly deserved it, and yes Hewitt could have been browbeaten into making the necessary changes through other methods. And while he is not the worst of the cretins that we must deal with, his sin is that if he is who he says he is; he should know better. The deluded and the enraged (I have done most of my edits here in Nuclear technologies/energy/weapons) I can forgive and deal with, as they need our pity and they can generally be brought under control (or they get themselves banned) in short order. Carl on the other hand knows exactly what he is doing and attempts to wear everyone out by giving ground only by inches, and by general passive-aggressive behavior because in the end he knows he will win in the long run.

Ask yourself how much of your Misplaced Pages time is spent reverting vandalism, ill conceived edits, and other forms of damage control? How much of that time comes out of the real work you want to do here? I my case it has become considerable. Hewitt knows that this is true for just about everyone that has written or made significant edits to a large enough number of articles. He also knows that if he keeps his scofflaw behavior just under the point where someone can make a case for banning him, eventually he can insert his theories just about anywhere.

In other words I think he is playing you all for fools.

Now if you feel your time is well spent cleaning up after his messes, with him resiting you all the way, that is your affair, but I have better things to do here, and so quite frankly have you.

Now I certainly don't take any of this personally. I have enjoyed editing with you and I hope to again soon, and feel free to call on me for help when dealing with Carl and his ilk, but note I have no issue with taking a harsh line when I think I am being played.

DV8 2XL 03:19, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

A bon; moi aussi je parle francais (at apart les accents et les autre signes, cedille, --- embetant, pour moi au moins en html--- je suis bien capable de l'ecrire aussi). Bon, d'accord, je ne sais pas ce qu'il se passe avec lui. Je sais bien qu'il est (ou etait) un cercheur de renom, mais son comportement ici est tout-a-fait bizarre. Mais d'autre part, on a pas le choix, au moin que on decide de le bannir, ce qui n'est pas, a mon avis, une bonne idee. C'est pour ca que j'ai fait la suggestion de une requete RfC pour discuter d'autres problemes.

Eh Bien, je sais, je ne le prends d'une facon personelle non plus. --CSTAR 03:41, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Carl Hewitt

I was on a sort of wiki-holiday for most of the time CH was pushing his ideas, so i didn't get involved. I think I won't get a chance to check on WP before Monday: I'll comment on what you said then; generally I think it's time to start some mediation process. My impression is that while CH is a serial violator of core WP rules, he is not so much a flagrant violator as someone who has not made the effort to internalise WP editing standards. If I am right, then the key to reform is convincing him that this effort is worth making - and we do well to remember that there is some effort involved. --- Charles Stewart 11:43, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Bad faith? Let's see. I'd like to point out that it is a possible interpretation of the NOR rules that if you succeed in getting your POV past any scientific peer review hurdle at all then you can treat it as settled fact for the purposes of WP. It looks to me like it is time to craft an RfC, perhaps with the name Physics, logic, computer science and the Actor model that will establish boundaries of acceptable conduct for CH in particular, and perhaps better rules for NOR in general. BTW, I've bookmarked your talk pages since over a year now, and we can conduct this and any other discussions on your page if you prefer. --- Charles Stewart 14:04, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree that my "bad faith" suggestion sounds unfair (even outrageous), particularly in an open forum such as this. Your RfC suggestion seems like a possibility, although it's not clear that that is the only problem. In any case, some RfC would have been preferable to the AfD which seemed to generate more ill-feeling everywhere.--CSTAR 14:57, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

What issues do you think such an RfC might not cover? --- Charles Stewart 15:22, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

For instance,

1. The use of extensive quotes in articles. Example: The article on Incompleteness of quantum physics contains quaotes plunked out from quantum indeterminacy.
2. Reference to the actor model, in situations when a reference to some kind of process algebra would have worked just as well.
3. Speculation about future trends. See the last section of Scientific Community Metaphor.
4. Unclear statements that seem to be about the physics-imposed limitations on computation. See Actor model, mathematical logic, and quantum physics. This would not be a problem if Hewitt were more responsive to criticisms (see for example the remarks above by DV8 2XL). As it is, his response to criticism is either a minmal fix or an evasive response. This points to a much more fundamental problem that other WP editors have pointed out to me.
5. The inability of Hewitt to distinguish WP articles from his own personal space. (I had to delete an announcement in the Carl Hewitt page for a talk he was going to give at Stanford). I explained my action on the talk page.
6. The issue of the plenitude of edits that I brought up in the AfD discussion is minor, I agree, but it does not make it easy to follow the progress of an article. Using diff's is a problem, because it's not always clear what pair of article states to compare. BTW, I was not the first to bring up the particular problem of many edits. Someone else did, in User talk:CarlHewitt on 14 September 2005 (UTC), in regard to the technical problem of burdening serves.

--CSTAR 15:54, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

I think that 1-4 and 6 could be handled by this proposed RfC, which would be broader than an RfC on CH's editing on any particular article, but rather a general call for comment on inappropriate pushing of the actor model in all its forms. Point 5 would really need a personalised RfC, but I think that can and should wait. --- Charles Stewart 16:18, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Postscript: I'm not sure that point 6 is really a problem. It can be irritating to try to fix a flurry of separate edits, but my own editing style has been evolving towards using more edits to achieve a change, to try to break up the big task into less intimidating sub tasks and to protect myself from the "browser has no saved edit state" threat. --- Charles Stewart 16:22, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree. It was mainly a problem for me when I had the dispute with Hewitt on quantum indeterminacy, which I had trouble figuring out what he had done last.

