Talk:Usenet personality/Archive 2

This page
Should not redirect. Archimedes Plutonium is the most notable of all usenet personalities. There were many unfortunate incidents here in the past, but I don't believe in Jinxes. If Wikipedia can cover Adolph Hitler, it can certainly cover Archimedes Plutonium.Likebox (talk) 08:16, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Bringing back this page after it was deleted and redirected seems underhanded to me. As well, it is damn near impossible to represent AP's ever-changing views.  For instance, he has recently disputed the claim that 1/3 = 0.333... or indeed that 1/3 is a number at all (I think).
 * In any case, I believe that consensus is opposed to your recent edits. I'll revert. Phiwum (talk) 17:49, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I see that Infrogmation reverted my edit, claiming, in part, that this is a "fresh" article. Is that so?  It seems to me to be the same article as was previously deleted, but perhaps my memory is faulty.
 * There is still the outstanding issue regarding "Plutonian Integers". There is no such coherent theory, since AP changes his mind every post or two, and what theory exists is described only in Usenet posts.  As far as I know, Usenet posts are not accepted as reliable sources.
 * Note: I still don't think that the "new" article should stand, but I'll wait and see what develops. Phiwum (talk) 19:22, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I think this version is better, although it does contain most of the text of the previous version. For notability, AP was the subject of at least one full newspaper article devoted to him alone in a newspaper somewhere since then.Likebox (talk) 21:09, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The paper was the Argus Leader. I don't know if the article adds much notability to the subject, but at least that's a new argument one might make.  (Note: the reporter interviewed me for that article and my comments were strongly disputed by AP.) Phiwum (talk) 21:21, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Crucial differences: Hitler is dead, and there are whole books devoted to him. Appropriately enough, given that Mike Godwin is the foundation's counsel, you have violated Godwin's Law with your very first post! The debate on this deletion and redirect was extensive, you would need to show what has changed about the subject since then - as far as I can tell, nothing has. Likebox, you are well aware of the fact that this was deleted through correct process, as you yourself initiated the last deletion review. Please respect consensus. Guy (Help!) 08:38, 2 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The debate on deletion never reached consensus. The deletion was out of line, and I never initiated deletion review, I wouldn't even know how.Likebox (talk) 12:57, 2 January 2009 (UTC)


 * If it sheds any light on the history. There was a rancor over the nickname issue of "arky" as what Likebox rightly notes as a juvenile mockfest rather than a objective Wikipedia article on Archimedes Plutonium. So many people hate AP because of the idea of god as Science in the Atom Totality. And so a mockfest ensued with a Wikipedia entry. And since no editor of Wikipedia was going to delete the false nickname, the South Dakota Attorney General was contacted and sent a letter to Wikipedia, and when that letter arrived at Wikipedia, the AP article was deleted, with or without any "process". Once the letter reached Wikipedia over the issue of the mockfest especially the nickname, then the article was toast. The Atom Totality theory turns many normal behaving men and turns them into crank-hate-mongers which are easy to spot on the Usenet and even in these talk pages of Wikipedia. I kind of love it, and enjoy it, that an idea-- atom-totality can turn a person so much into raging hatemonger, that it is laughable. But anyway, why the article was deleted, was because the Attorney General office of South Dakota letter asking about nickname policy of Wikipedia. Those hatemongers attached "arky" and that is a horrible falsehood. 216.16.54.60 (talk) 09:07, 19 April 2009 (UTC)Superdeterminism


 * I see no evidence of this claimed letter or that there is anything outside of normal AfD involved in the deletion history. DMacks (talk) 17:30, 22 April 2009 (UTC)


 * In reply to DMacks, do you see where there was a "fight" over the

nickname?? And it is easy to simply write to the South Dakota Attorney General's office. Where I stated-- Wikipedia was going to assign a person his nickname, whether true or not. But I have a question DMacks. How does one start the process of Deletion of a Wikipedia page of the Loadmaster's "List of Usenet Personalities" as not abiding by Wiki instructions of list membership. So how is that process started? Can you start the process of Deletion of Usenet Personalities? 216.16.54.141 (talk) 05:02, 24 April 2009 (UTC) LogicMaster


