Talk:Pseudomathematics/Archive1

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Request for comments.

While I realise it's got plenty of work to go, I'd really appreciate if somebody would give me a hard-and-honest guide to what steps they feel need taking on this article before it's in the realm of silver-brain-rating. I'd like a discussion on one kind of image, if nay, would improve the article. I can't think of anything which seems it belongs on the page, but perhaps I'm missing it? I'd say the biggest current issue to the article is the lack of references to ACTUAL attempts of proof. Statements of, "Lots of people try to do this." are abundant on the internet and in published books, but since most of the pseudomathematics just gets posted to University mathematics departments, it seems to be difficult to reference actual attempts at pseudomathematics. Like I said, there is the Underwood Dudley book, which would be really helpful to cite from, so I hope to get my hands on it. ^EXTERMINATE 16:13, 20 November 2010 (UTC)^EXTERMINATE 15:59, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Looks like great changes to me. I'll try to take a more careful look next week. I started an article once upon a time on ruler and compass constructions that's in a terrible state (maybe should be renamed to straightedge), attempting to summarize why these things are impossible. Maybe it doesn't really belong on RW, but I think it could fall under "debunking pseudoscience". I'll try to clean it up and add some pictures if you think it could be useful. Some of the other things might be worthy of separate pages too -- history of claimed values for pi (I can pull something from the book of Beckmann). There are very interesting things to be said about some wrong proofs of FLT but this might not really be on-mission. I don't know of any really cranky pseudomathematical organizations or people who are noteworthy on their own, but maybe there are some more.

Not to beat a dead horse, but I still don't really like the Deolalikar stuff. "Even a layman could tell by a quick reading of his abstract that Deolalikar was veering into crank territory"? Gowers and Tao didn't quickly rule out the possibility that there might be something to it, so I'm inclined to think any layman making such a dismissal is a bit cranky himself. --MarkGall (talk) 16:34, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I think ruler and compass constructions and an article on the history of psuedoscience relating to pi are good ideas. And I guess it's difficult to find some of this stuff, and they don't have magazines for it... because anyone capable of UNDERSTANDING the terms generally know it's bullshit. And I agree about the Deolalikar stuff I guess, I didn't know too much about it and just used ListenerX's text. I'll change it now, see what you think, then feel free to just get rid of it or redo it. 2 mins ^EXTERMINATE 16:37, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Since we've neatly explained Squaring the Circle, and have an article on it (not sure if this wikilinks to it, actually), I'll make an image representing Trisecting the Angle in SodiPodi when I'm next on the Ubuntu computer... probably tommorow. Then we can have a caption like, "The challenge is, given a straightedge and a compass, to split a given angle into three equal sections. ^EXTERMINATE 16:50, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good. Yeah, I think my article may have some overlap with that squaring the circle page. Maybe the historical stuff should be moved there, and I'll try to focus on a general explanation of how we could actually prove that these things are impossible. I think Gauss wrote up a neat explanation of complex numbers mostly for fixing the relevant CP page, but maybe he'd be willing to share it here. I'm not sure exactly where the line should be between "debunking pseudomathematics" and "boring off-mission math pages" -- it's something worthy thinking about in these cases. Great work on this article though. --MarkGall (talk) 16:57, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I reckon we might as well expand 'straightedge and compass' to document all of the problems and pseudoscientific attempts at proof, with an explanation of why they're impossible, and we'll call Squaring the Circle a duplicate page, suggest its deletion? ^EXTERMINATE 17:27, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Cantor's theories are not established truths

There is knowledge that one can say with almost 100% certainty, is true. Cantor's theories do not fit into that category. The section on Cantor should definitely be removed as it is not beyond question. Many respectable academics have published papers (I am not endorsing any of them) that do not agree with Cantor's theories.

http://thenewcalculus.weebly.com 197.79.26.106 (talk) 19:23, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

I would just like to say that the blog linked above is really fantastic. --MarkGall (talk) 20:47, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

