Re: Surprising statistics

On Fri, 2 May 2008 18:43:34 -0700 (PDT), JSH <jstevh@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>[...]
>
>I know that mathematicians lie as a group, 

Just curious: In your estimation, approximately
how many times has the following happpened?

1. You announce some mathematical result. You declare
that you have an ironclad solid proof; nobody can deny
your result unless they're simply lying.

2. People point out flaws in the proof, and/or show that
the proof must be wrong because the result is false.
There ensues a round of people pointing out the error
or errors and you calling them liars.

3. Eventually you realize that what you said was actually
wrong.

(4. And of course you never come out and apologize
explicitly for calling people liars when even you have
realized that they were just telling the truth about
the math.)

We all know that that's happened many times.
About how many times, would you guess?

Just curious.

>so of course, people part
>of that society will lie about lying, and lie about things most people
>think are obvious, like in our modern world search result rankings
>MEAN something.
>
>But you know it's like how the US has "liberated" the Iraqi people by
>events that have lead to the deaths of several hundred thousand of
>them.  Now I'm not going to say that they were better off before, but,
>well, more of them were alive, which one can argue was not better off
>under a tyrannical regime, but that's a digression.
>
>(After all, "give me liberty or give me death" is a famous saying from
>my own country.)
>
>The point is that the superior group--the US--can decide for the Iraqi
>people, enforce its will, and in the ensuing activity hundreds of
>thousands of Iraqis can die and they can't do a damn thing about it,
>and can't do a damn thing to stop it.
>
>That is the power of groups: life and death.

Excellent analogy. Exremely apt.

>James Harris

David C. Ullrich