Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Commentary

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(C)Copyright 2019, C. Burke.

Now I remember why I don't make social commentary on social media -- I can't keep up with the math!

I'm a firm believer in not veering off either side of the road. I don't need to alienate anyone. Problem is the bigger your audience, the more you have to stick to, shall I say, ideal forms, allowing others to fill in the specifics?

First of all, Thank you to Bill R., who inadvertently provided a portion of the above dialogue. It capsulized it better than my verbosity could have. Second, the commentary portion actually succeeded because of those who commented on that, I got positive feedback from people who would not likely agree with each other. Thankfully, the examples were few, mostly esoteric, but not politically charged, which is what I feared. Likewise, it was difficult to provide anyone with an example of what I was talking about in the media today, unless I gave two examples, one for each side.

And I know doing that wouldn't have made too many people happy, and they'd have to examine themselves, or else call their own side into question. I know fewer than a dozen people on line who can do that. The rest are likely (though not definitely) to go supercomputer, supercomputer. (That is, "cray cray")

Best parts of the discussion were: the acknowledgement of the point I was making, the noting that mixture of notation didn't make mathematical sense but it got the point across, and comments that my statement could be "fixed" simply enough to give either or True or False outcome, whichever interpretation was desired. ("False", from the comments I made.)

The worst parts: people treating it like it was a Doctorate-level lecture, wanting to prove through tables and diagrams that it was Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong, while ignoring the context, and not bothering to attempt a correction. Apparently, simplicity wasn't in their wheelhouses. If it was my four-foot swimming pool, they'd be in over their heads debating the proper construction of a breathing apparatus instead of just standing up and taking a breath of fresh air.

Am I subtweeting, subtexting, subblogging or whatever? I don't know. I don't know the individuals in question. I muted a few, and blogged one who damned me with faint praise (and probably thinks I'm too dumb to know better). But it's my blog, and this is me working it out in a nice small forum, among friends. Anyone is free to comment.

And I'm free to delete those comments as spam. If you go back to my oldest comments, you'll see that I've left up some doozies, so I don't delete lightly. Or mute for that matter. I've muted five people on Twitter EVER. Three of them this week.




Come back often for more funny math and geeky comics.




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