Please, crackpots, I am not your sympathetic ear. Stop sending me stuff.
The latest entry in the pile of bogus crapola is a “book”, if you can say that of a 14 page long pdf file that uses a very large and ugly font — this is the tech equivalent of sending someone a long letter written in crayon. Here, you can read it for yourself: All things are possible: Case study in the meaninglessness of all views By Colin leslie dean
. It has more impact in the original Gibberish.
Professional typesetting sets the tone, doesn’t it?
But once you get past the eye hemorrhages from trying to read it, the content…is worse. For instance, he disproves mathematics.
Again
1+1=2
And its negation
1+1=1
It be said that 1+1=2 be a
certain truth
Blah
1 number + 1 number = 1
number
1 number (2) +1 number (2)
=1 number (4)
So 1 +1=2
And
1 + 1 = 1
Thus a contradiction in
mathematics
I love the “blah” in the middle.
Another bonus in his book: he claims to be Australia’s leading erotic poet
. I don’t believe it. I looked at one of his erotic books, and sheep aren’t mentioned even once. (Oh, that was mean of me, and I’m sure you Australians are tired of that joke.)
Yeah, you can read it for yourself. 100 Views of Mons Venus by Hiroshige Basho by c dean. I find myself hoplessly confused by just the title. I’ve heard of Utagawa Hiroshige, the ukiyo-e artist, and I’ve heard of Matsuo Basho, the poet, but not the chimera, Hioshige Basho. And who wrote the book? Hiroshige Basho or Dean? But hey, maybe you’ve got a thing about very short poems that combine “lips” and “petals” with lots of adjectives, and will enjoy the work.
Buh?
So… if I win the lottery this week, the addition of millions of pounds to my bank balance will still only leave me with one money, therefore no great win? (On the flip side, no great loss if I don’t, I suppose?)
That’s New Zealand you insensitive clod. :P
Yep! New Zealand where men are men and sheep are nervous. Mind you I could tell some distinctly NSFW jokes about Tasmanians and about Jackaroos and emus.
Blah
New South fuckin’ Wales?
It’s New Zealanders (and Welsh) and sheep. Australians, reportedly, like to Tie their Kangaroo Down
Blah? Blah? Calls himself an erotic poet and can’t see the beauty of mathematics. Erotic, my arse.
Excuse me, I have to go and balance the checkbook. I may be some time.
Sheep? How dare you, eh? Go suck a maple leaf!
This guy fails to distinguish between the adjective one and the noun one.
Man, the Australians are really defensive about that sheep thing, aren’t they?
1+1=1 huh? With all, and I do mean all, due respect to “Australia’s leading erotic poet” Canada’s leading punk poets NoMeansNo beg to differ:
0+2=1 (With added chemtrail nonsense just for fun)
that nonsense about proving two contradictions is proof against mathematics, uses a similar style to the puzzle:
what’s next in the following sequence: {1, 11, 21, 1211, 111221, 312211, [?] }, (fill in the blank)
(hint: mix words and numbers, count numbers and describe with words, etc)
A (spoilers!): 13112221
argh
so “1 number added to 1 number equals 1 number”. To shorten that to “1 + 1 = 1” is *blblhlhlbh*
pfft
oh but the goal of poetry is to make the reader THINK, (look at Lewis Carroll) so uhhh *thinking* brb
Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare. (Was he bare? Was she [not my assumption: Ms. Millay’s]? Who knows? You can’t have sex-positivity without positivity, and that’s mathematics!!!)
Why did this guy decide to send this to you? Are you just a magnet for weirdos with delusions of grandeur?
As far as I can work it out (based entirely on the excerpt in poopyhead’s OP), the kook seems to be asserting that since adding one number to another number results in one number, therefore 1 + 1 = 1. However, since most people realize 1 + 1 = 2, and — implied but not stated, 1 ≠ 2 — maths contains a contradiction.
Dr Kurt Gödel was there a long time before, and also actually made sense.
Erotic lesson of the day:
1 Australian + 1 ewe = 1 Aussie-eeyew!
@ 16 emergence
In ref to PZM
Are you just a magnet for weirdos with delusions of grandeur?