Formulating a constructive but wide ranging RfC will not be easy. 2) and 4) will be the hardest. --CSTAR 16:37, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree that 2 and 4 are the keys, and the difficulty lies in figuring out what changes it is fair to ask CH to make in his editing styleactivity. The irritation of 6 would go away, I think, if there wasn't the worry that a CH edit was trouble of some sort or another. --- Charles Stewart 17:38, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Please excuse me for butting in to this thread uninvited, but you both seem to be avoiding something which is rather obvious to me. Carl Hewitt is not a crank; he is engaged in a program of self-aggrandizement. The Actor Model, whatever its utility in informatics, and what ever his contributions to it, should not be used as a vehicle by him to, as Blissex pointed out:”… redefine much of his research in order to claim after-the-fact victory (because unfortunately much of his research as originally defined has had zero impact on the so called real world,…” User talk:CarlHewitt.

Until this is addressed, and he is made to understand that this community will not put up with this, he will continue to be a pest.

DV8 2XL 20:17, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

CH's edits do admit somewhat more charitable interpretations, and demonstrable relevance to the real world is a test that much interesting science fails; CH's work on the actor model was a very direct influence on the design of the Scheme programming language which I think does pass the real world impact test, so with respect, I disagree. --- Charles Stewart 20:46, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Re: he is engaged in a program of self-aggrandizement. I don't think Blissex's remarks are really grounds for concluding much. I would also be very hesitant to conclude anything about Hewitt's motives, though I do agree (with USer:DV8 2XL) that Hewitt's behavior seems passive/aggressive.--CSTAR 22:22, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Actor model article

I would like to see Hewitt write one good article on the actor model (please read carefully Talk:Actor model where User:Koffieyahoo proposes a similar task.) This article should say what the model is. Presumably, this is a mathematical model and after introductory comments, the article could be more mathematically formal. The closest I find to this is the article Actor model theory. However, that article has serious problems of its own. For example, on the section on Activation ordering Hewitt states

• Because of the transmission of energy, the activation ordering is relativistically invariant; that is, for all events e₁.e₂, if e₁ --act--> e₂, then e₁ precedes e₂ in the relativistic frames of reference of all observers.

What does the above phrase "e1 precedes e2 in the relativistic frames of reference of all observers." mean? And shouldn't the article explain why transmission of energy plays a role? Indeed, do actors have energy? What is their world line (a term referenced later in the article)? How is this related to the notion of world line in physics? Do actors have physical coordinates? Do they have physical extension?

Questions like these need to be answered in one comprehensive article the about actor model.--CSTAR 02:48, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Standard Borel space

Looks like another usage difference. I'm used to talking about Borel equivalence relations on the standard Borel space, which is a unique object up to Borel isomorphism. Not something I'm going to fight about; your version is fine and if the issue comes up I'll try to disambiguate in situ. --Trovatore 16:20, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I prefer not to revert, but the change had immediate repercussions to several articles where a standard Borel space could be a countable set (at leat Abelian von Neumann algebra, Direct integral, System of imprimitivity, Projection-valued measure).--CSTAR 23:19, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Carl Hewitt

Hi, until today I though Carl Hewitt was just another computer science professor with enough self-esteem to create an article about himself. However, he seems to have doen more naughty things. I want to look into this further, could you give me some pointers to start? --R.Koot 01:23, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Am I suddenly the expert on Hewitt evildoings? Just look at this talk page for starters for what others have written.--CSTAR 01:31, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Panama

Panamanians always had qualms to the U.S. control of the canal, so "traditionally cordial" is not entirely accurate, but it can be re-worded. The canal administration was "redundant" as the above paragraph basically said the exact same thing. I'm sorry I did not see the LA Times article, but looking it up some of the information from it was distorted. CJK 21:50, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

It was a distortion as it made it look like the Hard Chargers were organized by the government to provide a pretext for invasion. CJK 22:04, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Intelligent design edit

CSTAR, please read the discussion section of The "who the designed the designer" section. Regarding the distortion of ID, note that I explicitly gave a reference from Behe himself regarding the irreducible complexity issue, and note that no references were given regarding the alleged ID claims that section refers to. If you think the ID position was not distorted, please give me even one verifiable reference where an ID adherent makes these claims I removed in my version. Note also how I explained the section of the wikipedia entry appears to violate NPOV policy on covering pseudoscience. Perhaps you should at least address the issues before claiming they are false. Wade A. Tisthammer 21:18, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

CSTAR was right to revert you. It's my opinion you've been ignoring consensus at the Intelligent design article again. Raising an issue does not mean you've gained consensus, please read WP:CON. FeloniousMonk 21:30, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Felonious, please explain to me why it is right to distort the ID position and violate NPOV policy on covering pseudoscience. Also, please give me evidence that the consensus is to distort the ID position and violate the NPOV policy. Otherwise I am inclined to believe the reverse. Wade A. Tisthammer 21:52, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Wade: There is a lot psuedoscience on Misplaced Pages and I admit dealing with it fairly is not easy. See for instance Talk:Autodynamics although many other examples exist. Every description requires language; Describing a pseudoscientific body of assertions X fairly does not mean one has to redefine explanatory terms in accordance to the canons of X.--CSTAR 21:40, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps dealing with it fairly is not always easy, but surely that does not justify distorting the ID position before criticizing it. Wade A. Tisthammer 21:52, 11 November 2005 (UTC)