We're 3rd

Pseudomathematics, when searched on Google, ranks our page third. As such, I've tried to make it into a proper article which we can work towards a proper rating. Apologies for it not being well-referenced, as a lot of this is from a lecture which I took last year and my crappy notes. I'll be expanding the article a lot, and trying to be sourcing it from the internet. I'm also going to try to find a copy of Underwood Dudley's book about pseudomathematics in a library. If not, I'll buy it and make the article better. ^EXTERMINATE 03:27, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Also, rather than including lengthy pseudoproofs with lots of symbols in the article, I'm going to make a couple of subpages tommorow with pseudoproofs, to make the article more readable. But that'll involve pencil & paper and scribbling, and I'm very tired. Don't want to mess up and get the proof right.... ^EXTERMINATE 03:30, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Don't get all wound up with subpages, just make new sections in page, ok? ħuman 06:13, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Okay, cool, will do sections. What would you like to see before this could be considered bronze-level? I'm planning to make a picture of squaring the circle (when I'm on a windows computer, GIMP is driving me crazy.) Can't really think of any other pictures that'd go well. Any suggestions? ^EXTERMINATE 06:19, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

I just marked it as bronze. Keep working, maybe you can earn it a silver medal! Note what I just did at "practitioners" - I don't know who added that, but we prefer to write in complete sentences. ħuman 06:36, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

What's all this stuff about the P=NP proof? It was wrong of course, but I don't think it was really all that cranky? Junk proofs of P=NP and all kinds of other open problems hit the arxiv all the time, and this was more serious than any of those. I'm always surprised by the number of cranks who even know that things like complex structures on S^6 are open problems, much less purport to solve them. --MarkGall (talk) 06:40, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Deolalikar was more serious than most, true, but the way he developed it (alone, without discussing it with anyone) was quite crankish, and in the discussion after it came out that he had made many of the errors because he did not have sufficient depth of knowledge in the many fields his proof drew from. ListenerX^TalkerX 06:52, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

It was a wrong proof by someone a bit out of his depth. I don't think that really qualifies as "pseudomathematics". --MarkGall (talk) 07:01, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

He was more than just "a bit" out of his depth. His doctorate is in electrical engineering and prior to this proof he had had very little to do with complexity theory at all. But on the pseudomathematics question, perhaps I am a little biased from having to tackle the problem of creationists who are, strictly speaking, scientists even though they know nothing of biology or geology. ListenerX^TalkerX 07:24, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

While I didn't add it, I'd agree with the P=NP thing being there. He's an Engineer who published a proof without any checking of it, disregarding any and all work in that field in decades. If an engineer published a physics paper which was out of his depth, wrong and ignored all the field's research... we'd call it pseudoscience. ^EXTERMINATE 16:32, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, it was apparently sufficiently non-cranky to get everyone's attention and put a fair amount of effort into trying to understand it -- if it was total gibberish I assume it wouldn't have gotten so much attention (like every other proof). Heck, Louis de Branges can't even get anyone to carefully check his proof of Riemann because everyone thinks the approach is bullshit, and he's a guy who's proved a couple major conjectures in the past.

But I won't keep arguing -- certainly there's a case to be made for it here. If this page/category is going to be expanded I'm happy to pitch in, though the next couple weeks are pretty busy. Any ideas on what other content you're planning to expand? --MarkGall (talk) 16:51, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

When we've done more research, it might be interesting to address these things more thoroughly:

• What do people often try to disprove (Cantor's theories, Godel's theories, certain proofs about algorithms, etc.)
• What do people try to prove which are impossible? (Ancient Greek problems, etc.)
• What do cranks deny the validity of (certain methods, complex numbers, etc.)
• More actual practicioners.

Havingg that book will help me, but it's not in any library in Leeds and it's £30 on amazon, but I'll keep looking. ^EXTERMINATE 17:06, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

I think I have a copy somewhere -- if you can't find it anywhere else I could send you scans of the good parts or something.

My dept also keeps a big pile of the crap that cranks send to them for review, maybe I'll have a look sometime. --MarkGall (talk) 19:00, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Any help would be wonderful. If you were able to reference some of the statements in the article with page numbers from the book, or upload an attempted crank proof or two for reference, that'd be brilliant :D ^EXTERMINATE 16:14, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Mohamed El Naschie

Website referred to seems to have done a bunk. Scream!! (talk) 11:25, 24 October 2014 (UTC)