Of course not, he has a day job too.
Last time I saw something like this it was completely nutty but in impeccable form. Our erratic (erotic?) poet is just not in the running for grand nutter of the year though the font gives him extra points.
blf @17:
I skimmed the actual PDF and you guessed right. The author is skirting around the edges of discovering the Entscheidungsproblem, but without any of the background necessary to know that (a) he’s covering ground that was thoroughly trod almost a century ago, (b) the contradictions he proposes are unsound at a high school level, and (c) Gödel, Church, and Turing all worked this out far better than he did, and that work built the foundations on top of which he now has a computer that can publish his wackily formatted PDF on the Internet.
@17
That is basically it.
He lists few arbitrary Mathematical Results and claims math can be prove them and their negation. Then he describes aristotlian symbolic logic concept p ^-p means a statement and it’s negation— three times. Then he claim *every* mathmatical result can be proven and *every* negation can be proven. Then as reality uses science and sciences uses math everything and its negation are equal valueless. Then he gives *two* (not all) example of inconsistency in math and 1 in “reality”.
The first is a number can not be both finite and infinite but 0.999999….. is infinite and then he does the grade school proof that 1 =.9999 and 1 is finite.
Then he claims the statement 1+1 = 2 and it’s negation is 1+1 = 1 (that’s not it’s negation, of course— you are giving him too much credit in assuming we know 1 != 2) and that 1 number, two, plus 1 number, two, is 1 number, four, so 1+1 = 1.
Then he seems to think two inconsistancies means *all* statement and their negations are provable. (Well, to be fair he quotes a text book that claims an inconsistant language system that can construct a simultaneous statement and it’s negation will be imply all formable statements to be both provable and disprovable.)
Then for reality he claims the negation of “the glass is half full” is “the glass is half empty” and he shows a photo and glass of white wine.
Then he quotes the text and concludes all observation is “theory laden” and therefore if we change meaning we change observation and and as all theory implies inconsistancy eveything is meaningless.
What bugs me isn’t so much that it is wrong, but that it is wrong and banal.
@17
Godel understood “inconsistent != incomplete” (and so the impossibility of consistency and completeness [within formal systems] doesn’t necessarily imply it is known which is one fails) and the inconsistancy of a *system* effects statements *within the system*.
(laughs) Yeah, I was largely ignoring the meaningless use of the word “negation”, as the statement would make just as much sense if the kook had said “flying strawberry”.
The ease with which an equivocation of this sort can be constructed in natural language is one of the major reasons “mathematics” exists.
I can imagine Mr Leslie Dean’s editor (assuming he has one) having A LOT of fun when the time comes to pay him dividends.
“Well, your books sold for 1000$ and you are owed 10% of that, is 1$ a correct amount? ” – *hands him 1$*.
@PZ
Yup, that’s the joke they (we?) usually throw at the kiwis, so it burns double.
Well, when you’ve only got one animal which sometimes doesn’t try to kill you…
“Well, when you’ve only got one animal which sometimes doesn’t try to kill you…”
Are you sure? Some may have escaped from New Zealand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sheep_(2006_film)
Obviously he has not read Principia Mathematica (PM) by Betrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead
“Famously, several hundred pages are required in PM to prove the validity of the proposition 1+1=2.”
@phillipbrown: reading Russell’s Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (you can get it for free at the amazing Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41654 !) or at least the first two chapter that my brain could understand, blew my mind.
If 1 = lots do you think I can pay him do to some chores around my house?
Using this kook’s reasoning, it should be trivial to “prove” 1 = minus zillons, or indeed, 1 = anything (at the moment, I want a nap, so 1 = nap, which means nap = nap + nap, so I can take as many naps, long and short, now, as wanted). Anyways, naps aside, that means you should be able to get this kook to do your chores and pay you. And do everyone else’s, paying you an additional fee…
He thinks he’s Australian? He can’t spell in Australian English. And his grammar is awful. That sad excuse for maths is more erotic than the poetry, which reads like a euphemism explaining why he leers at teenage girls.