 * Indeed, the WP history of the article is quite clear, covering not one but four separate discussions about deletion . The original article was deemed too lengthy and covered too much outside the subject material, viz., why AP is notable within the Usenet community. The compromise decision was to create the article List of Usenet personalities as a more suitable place for mention of AP and other notables like him. — Loadmaster (talk) 01:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Plutonian integers
This section needs help. The only citations are at the end, making it very difficult to see which claims are AP's and which are due to Likebox. This is especially problematic since AP's ideas change from day to day. Phiwum (talk) 19:34, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * This is a second try. The first time, I put in a few misleading statements which made the integers seem more like p-adics then they are. I put in correct representations now.Likebox (talk) 21:01, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * But, if I recall correctly, AP's current claim is that every number has both a "frontview" and a "backview", so 0.333... is not a real number according to AP. Instead, one can speak of 0.333...333, but this number is not 1/3.  I think that the same applies to naturals, so ...3333 is not a number either, although 333...333 is.
 * Thus, it seems to me that the current article misrepresents AP's claims about numbers. Phiwum (talk) 21:27, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Not exactly--- frontview is a notion that gets at the "end" of an infinite digit expansion. I only described it for adic-integers, but he naturally believes it holds for real numbers. I shortened it to just the essentials, and these are consistent from posting to posting and era to era.Likebox (talk) 21:29, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * You seem to see more consistency in AP's postings than I do. At present, as far as I can tell, every real has both a frontview and a backview and (I think) a second decimal point (!).  Neither of these are consistent with 0.333.... being a real number and no wonder!  After all, according to recent AP posts, 1/3 is not a number at all.
 * Thus, I just don't see how your presentation is consistent with current AP claims. Phiwum (talk) 21:51, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The backview could be a bunch of zeros .33333....00 vs. .3333...333 . Whether 1/3 is a number or not depends on details of infinitesimal quantities. These questions are ambiguous, and the sketch I gave is very representative, and faithful to what I have read of his writing.Likebox (talk) 22:19, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * He is very clear on this. Or at least as clear as he ever is.  Here's what he says:
 * Now let me talk about the function duality of quantity versus geometrical location that a Number plays. And let me pick on probably the very worst mistake in the Old Reals with their insistence that 1/3 was a number, an Old-Real Number whose value was 0.333.... This is probably the most laughable mistake in all of mathematics that has lasted the longest time in the history of math. The mistake started by the Ancients calling fractions as rational numbers. Fractions are really operations on numbers so when we divide 1 by 3 we go through the process of division and 3 into ten is 3, remainder 1, carry over the 1 and 3 into another 10 is 3, remainder 1 and finally make sure the decimal point is in the proper place. 


 * That's what he said on Dec. 20. It seems to me fairly arbitrary to claim that this is a subtle issue depending on infinitesimals, because AP's (recent) opinion is relatively explicit. Phiwum (talk) 00:46, 2 January 2009 (UTC)


 * What I meant was that it depends on how far you take the "backview". If you believe that 1/3 is .3333....3333 then multiply by 3 you get .9999...9999 which differs from 1.000...0000 in the backview. This is irrelevant, since details of backview are not the focus of the blurb.Likebox (talk) 03:34, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) It has nothing to do with what I believe. AP has said that 1/3 is not a number at all, and so the article should not imply otherwise. As well, AP believes that every real number has a "backview" and so the article should include this claim (if it reports any of his beliefs regarding reals at all). As it is, your presentation of AP's so-called theory of numbers is a misrepresentation of his current claims. Surely, this is a bad thing. Phiwum (talk) 03:51, 2 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The 1/3 isn't AP's thing, it's designed to explain the infinite integer idea to a general reader. He uses infinite digit sequences. All the rest is details which I don't think we need to get into.Likebox (talk) 05:29, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * It seems nonetheless misleading to refer to 1/3 and 0.333... in motivating ...333. Worse, as far as I know, ...333 is not an AP integer, since it has no front view.
 * You seem to be missing my main point. It is impossible to present a section on AP's "theories" because they are an incoherent, ever-changing mess.  At best, you can say that such-and-such is what he said on a particular day.  (For evidence, look at the various posts that he calls his "books".  They regularly introduce totally new and contradictory claims.)
 * Assuming that this page lives through the dubious resurrection, it will take considerable work to have anything approaching a fair and accurate presentation of his theories. Phiwum (talk) 15:00, 2 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I understand your point, I think it is disingenous. It is very easy to give the main idea of Plutonium arithmetic, as I did, then the details of frontview/backview are no more ambiguous than any other presentation of non-standard analysis. If a reader is interested, they can read the different versions provided by Plutonium. They are pretty consistent.Likebox (talk) 20:18, 2 January 2009 (UTC)


