4 ms·

What is the first diagram on this page supposed to depict? Seems like a bunch of unrelated topics with random arrows drawn between them. Also, the author seems

What is the first diagram on this page supposed to depict? Seems like a bunch of unrelated topics with random arrows drawn between them. Also, the author seems more than a bit arrogant and deluded: http://settheory.net/life http://settheory.net/life -- I would _not_ touch any of this stuff with a 40 foot pole.

travisjungroth 7y ago
That link looks like the writing of someone mentally ill.
- crimsonalucard 7y ago
  A lot of geniuses have issues. I wouldn't use this to judge the rest of his work.
  - User23 7y ago
    The author is evidently far from neurotypical. Generally I find these kinds of diverse viewpoints interesting, if not appealing. Unfortunately his prose borders on unreadable. There may very well be excellent ideas here, but until he follows the commandment "omit needless words" nobody is going to wade through it.
- avinium 7y ago
  I think "mentally ill" is pretty unfair. Passionate, depressed, maybe even self-righteous? Sure, all of these. But his capacity for logic doesn't seem to be affected. English isn't his first language, but he still writes in full, grammatically correct sentences that are very clear. Wordy and emotional - yes. But not mentally ill. I think we should be careful not to dismiss/overlook people because we don't share their emotional perspective on the world. In other words, just because he's a unique character doesn't mean his take on set theory should be ignored. From a very brief click through (and from my own fairly superficial memory of the topic), it doesn't seem to be extremely unconventional. At the very least, it's not standing shoulder to shoulder with Timecube.
DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
the whole thing you linked reads like he is going through some existential crisis triggered by spending too much time in his own head, or he is struggling to find himself. he calls others stupid but that might just be due to feeling misunderstood and a symptom of his alienation. one thing I learned is that knowing more doesn't make us happy. knowledge can be the key that opens a door to insanity. whether he is a lunatic or genius is hard to say without evaluating the quality of his work.
- onemoresoop 7y ago
  > But there are still many well-placed people who will never listen, cannot grasp this and that keep denying the right for young geniuses to decide for their own life. This obsession with I am a genius is bordering on pathological narcissism, excluding oneself from the society because one's too smart to be understood by the world is a very dangerous slippery slope. On the other hand, while in a healthy way, I applaud when one sticks to their own ways. I just wish humility was mode widely practiced. We are not gods, we're just some creatures that have varying degrees of intelligence, but nothing special. Good luck to you young thinker but remember we are to enjoy this life and the people around us. Don't be lonely and miserable trying to prove everybody wrong, it's pointless.
  - DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
    yeah it goes on and on. the Dunning-Kruger seems strong. I got the impression he is extremely isolated. sad really.
- bubble-07 7y ago
  The major red flag is in the "misunderstood genius" part -- 99% of the people I've ever seen with a claim like that haven't interacted with things enough to have been able to truly test their claims. "Genius" is only "misunderstood" when the person laying claim to it does not do enough to substantiate their argument. Here, I read some of what they had to say about "infoliberalism" -- the immediate issue that I have with their position is that they make some kind of claim that a few participants in it would naturally lead to a revolution. They then go on to claim that the system is completely decentralized, but also complain that not one other person is willing to join. If their system were truly decentralized, and also something that would provide significant benefits to participants over the existing social/economic/political order, why is the number of practitioners exactly one? All of this screams quackery.
ben509 7y ago
He's definitely angry, but from skimming it, it sounds like he had some ideas, put them out there, and no one bit. And he's uspet that it didn't pan out, and he's quite clear on a fairly reasonable, if hyperbolic, explanation of why the ideas didn't work. I read it as him coming to grips with the common blind spot of "my ideology would work just fine except for all the people who don't hold my ideology". You hear it from proponents of all major ideologies; liberalism "they're on the wrong side of history", conservatism "what happened to common sense?!" and libertarianism "but in a libertarian society..." His stuff is ranty and tone-deaf, and he probably shouldn't include it on a page on set theory, but he's not delusional.
- bubble-07 7y ago
  For all of the political ideologies you listed, we have concrete examples of societies which trend in those directions. Sure, most real societies do not trend toward radical versions of those ideologies, but at least we can each get an okay sense of the first derivative, so to speak, of "goodness" with respect to variation in political leanings. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem like anything like "Infoliberalism" has ever been tested (and the author even _says_ as much). Before jumping on the boat of a radical political ideology, I'm sure that any reasonable person would at least like to have an _idea_ of what it leads to.
  - ben509 7y ago
    Yeah, I broadly agree. But I think a person can only be radical if they disregard normal social inhibitory / moderating influences. I'm reluctant to write him off as delusional because I'd have to write off most activists. And he's pretty clear that he's aware that he's behaving out of the bounds of polite society, and he's taking his ideas to their logical conclusion. And I think for any new idea that is non-trivial, whether it's a new ideology, business plan, or whatever, a reasonable person also has to admit the only practical way to figure out if a thing works is to do it.
    - bubble-07 7y ago
      Yes, I absolutely agree with your second statement. However, the issue I take with the author is that they say that they are not a programmer, and they're frustrated that they cannot get a programmer to help build a prototype. Being _frustrated_ that people won't work for you _for free_ is delusional. The author could have also decided that their idea was worth enough to them to _learn_ how to program, so they could build a workable prototype, and possibly attract other developers as part of an open source project. However, the author seems more content to just sit there and complain about being "misunderstood." Implementations typically are worth a lot more than ideas, and this is exactly what the author doesn't seem to get.
crimsonalucard 7y ago
Eh. Donald Knuth is Lutherian. I'm atheist and I believe it is unscientific and deluded to believe in things from an ancient book of fairy tales. This doesn't discount Knuths' major contributions to the field. No one is perfect. Even the most logical, intelligent person could have aspects of himself that are illogical. If the OP's set theory stuff is good, I wouldn't let his emotional rants affect my judgement of this.
dkarl 7y ago
I don't see anything there that's incompatible with a high level of skill at mathematics. Honestly, I don't know of any opinion outside the realm of mathematics that could be deluded or disorganized enough to make me think that the person holding it couldn't be competent at math. That said, before I trusted this web site as a source I'd look for evidence that it has been reviewed and improved by other people, because even a competent person is bound to make mistakes, and if he's working entirely alone his mistakes are likely to go uncorrected.

