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Etiquette: Discussion with Ady

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    • CommentAuthorfedja
    • CommentTimeFeb 3rd 2010
     
    Look at http://mathoverflow.net/questions/11675/borsuk-pairs-of-banach-spaces/13798#13798 . It is getting unruly, but I do not really know what to do. I presented a proof in normal language, I presented it as a series of fairly simple to check formal claims, but after I was asked "who is a set of finite or infinite sequences with finitely many non-zero elements", I had no other option than to give a list of some terribly formal definitions almost for computer verification. It is hard to explain anything if the person on the other end makes absolutely no effort to understand. Certainly, there should be a better way to handle the situation than I am handling it now. Can somebody moderate? I feel like I need an interpreter to talk to Ady (or he needs an interpreter to understand me). This is even more of a pity because I tend to like the FA problems he posts and spend some time thinking of them. I'm not asking who of us is right and who is wrong, I'm just asking how to bring our discussion back to normal. If somebody who understands my proof would try to explain it to Ady in his own words or if somebody who has trouble with it would explain what exactly he or Ady does not understand, it would be great.
    • CommentAuthorMariano
    • CommentTimeFeb 3rd 2010 edited
     

    You can always leave (the question alone, that is)

  3.  
    I think Mariano's advice is wise -- if you find yourself getting annoyed with some other user in the context of a specific question, just say something like "I don't think it would be productive to have further dialogue on this question" and step back for at least a little while. What is delightful about MO is that (with very high probability) some knowledgeable third party will come along and mediate between the two perspectives. If you what wrote is essentially correct, then someone else will be able to suss it out or will ask clarifying questions in a manner you find more agreeable.

    In this case, I am a truly neutral party because I don't know enough functional analysis to easily follow the discussion.

    For what it's worth, though, you do seem to have taken a nonstandard definition of a sequence. Yours is sort of halfway between a sequence as it is usually construed (a function from the natural numbers to the set in question) and a net (a function from a directed set to the set in question). Again, no idea whether this has any effect on your argument, but I don't think that pointing it out should be construed negatively.
  4.  

    Certainly, my personal advice (let me be clear, this is without my moderator hat on) is to just let go. Sometimes people's styles just don't mesh, and it's genuinely hard to explain things over the internet. It's clear that you put a lot of effort and care into your answer, but at some point you just have to move on. Honestly, your impatience is starting to show in your comments, which I think is a good sign it's time to go work on another question.

    • CommentAuthorfedja
    • CommentTimeFeb 3rd 2010
     
    Yes, I reserve it as the last option. But do you think it is the best one? I mean Ady is neither a troll, nor an idiot and, I hope, I am neither of those too. It just frustrates me that our communication somehow fails completely. I think he was genuinely interested in the question when he asked it, not just wanted to post something to gain a few reputation points or just to show off. Well, it is his turn in the discussion anyway, so let's see what he has to say.
    • CommentAuthorMariano
    • CommentTimeFeb 3rd 2010 edited
     

    Obligatory xkcd reference

    • CommentAuthorLK
    • CommentTimeFeb 3rd 2010
     
    @fedja.
    This may help to understand where Ady is coming from:
    http://www.angelfire.com/journal/mathematics/
    • CommentAuthorHarry Gindi
    • CommentTimeFeb 4th 2010 edited
     
    That is the _awesomest_ website _probably_ of all time.
  9.  
    What I take from the page (apart from some amusingly eccentric graphics) is that Dr. "Ady" Duma is an active research mathematician in the field of functional analysis. (A MathSciNet search confirms that he's been publishing about one paper a year for the past 20 years. In my department, that would classify you as "research active" with room to spare.) That is, it makes me take his question quite seriously.

    As I said above, it would be nice if some other expert in the field could come to the rescue and interpolate between the dialogue of fedja and Ady. We do have some other Banach space people active on MO, right?
  10.  

    @Pete. I am not an expert, far from it, but I believe we have some of the most prominent researchers in Banach spaces in the world here in MO.

  11.  
    I guess this answers Andrew Stacey's question from a few months ago about how to get some functional analysts on MO.
  12.  

    @Pete, @Harry: the trouble -- well, actually, the pleasure, but you'll see what I mean -- is that functional analysis has become quite a big church, and the ways it's taught (beyond the basics) seem to vary a fair bit between mathematical cultures. In particular, I lean much more towards the algebraic side, and hardly ever think about nonlinear functional analysis -- or even the locally linear side, sorry Andrew! -- and almost never think about Hamel bases in Banach spaces, for instance. And then we have the apparent phenomenon of all things C* commanding attention and recruitment...

    That said, the likes of Bill Johnson, who have orders of magnitude more expertise/experience/connaissance with the analytic aspects than I do, would be well-placed to interpolate as Pete suggests.

    [Oh, and I deleted an earlier comment to Harry, since it is now no longer needed nor makes sense.]

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