tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?)

nielkj comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12882)

2011-01-28T07:57:31-08:00

@Pete: I'm sorry that he offended you, that is both uncivil and unacceptable. He wrote me to say that he apologized.

Pete L. Clark comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12879)

2011-01-28T07:41:04-08:00

@nielkj: He has definitely been combative with me. All I was doing was pressing him for details, while continually making clear that I had no "skepticism" towards his ideas whatsoever and only wanted to understand them better. He did not answer any of my questions. He did send me an unsolicited private email in which he gave me some further links -- which I appreciate -- but the rest of the email was rather insulting. In particular, he seems to have decided that I don't know much analysis based upon the fact that I cannot supply a proof that the Weierstrass Approximation Theorem allows one to extend the derivative from the class of polynomials to all continuously differentiable functions. But come on -- the WAT says no such thing. Is this a major concern of mine with his work? Not at all -- it seems to simply be an offhand remark that a mathematician made that turned out not to be true. If you follow me on this website, you'll find plenty of instances of that sort of thing coming from me. But his reaction was frustrating: it discouraged me from further engaging him.

On the other hand, let me say that I did spend some time reading some of the materials on his webpage. His short "textbook" had the most details -- including some details that were not supplied on my requests here -- and I think there is definitely some interesting mathematical content there. What he has written is incomplete by any standard -- there are, for instance, whole blank sections in the text -- and it is way underexplained from the pedagogical side (I.e., given that we agree that most freshman calculus students actually get very little out of the formal definitions of limits and derivatives, is there any reason to believe that replacing one technical foundation they ignore with another technical foundation they will mostly ignore is going to make any significant difference?). But as a mathematician I definitely enjoyed parts of his work and acquired insight from them. When I have the time I would like to take some notes on it and think harder about how or why to incorporate some of these ideas into my teaching (probably not at the calculus level, but that's okay).

I feel the need for some concluding paragraph summing up my take on the situation, but I guess it's pretty clear that I find it rather strange and have very mixed feelings about it. That will have to do for now.

nielkj comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12877)

2011-01-28T07:20:59-08:00

@WillieWong: perhaps it is sufficient to say that Bourbaki had only a very limited impact on Soviet era mathematics

nielkj comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12875)

2011-01-28T07:05:24-08:00

@WillieWong: " is he as combative in person as he is in the discussion linked above? " No, I think he is frustrated from not being understood.

"I took a look at what he wrote and got worried that it may be sweeping things under the rug and/or passing the proverbial buck..."

There may be a cultural issue at work here. Michael's way of presenting mathematics informal, but when pressed, he can explain details. This has to do with the way he was trained. There are some parts of the russian school which prefer to express mathematical ideas in a breezy way (the Rochlin school, some who came from the Gelfand school, and some from the
Arnold school).

Emerton comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12855)

2011-01-27T11:02:38-08:00

I found the discussion interesting enough to read parts of, and I liked the answer sufficiently much to upvote it.

Since posting comments does not cause anything to bump, it can be carried on harmlessly by those who want to participate in the thread, while all others can ignore it. Given this, I don't see that fedja and misha should stop unless/until they decide to do so themselves.

Yemon Choi comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12841)

2011-01-27T08:43:54-08:00

I rescinded one of my downvotes because, as jbl says, the answer has now at least been fleshed out, and the ratio of detail to "denunciation" has improved.

I'm also inclined to agree with Andrew, but have to admit that if this discussion were taking place on ML's own blog then I would be even less likely to read it. The fact I do occasionally check the discussion going on in that comment thread is more to do with the calibre of the "defenders of the orthodoxy" than with it belonging on MO.

jbl comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12828)

2011-01-27T06:40:04-08:00

It is, indeed, extremely hard for anyone else to follow the discussion there.

By the way, I and at least 3 other people down-voted the answer in a much earlier state lacking any worthwhile content (it was basically just a denunciation combined with a link at that point).

Andrew Stacey comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12825)

2011-01-27T05:25:48-08:00

Now, is a public discussion of controversial issues appropriate for MO?