travisjungroth 7y ago

That link looks like the writing of someone mentally ill.

crimsonalucard 7y ago
A lot of geniuses have issues. I wouldn't use this to judge the rest of his work.
- User23 7y ago
  The author is evidently far from neurotypical. Generally I find these kinds of diverse viewpoints interesting, if not appealing. Unfortunately his prose borders on unreadable. There may very well be excellent ideas here, but until he follows the commandment "omit needless words" nobody is going to wade through it.
avinium 7y ago
I think "mentally ill" is pretty unfair. Passionate, depressed, maybe even self-righteous? Sure, all of these. But his capacity for logic doesn't seem to be affected. English isn't his first language, but he still writes in full, grammatically correct sentences that are very clear. Wordy and emotional - yes. But not mentally ill. I think we should be careful not to dismiss/overlook people because we don't share their emotional perspective on the world. In other words, just because he's a unique character doesn't mean his take on set theory should be ignored. From a very brief click through (and from my own fairly superficial memory of the topic), it doesn't seem to be extremely unconventional. At the very least, it's not standing shoulder to shoulder with Timecube.

DyslexicAtheist 7y ago

the whole thing you linked reads like he is going through some existential crisis triggered by spending too much time in his own head, or he is struggling to find himself. he calls others stupid but that might just be due to feeling misunderstood and a symptom of his alienation. one thing I learned is that knowing more doesn't make us happy. knowledge can be the key that opens a door to insanity. whether he is a lunatic or genius is hard to say without evaluating the quality of his work.