 * You and I have radically different opinions on the clarity and coherence of AP's "theories". Either that, or you have a remarkably low opinion of NSA.  Non-standard analysis is, as far as I understand it, a clearly axiomatized first-order theory.  How on earth you believe that AP's stuff is comparable is beyond me. Phiwum (talk) 23:46, 2 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Go to the article on non-standard analysis, and look for the examples they give of non-standard integers. They are similar to Plutonium's early representations with numbers and ... going up in front (a representation, by the way, which I have never seen earlier than Plutonium's writing), except they don't sweat out the details of multiplication and division as much. You give Plutonium's lower marks for coherence because you are not willing to invest the effort to try to understand what he is saying. It's coherence level is intermediate--- higher than a crank, but lower than accepted work. It is similar to the coherence level of new speculative ideas, but it has the disadvantage of being totally disconnected from society, and a bunch of gibberish comes along for the ride. Be that as it may, it makes no difference what you or I think of it. It is notable and interesting.Likebox (talk) 23:56, 2 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, but it is gibberish. His early work referred to the 10-adic numbers as if it were the "real" integers, while it clearly has zero-divisors, so is not "real".  I haven't read his later work, but, unless he specifically repudiated his early work, it's still bad.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 00:16, 3 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid that I couldn't find the non-standard integers you described, but are you seriously suggesting that published NSA theories are no more clearly presented than AP's loose collection of claims? Again, this is simply, obviously false from where I sit.  I suppose we may as well stop going round and round on this, since we are no closer to resolution. Phiwum (talk) 02:51, 3 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I didn't say they were consistent, nor did I say they were as consistent as NSA, which is completely consistent. What I was saying is that the algorithms for multiplying infinite integers are more consistent than crank theories but not as consistent as ordinary mathematical theories, and that his notation for infinite integers seems to have caught on in NSA circles.Likebox (talk) 22:46, 7 January 2009 (UTC)


 * You are evidently using the word "consistent" in an informal way, since you claim that AP's ideas are "more consistent" than other crank theories, but not consistent. I have only a vague idea what you mean, but let's let it pass.  It's that second bit that I couldn't find: you say that his notation has caught on in NSA circles?  Of course, even if they use similar notation, it's extremely unlikely that it is an imitation of AP's stuff, but could you show me an example of AP-like notation in NSA?  Thanks. Phiwum (talk) 01:55, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Not in the literature, I meant here, in Wikipedia. I thought I ran across some article that had a ...333 somewhere. I couldn't find it again, so maybe I'm wrong.Likebox (talk) 18:31, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Okay. It's easy to misremember such things. Phiwum (talk) 20:35, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


 * You need to start not with Plutonium Integers but with the concept of "All Possible

Digit Arrangements". That concept then gives the true-blue Reals and the AP-adics which contains the Plutonium Integers. I have read the math content of this discussion page and the concept of "All Possible Digit Arrangements" was never once mentioned. It is the crux and heart of Plutonium's mathematics, and is the lifeblood of that math. All the other concepts such as frontview/backview are offshoots of All Possible Digit Arrangements. 216.254.227.140 (talk) 06:50, 19 January 2009 (UTC) Dedekind's ghost Arrangements. 216.254.227.140 (talk) 06:50, 19 January 2009 (UTC) Dedekind's ghost —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.16.57.165 (talk)