I'll say "no". Not because I don't think that these discussions are important, but actually because I think that they are important enough to have somewhere where they can actually be easily followed and participated in than stuffed in the comments on a question that most people won't look at.

Discussions and MO just don't fit well together!

fedja comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12823)

2011-01-27T04:29:58-08:00

It was a public discussion of a controversial issue from the very beginning. I do not have a blog and have no desire to set up one, and it is not a private disagreement over irrelevant things. If we stick to the philosophy of teaching math the "hard" way (which I do), we have to be able to defend it in public against any qualified challenger. Otherwise, our philosophy is worth nothing.

Now, is a public discussion of controversial issues appropriate for MO? My reputation is slightly below the magic 10,000, which would make me one of those "people by whom MO is run", but I'll still dare to say "yes" as long as the issue is directly related to our craft and as long as all main participants are qualified to have an opinion on the issue, which is the case here.

Mariano comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12819)

2011-01-27T00:13:44-08:00

The answer and its comment thread have degenerated into something as discussion-y as things come---predictably...

Maybe it is time it were moved to a blog or email or...?

fedja comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12811)

2011-01-26T15:37:07-08:00

Come on, we all know Harry's disposition towards humanitarian arts and even engineering. By the way, Mikhail Gasparov, say, made a real science of literary criticism, so neither Freeman Dyson, nor Richard Feinman would be unhappy with his techniques and those two have often made very sarcastic comments about research techniques in humanitarian sciences in their popular books. As to 99%, that is a standard figure: 99% of math papers are junk too (of course, the number 99 here is figurative, not literal).

Anyway, back to the main theme.

I do not know why the original post was so severely downvoted. The idea he pushes is rather natural and if anybody figures out how to make it work and tunes it up, I would be willing to give it a try in the business calculus course. By the way, it is always useful to have at least one representative of an opposite point of view in such thread who spent some time developing his methods and can present at least something to show how the alternative might work or fail.

Harry Gindi comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12810)

2011-01-26T15:32:19-08:00

"Promotion of obscurantism" -- you know, some people say that about higher topos theorists, too.

Yeah, but those people don't know what they're talking about. First of all, everything is as precisely defined, and the underlying ideas are easy to grok. As usual, the devil is in the details (the underlying ideas are far simpler than the underlying ideas in algebraic geometry, for instance (of course not that I'm implying that algebraic geometers are obscurantists either (quite the opposite, in fact))).

If that still isn't convincing, I suggest that such people take a look at Lurie's DAG I, where he applies the general theory to show that the fundamental category of a stable $\infty$-category (the definition of this is extremely elegant) is a triangulated category, where the shift autoequivalence (whatever you call it) (resp. its inverse) is induced by the natural suspension functor (resp. loop functor).

dan petersen comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12809)

2011-01-26T15:29:19-08:00

"Promotion of obscurantism" -- you know, some people say that about higher topos theorists, too.

nielkj comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12795)

2011-01-26T12:06:42-08:00

@Harry: I daresay, the literary critic in question wasn't writing in English. As critics go, I think his work has merit. Not that it is relevant to the current discussion, but I also enjoy the criticism of Twain, of Mencken and of Edmund Wilson.

Harry Gindi comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12794)

2011-01-26T11:57:53-08:00

You lied! That's not the quote! I looked it up!

Storkle comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12793)

2011-01-26T11:50:47-08:00

Harry, since you seem to hold documentary film in high regard, let me quote from the documentary "Man on Fire", in which Christopher Walken has this to say: "A man can be. an artist. at anything. Food, whatever. Creasy's art is literary criticism. And death. He's about to paint his masterpiece." Presumably your blanket denunciation of literary critics does not include Creasy? Because he will come for you.

Harry Gindi comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12791)

2011-01-26T11:36:38-08:00

Documentary? Are you talking about the Rodney Dangerfield comedy film?

Yes.

