From: Bill Richter (richter@math.northwestern.edu)
Subject: Re: endless onanism about semantics 
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Date: 2004-09-02 18:51:59 PST 


Shriram Krishnamurthi <sk@cs.brown.edu> wrote in message
news:<w7dk6vdqo5x.fsf@cs.brown.edu>... 
   
   Despite my phrase "has explicitly said", Brad Lucier chose to
   interpret this as follows:
   
   > This is total speculative bullshit.

Shriram, I guess I can't count on Brad for much support, since he said
you & Will are probably right.  But Brad was right about your total
speculative bullshit, as you're giving a speculative interpretation to
what I wrote.  The only thing that was actually a quote was 

   > he has no stake in the Scheme community

which doesn't sound controversial.  One would normally think that your

   > using the newsgroup as a medium to advance his career.  

meant more than what I wrote: "if I could teach something to you guys,
it might marginally improve my position."  That doesn't sound very
sinister to me!  As Brad posted, my position is extremely weak.  
Anything might help, who knows. 

So there's speculative interpretation, which you also get here:

   > He doesn't care how many people he drives away.

That's not a quote.  I wrote "I don't worry about any damage I'd do."
Among other things, you took me out of the subjunctive, getting rid 
of my contracted "would".  

I don't think I do any damage at all.  You guys have falsely claimed
that my semantics isn't compositional, and in the process, it seems
clear to me that your compositionality beliefs contain serious
mathematical errors.  But you won't scrutinize 'em.  Sounds to me like
you guys are doing the damage, if any.  And your troll insults are a
low blow, since you refuse to put your Math where your mouth is.

But let me give an actual "damage report."  To the extent that Scheme
is a Math-friendly language, I want to belong to the Scheme community,
although right now I'm an outsider.  But to the extent that Scheme is
a place where CS folks make ridiculous mathematical errors, and refuse
to scrutinize them, and flame away at top volume, then I tend not to
care about Scheme.  Maybe it's the wrong language for me.