Arbitrary Deletions, Big Mess
The last restoration was a big mess, the whole thing was subject to a great deal of absurd attention. This needs a proper discussion, because of my own opinion that there is absolutely no chance that this merits deletion, period. If you read the deletion logs, you can see that the deletion happened despite lack of consensus. It is probably good that deletion happened then, because there were flaws in the old article. But the new article should be fine.Likebox (talk) 03:39, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Can you clarify how the new article differs from the one deleted in the last AfD in October, 2007? EdJohnston (talk) 03:44, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * It has more text in biography, and less text on integers. The text on integers has been made more accurate.Likebox (talk) 05:26, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * To be sure, I can't say that I think the latter two AfDs to have been correctly closed, and I recall in particular my being irked&mdash;although not, I was sad to say, surprised&mdash;that the abhorrent close of the third AfD was sustained at DRV by a not insignificant margin; however problematic may be the procedural posture here, though, it is fair to say that a recreation of the article will not be permitted in the absence of a DRV result explicitly countenancing the creation of a new text that makes out more plainly the notability of the subject and reveals him to have been discussed non-trivially in multiple sources, such that any BLP-based concerns about his being only barely a public figure might be overcome. Your best bet, then, is to create a proposed article in your userspace (e.g., at User:Likebox/AP; someone may suggest that you thereafter blank the page and reference the content only with a link to the unblanked version, but I'll hope that no one should be so silly) and then list Archimedes Plutonium at deletion review, noting that that you have new information that would suggest that the previous decision to delete should be revisited (I'm sure I'd be willing to help should you need help navigating DRV; the instructions are pretty good, though); whether anyone will care to address the issue more than cursorily is, of course, a separate question (more than a handful of BLPs have, one regrets to say, taken the following course: article survives multiple AfDs and is renominated until a discussion can be [or at least is] closed as "delete", after which those who  argue for a more restrictive construction of BLP regard the question as closed and reject out-of-hand any attempt to resuscitate it), but, rightly or wrongly, your only recourse is to present to the community at DRV a new version of the article that attempts to address the issues that led to deletion at AfDs three and four. Joe 21:33, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Notability
The subject of Archimedes Plutonium does not qualify for an article under the Wikipedia guidelines. Consider that:
 * 1. There are only a handful of (more than two?) printed references to him, all of which refer to him more or less as a crank.
 * 2. There are no professional journals or papers that cite or even mention his work or theories.
 * 3. Even ignoring the fact that his theories are little more than his personal beliefs, they would most certainly qualify as original research, and as such do not merit an article on Wikipedia.

If anyone can find a legitimate objection or counter-example to these points, then perhaps the consensus discussion (→ no article, but redirect) can be resumed. Until then, the rules are pretty clear: no article for AP. He does qualifies for mention as a notable Usenet personality, however,, which is where he is mentioned currently, based solely on his notoriety among a subset of the Usenet community. | Loadmaster (talk) 23:39, 2 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm tired of arguing with this nonsense. Although it is hard to document usenet figures, AP is one of the best documented of the bunch, if not the best. He has a 2008 newpaper article devoted entirely to him, a chapter in a book on a mostly unrelated case, a huge internet presence, and every one of you knows exactly who he is. The references in the literature that I am personally aware of are 3 minor references in books, 2 major references, and yes he is referred to as a crank scientist, because that's the genreal tone of his work. I don't know any case of a clear-cut notable figure that has been so difficult to get the consensus to cover.


 * The reason is that the article used to be a juvenile mockery-fest. Now that it is reasonably in line with BLP, the same people that endorsed the mockery are upset. Both the AFD's that ended in delete were unjustified, and the deletion review was a crock. There was concern about BLP violating stuff getting in this article, but that was in a previous era in Wikipedia. The chance that slander or libel will enter this article is next to zero with the level of attention available today.Likebox (talk) 23:42, 2 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm confused by Loadmaster's reference to OR in relation to AP's theories. There are two possible interpretations.
 * Because these theories are original with AP, we cannot discuss them without violating OR.
 * Because AP never clearly and coherently states his theory of, say, integers, any presentation of this theory would necessarily violate OR.
 * I disagree with the former, but agree with the latter. (Note to Likebox: I didn't agree with the original deletion, nor "endorse the mockery", but nonetheless find this attempt at unilateral resurrection to be a bad idea.) Phiwum (talk) 00:01, 3 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorry--- I didn't mean to impugn your character. Please look at User:Likebox/Archimedes Plutonium and tell me if the description there is still OR in your eyes.Likebox (talk) 00:03, 3 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I'll try to have a look at it later, but there is one thing I don't like about the text so far. You place the citations at the end of the section or paragraph, which makes it very hard to figure out which claims come from which cites.  Could you please change these citations to in-line cites?  Thanks. Phiwum (talk) 00:16, 3 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Not every text in WP needs cites, only text that is challenged. If people are reasonable about what text they challenge, it makes life bearable.Likebox (talk) 01:15, 3 January 2009 (UTC)


