Timeline for What is "rich structure", actually? [closed]
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
30 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Sep 14, 2021 at 19:58 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Stefan Kohl♦ | ||
| Dec 28, 2011 at 15:08 | history | undeleted |
Andreas Blass François G. Dorais |
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| Dec 23, 2011 at 21:33 | history | deleted |
Andy Putman Kevin Buzzard Andrés E. Caicedo |
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| Feb 23, 2010 at 6:19 | comment | added | Hans-Peter Stricker | @Scott: So where am I to get such excellent answers as the ones below? | |
| Feb 23, 2010 at 6:12 | comment | added | Kim Morrison | @Hans: re: a "philosophical forum" being a good idea. No, it wouldn't be a good idea, because it would not have the main advantage mathoverflow has, namely a plethora of excellent questions which admit definitive answers! | |
| Feb 23, 2010 at 6:07 | history | closed |
user350 Pete L. Clark S. Carnahan♦ Qiaochu Yuan Kim Morrison |
not constructive | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 12:34 | comment | added | Ian Durham | @Pete: You are correct that it is exceedingly rare for philosophers to agree and I would agree even that philosophical questions tend not to have definitive answers. But there's a subtle difference between "philosophical" and "foundational." The latter, as seems to have been shown here by the multitude of interesting and seemingly specific answers, straddles the line a bit. But usually people who ask foundational questions are looking for specific answers (or if the question can be answered). Philosophers tend not to care (no offense to any philosophers lurking out there). | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 11:19 | answer | added | Neel Krishnaswami | timeline score: 3 | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 10:08 | answer | added | kakaz | timeline score: 1 | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 8:50 | answer | added | David Corfield | timeline score: 7 | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 7:30 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | Just for the record, I think that this question - while similar to questions that have been IMHO too vague - could lead to useful answers, especially once people read the existing ones. | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 6:20 | answer | added | Emerton | timeline score: 12 | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 4:27 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | @ID: For me, two inherent properties of philosophical questions are that they do not have definitive answers and that they are prone to discussion. Many philosophers agree with me (not all, but that rather establishes my point: it is exceedingly rare for all philosophers to agree!) | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 4:21 | comment | added | Pete L. Clark | It seems to me that the most honest answer is that "richness of structure" is used only informally by mathematicians: like a deep theorem or an elegant proof, it involves an aesthetic judgment on the part of the speaker. You could try to create some quantitative measure of richness of structures, in which e.g., richness is non-increasing under forgetful functors, but this is not what people mean when they use the term. Thus I agree with Anton G. that the question is not a good one for MO: it is not possible to decide whether a given answer is correct. | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 3:36 | comment | added | Ian Durham | I should just like to point out that "philosophical" does not necessarily equate to "discussion." Just because a question is "philosophical" (I prefer "foundational") does not mean it doesn't have a definitive answer. Nor does it mean it is necessarily more prone to discussion. | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 2:51 | answer | added | Douglas Zare | timeline score: 3 | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 2:39 | comment | added | Charles Siegel | I think this is likely to promote discussion, but another solution in this case is that it can be made community wiki, and people can vote for what they agree with, and let the community sort answers by how they use the words. Presumably this should converge (roughly) to something useful. | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 2:38 | answer | added | Charles Siegel | timeline score: 3 | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 1:49 | comment | added | Gjergji Zaimi | I agree with Anton. I guess it's obvious from my answer below, that I don't believe there are rigorous answers. While this question is not provocative it seems more suited for a discussion then a question-answer type prompt. | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 1:46 | answer | added | Gerhard Paseman | timeline score: 1 | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 1:34 | comment | added | Douglas Zare | This is a question which has answers. This is not a question which will only provoke discussion and not answers. I have read all of your links, and I think you are wrong about this question, and that others have been wrong in the past to overuse similar comments. | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 1:19 | comment | added | Anton Geraschenko | @Douglas: while what you're saying sounds reasonable, I disagree with it. If you want to discuss it further, let's do it on meta, where this topic has already received a lot of attention. Here is another one of my posts that elaborates on why we should close questions at all: tea.mathoverflow.net/discussion/130/2/…. Please also have a look at this thread: tea.mathoverflow.net/discussion/155/…. | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 1:04 | comment | added | Douglas Zare | It's not my question, but I'd like to see the answers, not to have this closed out of a bizarre fear that someone might try to discuss something instead of answering the question. I'm aware of the limitations of MO. | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 0:58 | comment | added | Anton Geraschenko | While I have nothing against philosophical questions or discussion questions (I really like them sometimes), the feature set that makes MO so good for focused questions makes it extremely frustrating for discussions. A regular threaded discussion forum is much better suited for this kind of question. See tea.mathoverflow.net/discussion/21/philosophical-questions/…. Consider posting this on the request thread of a blog or on reddit.com/r/math. | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 0:56 | comment | added | Douglas Zare | Why is there a rush to label questions as ones which might lead to a discussion? If someone gives a concrete example of what is meant when someone says "rich structure," is that so horrible? | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 0:45 | comment | added | Hans-Peter Stricker | Wouldn't it really be a good idea to open up an MO companion forum for "philosophical" questions? Or to provide a prominent tag "Be aware: philosophical!" | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 0:35 | comment | added | Anton Geraschenko | I think this is way too philosophical and discussion-y to work on MO. I don't think it's a question that "has an answer" (i.e. it's really bait for a discussion). I'd vote to close it as "not a real question", but I don't want to close unilaterally. If it acquires two or three other votes to close, then I'll vote to close too. | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 0:28 | history | edited | Reid Barton |
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| Feb 22, 2010 at 0:24 | answer | added | lhf | timeline score: 2 | |
| Feb 22, 2010 at 0:16 | history | asked | Hans-Peter Stricker | CC BY-SA 2.5 |