Yemon Choi comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12790)

2011-01-26T11:30:54-08:00

Seconding what Hailong has said; and seconding Andy's admonition to Harry. (I'm resisting the temptation to argue the rights and wrongs of Harry's/Hardy's claims, because that's not really the issue; the issue is that it just derails this thread.)

Todd Trimble comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12789)

2011-01-26T11:30:47-08:00

Documentary? Are you talking about the Rodney Dangerfield comedy film?

+1 to Andy.

Andy Putman comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12787)

2011-01-26T11:22:45-08:00

@Harry : Your (uninformed) opinion about literary critics is basically irrelevant noise to the discussion at hand. You've brought it up in several contexts on meta before -- will you please stick to math?

Harry Gindi comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12786)

2011-01-26T11:18:23-08:00

@Harry: there are many literary critics, and I wouldn't paint them all with the same tarbrush. Perhaps you are thinking of a certain type or school of literary critic?

Me being me, I'm going to respond with a quote from Hardy's Apology:

Statesmen despise publicists, painters despise art-critics, and physiologists, physicists, or mathematicians have usually similar feelings: there is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain.

Which does not answer your question, but having gone to the library and looked through the massive tomes of literary criticism, I can say for sure that 99% of it is pure nonsense. I recall the scene in the (completely true and not at all fictional) documentary Back to School:

Diane: You didn't write this paper, Thornton... And I'll tell you something else: Whoever did write this doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut!
[cut to Thornton's dorm suite]
Thornton Melon: [on the phone] ... and another thing, Vonnegut! I'm gonna stop payment on the check!
[Kurt tells him off]
Thornton Melon: Fuck me? Hey, Kurt, can you read lips, fuck you! Next time I'll call Robert Ludlum!
[hangs up]

nielkj comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12785)

2011-01-26T10:55:35-08:00

@Todd: bull's-eye regarding what you last wrote to Harry.

Hailong Dao comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12783)

2011-01-26T10:41:08-08:00

Dear all,

May be it is just me, but I feel a little uneasy reading all this discussion about personal details. I am not sure Misha employment status (and other juicy information about him) is relevant to the question. Can we close this thread please ? Thank you.

Long

Todd Trimble comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12782)

2011-01-26T10:37:02-08:00

@nielkj: we are mostly in agreement then.

However, Misha/Michael, whatever his employment status, doesn't do himself any good carrying on as he does. He is really, as Pete found out, insulting to his interlocutors.

nielkj comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12781)

2011-01-26T10:32:03-08:00

@Todd: no, Michael does not have Gromov's genius quotient. I was just trying to illustrate a general point, that one's reputation on MO is not entirely determined by what is written. Anyway, if Michael has been behaving poorly, he should be reprimanded. What is it that he is being accused of anyway? Also, I'm one of those people who thinks we should let a thousand flowers bloom: Michael is most definitely an original thinker. Lastly, we should cut the guy some slack because he's been unemployed for quite some time now. One shouldn't hit a guy when he's down.

Todd Trimble comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12780)

2011-01-26T10:31:22-08:00

@Harry: there are many literary critics, and I wouldn't paint them all with the same tarbrush. Perhaps you are thinking of a certain type or school of literary critic?

It sounded to me that nielkj was suggesting that the mathematicians there were just about as fawning in their attentions to said critic as the paparazzi, in other words that we mathematician-types are equally taken in by superficial trappings of reputation. (It's perhaps a little ironic to be talking about reputation here however!)

Harry Gindi comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12779)

2011-01-26T10:24:35-08:00

The individual in question was a famous literary critic.

To be fair, this person was a literary critc. Not only do I not have respect for them, I also think that they do active harm through promotion of obscurantism.

Todd Trimble comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12778)

2011-01-26T10:14:14-08:00

@Qiaochu: yes, it's the same guy.

@nielkj: I personally am not "worried" whether Misha has a PhD, but since he seems not to be very capable of having a civil conversation about his chosen topic, I thought it might be good to counterbalance any impression that he is a complete flake with the observation that he does have a substantial mathematical background. I don't see that registering that data point is in any way elitist -- it is consonant with what you wrote in the last sentence of your first comment here.