 * With AP, clear citations are essential, since he often contradicts his earlier claims. I'd like to know which of the mathematical claims you make are clearly found in AP's writings and where.  I don't believe that's unreasonable.  Phiwum (talk) 02:53, 3 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree. I think the only claims in the article are broad enough to easily find consistent cites, since the actual calculations: the addition/multiplication algorithm has been stable throughout his writing (as far as I know, I havn't read everything. Also, certain model-dependent conclusions keep changing, like whether ...9993 is prime, but that depends on whether he finds a "big" factor, and whether he worries about matching in the front-view or not).Likebox (talk) 06:14, 3 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Ok, I put in a specific example of his multiplication algorithm (this never changed, although I believe he used to ignore the "front view").Likebox (talk) 06:50, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I'll clarify the question of notability. While the person Archimedes Plutonium deserves mention in WP because of his notoriety within a subset of the Usenet community, his theories and ideas do not. His notoriety, as has been pointed out, is backed up by several citations. His crackpot theories, however, are not mentioned or referenced in any professional journals or papers, so at best they deserve only passing mention, and certainly not a full-length exposition. His theories serve only to support the notion of why he is notable on Usenet. As such, a passing mention of them alone is sufficient to establish the why; expounding on them in detail does not add anything useful to WP. | Loadmaster (talk) 16:53, 5 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree in principle, but when I put little sketches of the ideas, which I think is what is justified, phiwum tells me it's OR. The only way to get people to see what it was about is to go into detail. I don't think that most of his theories are all that notable, except that they gets the idea of what he's about across. But the infinite integers are an exception, because they both make some sense, and because these arguments have been widely imitated by other people writing about mathematics in the usenet alternative mathematics community.Likebox (talk) 02:01, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * ... they make ... sense? I think not.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 02:09, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Of course they don't make sense. What's worse is that AP is continually changing his ideas about his "AP-adics" and "AP-reals", sometimes making complete reversals in their alleged properties from one month to the next. He has yet to define any coherent definition of addition or multiplication operators for them. He throws terms around like "Cauchy sequence" and "p-adics", giving the impression that he understands these things, but reading a few of his posts provides enough evidence to conclude that he doesn't. And, yes, other people have tried their hand with "infinite numbers", but always with the same result: a new "system" that they claim will revolutionize mathematics but is really nothing more than a bunch of inconsistent and incoherent wistful ramblings with no basis in real math or logic.
 * But it's incorrect to say others have imitated AP, because these crank ideas have been floating around for at lot longer than he has, and besides that he's not that well-known outside of a few Usenet groups. There are plenty of old examples on sci.math and sci.logic of people with similar ideas who have never heard of AP.
 * All in all, it's sufficient to mention (only) his "Plutonium Atom Totality Theory" to support his notoriety, and leave it at that. At least that's one belief of his that hasn't changed that much from his original inception. | Loadmaster (talk) 19:57, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * They make sense in the following way: it is easy to give a formal definition of a consistent subgroup of Plutonium integers under multiplication, analogous to the rational numbers, which is defined by his multiplication algorithm applied to numbers which eventually repeat in both the frontview and the backview. There is a subtlety if the frontview is zero--- in that case, and that case only, the frontview of the product is the product of the nonzero frontview with the backview of the other. The subgroup with zero frontview is sufficient, nonzero frontview is a simple generalization.


 * To define addition is subtle, and can easily lead to paradox, because the product doesn't keep track of order of magnitude. So there are infinite integers A such that


 * X A "=" X


 * namely the integer with frontview 10000... and backview ...0000. This is clearly an order of magnitude issue, and can be fixed by adding a grading, so that the two numbers are not equal, they just have "similar digits". If you add numbers of different order of magnitude, one can vanish into the other. This makes the integers very weird, but not necessarily inconsistent. They are what they are. An informal idea, with interesting applications partially worked out.


 * None of this makes any sense unless AP's notation (e.g., 1.666...666) has a coherent definition. AP states that the "..." represents an infinite number of digits, that there are an infinite number of digits to the right of the decimal point followed by a series of final digits. This does not make sense, and he has failed to provide anything resembling a logical explanation for it. He states that if you start at 1 and continue counting by ones that you'll eventually reach infinite counting numbers. He claims that 999...999 is 99+% of the "number sphere" while 0999...999 is only 10% of the "number sphere", and that the leftmost digit in 999...999 is 9×10999...999, both of which also look like a lot of contradictory nonsense. He also admits that comparisons don't work at all for his numbers. You can continue interpreting his theories, bludgeoning them into something resembling logic, but you're not accurately representing what he actually believes and you're wasting your time. | Loadmaster (talk) 21:35, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The definition is provided by the multiplication algorithm. If I give you symbols, and an algorithm to work with them, I have defined a formal system. Whether this system has enough properties to call it "the integers" is a philosophical question.Likebox (talk) 22:54, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The idea that Cantor's argument fails, however, and that there is a direct one-to-one map between the integers and the reals is completely original to Plutonium. Nobody has ever thought this thought before. It requires not only playing with infinite digit sequences (which is an old idea), not only defining a frontview and backview (which is an old, but less known idea) but taking the whole mess seriously and thinking of the integers as really including these crazy numbers. This idea is the one that has been copied again and again (badly) by a stream of usenet math cranks. It is completely crazy within standard set theory, of course, but the whole point is that it entails a different philosophy of infinity.Likebox (talk) 20:45, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * AP was not the first person to claim that ||N|| = ||R||. You'd have a tough time proving that he was. Search sci.math and sci.logic and you'll find several people over the years who have claimed the same thing, usually in the context of disproving Cantor's theories, and most of whom had not heard of AP at the time. Do a search for "Tony Orlow" and his "Big'un" and "bigulosity", for example, which are based on a "unit infinity" and a "digital representation of infinite values" across "levels of infinity", and also on the claim that ||N|| = || [0,1] ||; and Tony has stated that he never heard of AP before posting any of his stuff. In fact, since everyone assumed that ||N|| = ||R|| prior to Cantor, this idea is as old as the belief that Cantor was wrong. | Loadmaster (talk) 21:35, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Tony Orlow, if I'm not mistaken, is one of the people I was thinking about when I say this stuff is widely imitated. He is post-Plutonium. Whatever he says about never hearing of Plutonium, he is writing much the same thing about ten years later on the same forum.


