Re: The reality of sets, on a scale of 1 to 10 [Was: The non-existence of "dark numbers"]

On 3/27/2025 1:50 PM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:

Moebius <invalid@example.invalid> wrote:

Am 27.03.2025 um 12:18 schrieb Alan Mackenzie:

WM <wolfgang.mueckenheim@tha.de> wrote:

>

>
Crank talk.
You don't understand limits, as I've already said.
Have you really got a degree in mathematics?
It seems unlikely.

>

WM doesn't have a degree in mathematics.

>
He denied not having one.
Most of the time,

Hmmm.

Most of the time,
people don't outright lie on Usenet.
They twist and turn,
answering direct questiongs evasively and inadequately,
and assert half truths.
>
My working theory at the moment is that
WM has some university degree which had
a small component of mathematics, but
that part of his degree didn't cover
rigorous analysis or rigorous set theory,
or anything much else rigorous.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_M%C3%BCckenheim
[Google->Eng]
⎛ From 1973 to 1977, Mückenheim studied physics with
⎜ minors in mathematics, astronomy and chemistry ...
⎜
⎜ In 1979, he obtained his doctorate in physics with
⎜ a dissertation on elastic photon scattering on
⎝ the ¹²²uranium, ...
⎛ For the record, my (JB's) own formal education ends with
⎜ a bachelor's degree in physics and
⎝ minors in mathematics and computer science.
For what it's worth,
on paper, Mückenheim is more qualified than I am.
I suspect that that irks him to no end.

His outpourings on this newsgroup
(as well as on its German counterpart)
pretty much rule out systematic study of
the foundations of mathematics.

I am honestly mystified by
what I need to explain to Mückenheim,
someone who apparently has taken
upper.level courses in mathematics.
Am I unusual in having had to prove things
in such courses, for homework and for tests?
But I have a theory.
There once was a poster of the crankish persuasion,
convinced that he was going to prove
Fermat's Last Theorem at a highschool level of difficulty.
He seemed to know very little mathematics.
I had some reason to look back over
his much.earlier posts, and
I was surprised to find that
that, much _earlier_ he apparently knew _more_
than the same (?) poster later, _after_ years of
arguing mathematics with mathematicians.
My theory is that
trying to defend bullshit rots the brain.