From: Anton van Straaten (anton@appsolutions.com)
Subject: Re: endless onanism about semantics 
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Date: 2004-09-01 23:11:01 PST 


Bill Richter wrote:
> Anton vS quoted me more or less correctly,
>
> [He's] uncomfortable with accepting help if he can't offer
>          anything in return
>
> Isn't everyone that way?  How much help will any of us get if we don't
> offer anything in return?  What can I offer, except pure Math?

It's not nearly as simple as you seem to think - human interactions are not
reducible to simple equalities, for pity's sake!  It would make for very
strange discussions - "here's what you're missing about structural
induction, now can you tell me more about those point set thingies?"

You'd have to find people who had the exact information you wanted, and who
happened to want the exact information you had to offer.  This doesn't work
very well, and in fact is why money was invented thousands of years ago.  On
c.l.s., we don't use money, but "what goes around comes around", and we do
value things like reputation, trust, respect, politeness, etc.  That may
seem ironic given the tone of the current semantics permathreads, but having
dealt with you in the past, I lay the blame for that squarely at your feet,
Bill.  If you could bring yourself to refrain from continually insulting and
questioning the competence and knowledge of those you're trying to learn
from, things would go much more smoothly.

However, I'm sure I'm wasting my virtual breath.  I don't think you can help
yourself, and in the end we're just forced to deal with your personality
quirks, one way or another.  For myself, it's not worth it, and I'm only
posting now partly to vent, but also in case anyone else benefits from the
perspective I've gained on the matter.

> Now if Anton, Shriram, or other cls folks think they're better at pure
> Math than I, and that the pure Math I've posted is nonsense...

You can leave my name off that list - I'm making no claims for my non-CS
math knowledge, and my education is not in the same league as any of the
academics here.  However, many of your fundamental CS errors here have been
obvious to anyone with even a basic knowledge of CS.  Because of this, if
nothing else, you should *always*, on *every* post you make, keep in mind
that if something someone credible is saying "sounds wrong" to you, the most
likely explanation by far is that you don't understand something, so the
appropriate response is to assume that your understanding is lacking and ask
for an explanation.  Unfortunately, it seems that you cannot usually bring
yourself to believe that this could possibly be the case, which results in
your producing highly inappropriate responses every time you don't
understand something.

Anton