The interactions I had with him on Armstrong's blog did not, however, suggest that he was in any way a deep thinker; what I saw was a great deal of sloppiness. Are you seriously comparing him to Gromov?

nielkj comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12774)

2011-01-26T09:12:03-08:00

@Harald: there is some truth in what you say. However, I think we tend to overlook that nastiness, or are more likely to accept that person's quirks if he has been "stamped" by the mathematical community as brilliant. Michael has not been officially "stamped" so he is viewed as an outlier. If someone on the order of maginitude of say, Gromov, on the brilliance scale were to write what Michael had written, then I surmise he would have gotten positive reputation points on MO. That's the way things work, I think. One's reputation on sites such as MO is not necessarily just a function of what they actually write ...

I recall a time when I was at Oberwolfach when a famous personage (not a mathematician) came to visit. The individual in question was a famous literary critic. The mathematicians behaved only slightly better than the papparazzi.

Harald Hanche-Olsen comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12771)

2011-01-26T08:34:33-08:00

I haven't really followed the discussion very closely, but I thought I might point out that it is not at all impossible for one person to be totally brilliant and to behave like a complete bastard at the same time. In fact, it seems to be disturbingly common. Perhaps being brilliant and misunderstood can push a person towards the nasty end of the behaviour spectrum, which certainly is unlikely to improve the “misunderstood” part.

Qiaochu Yuan comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12768)

2011-01-26T08:10:33-08:00

This is Livshits we're talking about? The same Michael Livshits who used to start flame wars on John Armstrong's blog?

WillieWong comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12766)

2011-01-26T07:09:34-08:00

@nielkj: actually, my impression of this thread is that he didn't do that: the posts were deleted by a moderator (see Qiaochu's response above). So in so far as the originally stated topic of this discussion is concerned, that much has already been settled.

WillieWong comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12765)

2011-01-26T07:06:46-08:00

@nielkj: is he as combative in person as he is in the discussion linked above? I took a look at what he wrote and got worried that it may be sweeping things under the rug and/or passing the proverbial buck, and had in mind to ask a question about his use of the Weierstrass approximation for clarification. Then I read down and saw how he responded to fedja and Pete Clark and decided not to bother trying to climb over his defensive wall. Part of this may be due to the medium: people always sound more hostile over the internet. But it would be a shame if his modus operandi makes it difficult for people to get to the core of his ideas.

nielkj comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12763)

2011-01-26T06:49:57-08:00

As far as Mochael's behavior goes (deleting a post based on the number of it's down votes and then reposting it), I agree that it might be of use to have the moderators contact him about the matter.

nielkj comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12762)

2011-01-26T06:40:28-08:00

I am the "professor" Sean mentions in his post. I have known Michael Livshits for about 30 years. He is a very unconventional and original, and is probably in the category of "one of the deepest thinkers" I've known. I think it was a mistake to dismiss his ideas out of hand. His program "Calculus without limits" is a serious one, he has a manuscript outlining these ideas, he has been inivited to several places to give colloquiua on this topic (including Beijing and our department), and I find it rather elitist of us to worry about whether he has a PhD or not.

Incidentally, he has done serious mathematics: he has been credited with answering a conjecture of Melrose on the inverse scattering matrix.

sean tilson comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12761)

2011-01-26T05:20:02-08:00

One of my professors, who happens to be on MO, is friends with Livshits. I have contacted him, but he is out of town right now. I pointed him to this meta thread. hopefully he will weigh in here or in the comment thread or privately.

Livshits gave a colloquium talk at Wayne State last fall. I got the impression that this is a project he has spent a lot of time and blood on. I think Todd is right in that this cause is a somewhat religious one for him.

Pete L. Clark comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12760)

2011-01-26T04:16:41-08:00

@Todd: well, what can I say? You did warn me. I do like to give people the benefit of the doubt, though: just because other people have had problems with someone doesn't mean I will. Not necessarily, I mean!

