From: William D Clinger (cesuraSPAM@verizon.net)
Subject: Re: interpreters & semantics 
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Date: 2004-08-11 05:25:15 PST 


Category-theoretic abstract:
Category 5. Category 2. Category 6. Category 6. Category 6. Category 5.

richter@math.northwestern.edu (Bill Richter) wrote:
> But you've been
> lambasting me like I was the dumbest kid in a freshman Honors Calculus
> course you're teaching.

You've been behaving like the dumbest kid in comp.lang.scheme.

Read http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/will/Ephemera/richterFAQ.html
if you don't believe it.

Or reread the three messages you just wrote.  In just the one to
which I am replying, you wrote three different stupid things.

Number one:
>    [Bill] says things like "it's ludicrous to assert that a machine
>    can compute" a partial recursive function.  That, my friend, is
>    lunacy.
> 
> It would've been lunacy, Will.  Good thing I didn't write it.  Here's
> the whole quote, in a response to Joe:
> 
>       The partial function |--->>_v is a subset
> 
>       R subset LC_vExp x Value
> 
>       The projection of R to LC_vExp is a noncomputable set
> 
>       Halt = { x in LC_vExp : x standard-reduces to a value }  
> 
>       So it's ludicrous to assert that a machine can compute R.

You wrote that |--->>_v is R.  |--->>_v is a partial recursive
function, so R must be a partial recursive function.  You wrote that
it is "ludicrous to assert that a machine can compute" that partial
recursive function.

Now you're waving your hands about referential transparency, as if it
were impossible for you to have given a clear statement of what you
meant.  The fact remains that what you wrote was really really stupid.
You said it's "ludicrous" to use the standard terminology of recursion
theory.

If you actually knew the standard terminology of recursion theory,
you would know how to say what you mean in a clear and precise way
that would be understood by everyone who is still reading these
threads.  It is your responsibility to learn that terminology.  It
is not our responsibility to teach you.

But you aren't really trying to be understood anyway.  You're trying
to show us that your head is bigger than everyone else's.  That's why
you responded to Joe's correct statements, with which you now claim
to agree, as though Joe were saying something "ludicrous".

Number two:
> You couldn't just say Richter proved 1 = 0 because of a
> dumb variable capture error he made.  You'd have to assume I didn't
> make a variable capture error, and try to figure out what I did say.

You said that before, and I corrected you, and now you're saying it
again.  That's really stupid.

No one has said you proved 1 = 0.  It is, however, a fact that your
reasoning is fallacious, and implies 1 = 0.  I have explained the
fallacy in the "Richter's Fallacy 3.13 implies GRH, P=NP" thread,
in the "Elvis lives!" thread, and in category4.txt at the Richter
FAQ at http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/will/Ephemera/richterFAQ.html.

Instead of trying to understand why several competent mathematicians
and computer scientists say your argument is fallacious, you have
spewed Billspit about semantic proofs in a model of ZFC.  That is
stupid.  You have also argued that my formal study of logic, set
theory, recursive functions, and higher-order functions has made
me less "fluent" than you in matters of logic, sets, and functions.
That is really really stupid.

Number three:
> And then maybe you'd understand by now my definition of
> Bill-compositionality, and my proof that Bill=c.l.s.-compositionality,
> and that both of our ISWIM sem functions were compositional.

Compositional means defined by structural induction over syntax.
You now claim to agree with this definition, after calling it
"meaningless" on 20 July.  You have (finally!) posted the
definition of your semantics at your web site.  That definition
is *clearly* not compositional, as has been amply explained here
and at http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/will/Ephemera/richterFAQ.html.

Yet you claim it is.  That is stupid.  Either you still do not
understand the notion of structural induction, or you still do
not understand our definition of compositionality, or you are
lying when you say you agree with our definition.

In any case, for you to continue to claim your definition of
compositionality is equivalent to ours, even after posting (at
last!) your semantics, which serves as a concrete counterexample
to that claim, is really stupid.

                                * * *

You were given a respectful hearing, but enough is enough.  You've
been carrying on about this stuff for two years and more, but you
haven't grokked basic concepts that belong in the first week of a
semantics class.  That alone would earn our pity, but it wouldn't
earn our disrespect.

You earned our disrespect by asking for our help, only to tell
all who try to help you that what they are saying doesn't make
any sense, and that your head is bigger than theirs.

Will