onemoresoop 7y ago
> But there are still many well-placed people who will never listen, cannot grasp this and that keep denying the right for young geniuses to decide for their own life. This obsession with I am a genius is bordering on pathological narcissism, excluding oneself from the society because one's too smart to be understood by the world is a very dangerous slippery slope. On the other hand, while in a healthy way, I applaud when one sticks to their own ways. I just wish humility was mode widely practiced. We are not gods, we're just some creatures that have varying degrees of intelligence, but nothing special. Good luck to you young thinker but remember we are to enjoy this life and the people around us. Don't be lonely and miserable trying to prove everybody wrong, it's pointless.
- DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
  yeah it goes on and on. the Dunning-Kruger seems strong. I got the impression he is extremely isolated. sad really.
bubble-07 7y ago
The major red flag is in the "misunderstood genius" part -- 99% of the people I've ever seen with a claim like that haven't interacted with things enough to have been able to truly test their claims. "Genius" is only "misunderstood" when the person laying claim to it does not do enough to substantiate their argument. Here, I read some of what they had to say about "infoliberalism" -- the immediate issue that I have with their position is that they make some kind of claim that a few participants in it would naturally lead to a revolution. They then go on to claim that the system is completely decentralized, but also complain that not one other person is willing to join. If their system were truly decentralized, and also something that would provide significant benefits to participants over the existing social/economic/political order, why is the number of practitioners exactly one? All of this screams quackery.

ben509 7y ago

He's definitely angry, but from skimming it, it sounds like he had some ideas, put them out there, and no one bit. And he's uspet that it didn't pan out, and he's quite clear on a fairly reasonable, if hyperbolic, explanation of why the ideas didn't work. I read it as him coming to grips with the common blind spot of "my ideology would work just fine except for all the people who don't hold my ideology". You hear it from proponents of all major ideologies; liberalism "they're on the wrong side of history", conservatism "what happened to common sense?!" and libertarianism "but in a libertarian society..." His stuff is ranty and tone-deaf, and he probably shouldn't include it on a page on set theory, but he's not delusional.

bubble-07 7y ago
For all of the political ideologies you listed, we have concrete examples of societies which trend in those directions. Sure, most real societies do not trend toward radical versions of those ideologies, but at least we can each get an okay sense of the first derivative, so to speak, of "goodness" with respect to variation in political leanings. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem like anything like "Infoliberalism" has ever been tested (and the author even _says_ as much). Before jumping on the boat of a radical political ideology, I'm sure that any reasonable person would at least like to have an _idea_ of what it leads to.
- ben509 7y ago
  Yeah, I broadly agree. But I think a person can only be radical if they disregard normal social inhibitory / moderating influences. I'm reluctant to write him off as delusional because I'd have to write off most activists. And he's pretty clear that he's aware that he's behaving out of the bounds of polite society, and he's taking his ideas to their logical conclusion. And I think for any new idea that is non-trivial, whether it's a new ideology, business plan, or whatever, a reasonable person also has to admit the only practical way to figure out if a thing works is to do it.
  - bubble-07 7y ago
    Yes, I absolutely agree with your second statement. However, the issue I take with the author is that they say that they are not a programmer, and they're frustrated that they cannot get a programmer to help build a prototype. Being _frustrated_ that people won't work for you _for free_ is delusional. The author could have also decided that their idea was worth enough to them to _learn_ how to program, so they could build a workable prototype, and possibly attract other developers as part of an open source project. However, the author seems more content to just sit there and complain about being "misunderstood." Implementations typically are worth a lot more than ideas, and this is exactly what the author doesn't seem to get.

crimsonalucard 7y ago

Eh. Donald Knuth is Lutherian. I'm atheist and I believe it is unscientific and deluded to believe in things from an ancient book of fairy tales. This doesn't discount Knuths' major contributions to the field. No one is perfect. Even the most logical, intelligent person could have aspects of himself that are illogical. If the OP's set theory stuff is good, I wouldn't let his emotional rants affect my judgement of this.

dkarl 7y ago

I don't see anything there that's incompatible with a high level of skill at mathematics. Honestly, I don't know of any opinion outside the realm of mathematics that could be deluded or disorganized enough to make me think that the person holding it couldn't be competent at math. That said, before I trusted this web site as a source I'd look for evidence that it has been reviewed and improved by other people, because even a competent person is bound to make mistakes, and if he's working entirely alone his mistakes are likely to go uncorrected.