Note also: I guess I took from your advice not to try to argue with him. I didn't realize that I shouldn't try to question him for understanding!

About the biographical data: I couldn't find any evidence that Mr. Livshits has a PhD (which is not to say of course that he doesn't have one). His own resume lists a 1974 Master's degree in Leningrad and that he spent five years as a graduate student at Brandeis. He has one MathSciNet publication.

Todd Trimble comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12759)

2011-01-26T03:57:51-08:00

@Pete: I warned you! But I should have said, "don't engage him at all, unless you like getting into long drawn-out interchanges that go nowhere," because this is the (predictable) course it would take. (Misha has a mathematics PhD, from Brown University if I remember correctly, and I think he may have written a few papers. But as I say, this business to do away with limits is something of a religious cause with him, and he is ready to attack all comers-on. It's strange, and a little sad.)

Pete L. Clark comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12757)

2011-01-25T19:25:14-08:00

On the other hand, I have just recently tried to engage the responder in question, and I am already quite frustrated. The latest downvote on the answer is mine.

Pete L. Clark comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12756)

2011-01-25T18:15:05-08:00

To be clear: I was not suggesting that the moderators' involvement should be disciplinary. I just meant that we seem to have entered a periodic cycle of downvoting, locking/deletion and reposting, and that this is a waste of people's time (including the responder). So some intervention seems helpful.

Let me also say that I am sincerely interested in the ideas expressed in the responder's post, although I don't yet understand them very well and feel that, perhaps, they are not being expressed very clearly. In any case, in that it is a program for doing calculus without limits, it is 100% on target as an answer to the question.

[@Yemon: I have no idea what you're talking about. But that's okay with me if it's okay with you. :)]

Ben Webster comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12755)

2011-01-25T16:22:24-08:00

Fedja, That was my opinion and seems to now be the consensus among the moderators. That's why the answer has been undeleted. I haven't heard anything from Scott about what led him to delete the answer in the first place.

fedja comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12732)

2011-01-24T22:36:00-08:00

All right, he presented his opinion. I wouldn't say I agree with him but why shouldn't he be entitled to his point of view? I thought a bit about using Lipschitz functions rather than continuous ones in business calculus courses myself but found that this program runs into too many difficulties and inconsistencies. Still, it is just an idea, not a heresy, and he honestly tried to make sense of it without too much crankery in the process. I would say "Let him be" (but you are free to downvote, of course).

Yemon Choi comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12727)

2011-01-24T21:25:27-08:00

Pete: coincidentally, I was rewatching the cartoon+song "The Cat Came Back" only a few days ago...

Pete L. Clark comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12722)

2011-01-24T13:40:02-08:00

And now the answer has been posted for a third time. It seems like a situation in which the moderators will want to contact the user.

Qiaochu Yuan comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12716)

2011-01-24T08:00:26-08:00

Actually, both answers were locked and deleted by Scott Carnahan.

Todd Trimble comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12715)

2011-01-24T07:10:00-08:00

A little heads up: Misha has been known to get into long wrangles about this sort of thing (as signaled by his referring to "foes"). It seems to be almost like a religious thing with him. My advice would be not to engage him in argument at all.

WillieWong comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12714)

2011-01-24T07:03:10-08:00

@jbl: 10K+ users and moderators can see deleted answers. I believe if you have suspicion like this you can flag the post in question for moderator attention.

As to what should be done with this: for a non-CW question this is gaming the system. And I think the moderators probably have established practice of dealing with this (warning + suspension etc). For CW questions, you can always downvote it again: downvoting community wiki answers does not incur a penalty on the voter.

jbl comments on "Deleting an answer to shed downvotes?" (12713)

2011-01-24T06:55:30-08:00

I'm fairly certain that this answer http://mathoverflow.net/questions/40082/why-do-we-teach-calculus-students-the-derivative-as-a-limit/53042#53042 was posted over the weekend and received several down-votes; it seems that Misha has simply deleted the downvoted version and reposted an identical answer. Am I right about this, and if so, what's the appropriate thing to do?