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From: Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.theory
Subject: Re: Definition of real number =?utf-8?Q?=E2=84=9D?=
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Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2024 22:56:03 +0100
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Mike Terry <news.dead.person.stones@darjeeling.plus.com> writes:

> On 03/04/2024 18:23, Keith Thompson wrote:
>> "Fred. Zwarts" <F.Zwarts@HetNet.nl> writes:
>> [...]
>>> Olcott is unable to understand  what it says in the context of the
>>> real number system, even when spelled out to him in great
>>> detail. Therefore he sticks to his own (wrong) interpretation and then
>>> starts to fight it. Fighting windmills.
>> Might I suggest waiting to reply to olcott until he says something
>> *new*.  It could save a lot of time and effort.
>
> My suggestion would be for everyone to decide on a personal "repeat count"
> to limit saying the same thing to PO indefinitely.  They don't need to
> reveal that count.
>
> For example, if everyone set a limit of, say, 73 times - meaning that once
> they have explained something to PO 73 times that's it, they accept PO will
> not suddenly understand on the 74th explanation - all these interminably
> repetitious threads would soon die out!  Well, they might go on for a
> once-off of a few hundred more posts, but then that's it...  There are
> simply not that many new things to say to PO!
>
> Personally I've set my repeat count of around 3 [mostly used up years
> ago],

Another approach is not to keep telling cranks things but to keep asking
them questions.  You stand a chance of finding out what the
misunderstandings really are.  That's what's always interested me.  But
you need a slightly higher repeat count for that as all the cranks seen
to expend a lot of effort avoiding straight answers (though, to be fair,
it's possible that they just don't understand the questions and don't
answer in order to hide that lack of understanding).

Most cranks do get embarrassed into trying to answer eventually, but I
doubt that three repetitions would do it.

Another advantage to questioning is that, in general, cranks never admit
to being wrong about anything significant so they must stand by any
answers they give forever, so when they /do/ want to backtrack it can be
fun to see the excuses.  When PO finally admitted that he did not, in
fact, "have an actual H" and Ĥ, "exactly and precisely the Peter Linz H
and Ĥ", "fully encoded as actual Turing machines" he eventually decided
to call these remarks "poetic licence".  Priceless!

-- 
Ben.