 * Which does not prove AP's ideas are being copied. Identical ideas can originate from many people's minds. And I still highly doubt that AP was the first to attempt a system of "infinite integers". He may be the most renowned person to do so, though. | Loadmaster (talk) 17:25, 7 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Before cantor people did assume that |N| and |R| are both infinite, and therefore "equal" in some sense, but their view is based on the following theology: all infinite collections are defined as lists which are potentially infinite, and these lists complete to the same countable "actual infinity". Cantor's insight that R>N is profound, and critics of Cantor never again make the argument that R is countable. They criticize that the notion of sets in such large realms is nonconstructive.


 * Plutonium is not saying that R is countably infinite. He is saying that N is uncountably infinite. That's a crazy original idea. It's unbelievable. No critic of Cantor's theory ever said that. If you find any reference anywhere I'll eat my hat.


 * I do not consider myself the "defender of Plutonium integers". I don't try all that hard to make sense of this stuff, I am just reporting my best fair take on what he writes, as objectively as I can. It comes together to give a fuzzy picture, but one which is not 100% logically consistent. But, then again, Cantor's set theory was bedeviled by paradox until the 1920s. You don't have to say it's consistent, just say that on usenet, this has been an influential idea. By the way, Plutonium's 0999..999 is 10% of the way to 9999...999, because he sees the frontview as being at a fixed order of magnitude. His ideas about the "circle of integers" is related to negative numbers closing in at an idealized point at infinity, sort of like a Reimann sphere (except no complex numbers). Give the guy a break, He is struggling to find a consistent infinite arithmetic, which is next to impossible.Likebox (talk) 22:51, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The guy is a crank who disdains all of modern mathematics and science, and is trying to sweep them all away and replace them with his own private crank beliefs. That's not a libelous statement, either, because that is what he really and truly believes. Oh, and also he's a genius, one of the few true geniuses of history, and we're all idiots, and we know this is true because he's told us many times. Give him a break? Why should I?
 * As to the discussion at hand, whether or not he warrants a separate WP article: No, there is not enough info for an entire article. His sole claim to fame is his notoriety from his prolific crank postings on a few Usenet groups. Mentioning much more beyond that is superfluous. That's why his entry at List of Usenet personalities is entirely sufficient. | Loadmaster (talk) 17:25, 7 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Don't worry so much. If that's what he's doing, he's not going to succeed. I tend to interpret his aims more charitably. He is like an old-testament prophet, writing at the edge of sanity, with spiritual beliefs derived from scientific texts. His theories often make no testable predictions, but make an ethical statement. For example, bipedalism evolved so that humans could throw stones at one another. His philosophy of infinite integers is about as consistent as expected from a theology. As someone said on the last debate on the future of this article, his writing is more like poetry than science or mathematics.


 * His writing is important in the history of usenet. If nothing else, it defined the boundary of acceptable discourse there. Turns out that it was much further into the wilderness than acceptable discourse in any other community based on writing. Is he as notable as Winston Churchill? Obviously not. Is he as notable as Alexander Abian? Of course.Likebox (talk) 22:20, 7 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I shortened the infinite integers stuff. I think a little discussion is useful because there are usenet copycats.Likebox (talk) 22:38, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

And here's another WP policy to consider: Fringe theories. Note especially the Unwarranted promotion of fringe theories section. | Loadmaster (talk) 16:07, 30 January 2009 (UTC)