FOM: FOM threads; censoring Forster; Boolean near-triviality

[Stephen G Simpson]

Olivier Gerard writes:
 > "In a discussion group, the reasonement abilities are inferior or equal
 > to the intersection of those of all members taking part."

Yes.  One bad apple can spoil the whole barrel.  I think several
interesting FOM threads have been stymied in this way.

Fortunately, lots of interesting topics are still under discussion.
In no particular order, these include:

  1. Friedman's results on the necessary use of large cardinals
  2. determinacy and large cardinals
  3. equational axioms for topos theory
  4. categorical dys-foundations; IHOL
  5. intuitionistic Dedekind cuts
  6. affectionate insults
     a. abstract nonsense
     b. wet blankets     
  7. pictures of Macintyre
     a. dimly lit pubs
     b. trotting after Atiyah
  8. the evil influence of Kreisel and Wittgenstein
  9. why G"odel is a much greater philosopher than Wittgenstein
  10. reverse mathematics
  11. why mathematical logic isn't algebra
  12. why mathematical logic isn't necessarily f.o.m.
  13. ultrafinitism; determinateness of the natural numbers
  14. Barendregt's ideas on computational f.o.m. 
  15. elementary proofs of theorems in number theory
  16. Tymoczko's book and "quasi-empiricism"
  17. Tennant's explanation of Dummett's ideas on intuitionism
  18. Detlefsen's ideas on consistency-completeness
  19. NF and other unusual set theories
  
---

By the way, some FOM subscribers seem to be under the false impression
that I censored a posting from Thomas Forster.  What actually happened
was that Forster sent a private e-mail to Harvey Friedman, to which
Harvey replied on the FOM list.  I urged Forster to post his full
remarks on the FOM list, but he didn't do so.

-- Steve