Sorry, what were we talking about? Ego what?

The fact that if anyone is competent to understand the coincidences I presented in the first page of this thread they haven't demonstrated that. The only person who made any effort at all glibly said I would have had a faster go of it with primes on disk, not recognizing that the primes in question were too large for that.

I think that I'll do a summary of each post not written by me in my next post.

Understand coincidences? WHat is to understand? They're coincidences! You haven't begun to explain why they're of any significance. Really, dude. You're smarter than that. What are these coincidences actually telling us about reality, and how are they relevant?

You haven't read that that's no longer a subject I want to discuss. At some point if I get the sense that somebody other than me understands them, then I may talk about it again, and it's not true I haven't yet.

Someone,

You need to explain your thinking. Your coincidental numericals can act as support for your ideas, but they are not ideas in themselves. You must ask yourself why you are so reluctant to engage in this manner in this matter? Why do you first insist that others understand the coincidences as you understand them before you will deign to discussion what that understanding is, or might be?

Please address this post. Please do not dismiss it on the grounds that I have not demonstrated the right kind of understanding.

THWOTH

Someone wrote:You haven't read that that's no longer a subject I want to discuss.

I have read that. What I haven't done, in light of that, is to see the end of the topic, and if you really don't want to discuss that, then the topic is over, simple as that.

At some point if I get the sense that somebody other than me understands them, then I may talk about it again,

What is there to understand? You have pointed out that there are some interesting coincidences when you look at numbers a certain way. Nobody here has disputed that there are coincidences, but what hasn't been agreed is that they're interesting, or anything other than the coincidences you'd expect to find. We already went over some of this at the old forum, when we discussed the phenomenon of somebody phoning you or knocking on your door at precisely the moment you were thinking of them. To the untrained mind, these things are incredibly spooky, and many people say so, but to the trained mind, it is recognised that, given the number of people you think about throughout the course of a given day, it would be a good deal more spooky if such things didn't happen. Figures have even been provided to elucidate this.

and it's not true I haven't yet.

It is very much true that you haven't yet. All you've done is go 'oooh, spooky!', or words to that effect. Until you actually point out what is significant about them, there's nothing remotely interesting about the coincidences you have discussed here. There is nothing that anybody seriously intertested in maths would remotely pay attention to, because there are no conclusions to be drawn. Until you present your conclusions, all we have is 'ooh, spooky!', and it will be dismissed as summarily as it has been presented. If you have something interesting to present, present it.

If you feel that this subject is over and done with if I choose not to discuss what you want when you want me to, it's your prerogative not to think about it anymore yourself. It's simply irrelevant to me, but I claim it's false that I haven't discussed my thoughts on what the coincidences' significance is. This thread has a long history and the task I have identified as useful for my purposes next here--and not necessarily soon--is the history of this discussion from my perspective.

Someone wrote:If you feel that this subject is over and done with if I choose not to discuss what you want when you want me to, it's your prerogative not to think about it anymore yourself. It's simply irrelevant to me, but I claim it's false that I haven't discussed my thoughts on what the coincidences' significance is. This thread has a long history and the task I have identified as useful for my purposes next here--and not necessarily soon--is the history of this discussion from my perspective.

Please consider that many of us may have felt the same way about you, when you earlier tried to dictate who could and could not participate in this thread, mmmkay? That was serious, and not an attempt at a cheap shot. Read your own words here as if any of several others in this thread were addressing them to you and your "argument".

I believe that the post you must be referring to--where I supposedly tried to dictate who could participate--began with the word 'please'. If it didn't, it should have. In any case, all I'm saying is that if I'm to participate myself in a way that people seem to want, I have certain conditions on that.

Oh, I see now. I should have said 'please' twice. The following sentence should end 'please leave'.

Someone wrote:Please read the very bottom of this post and then either digest the first page's mathematical content and comment if you like or leave.

Someone,

I'm re-quoting an earlier post for emphasis...

THWOTH wrote:[W]hen one offers an idea for wider assessment one does not get to control, limit or set the conditions by which that idea is to be assessed by others. For an idea to persist and enter the Pantheon Of Truths it must resist all rational sceptical challenges and not just a predefined list of challenges deemed acceptable or appropriate by its proponent.

[...]

[T]he innate scepticism and incredulity shown towards your 'unbelievable mathematics' is not indicative of a lack of appropriate 'criticality' as you called it, but of the inherent weakness of your conclusion and the argument supporting it.

This is not a cheap shot - this amounts to a critique of your approach.

Your ideas have not resisted the rational, sceptical challenges of others.
Your insistences regarding who is (and is not) qualified to form an opinion on and judge your notions are misplaced and dishonest (in a discursive sense you understand, I am not accusing you of being a liar).
The error in your thesis lies not in the mathematics but in the hypothesis and the conclusion the numeric coincidence attempt to support.

If an idea has merit, either as a whole or in part, one should not only attempt to explain it in as much detail as possible, to avoid misunderstanding and/or confusion, offering clarifications and justification as required, but also the idea will naturally rebut the criticisms of others when founded in firm evidences and sound reasoning.

As I said, this is not a cheap shot - this is a challenge to which I hope you will now rise.

THWOTH

My attitude is that until someone grasps the actual scale of the coincidences on his or her own without my spelling out a statistical argument I have to infer an absence of people qualified to discuss the subject and, hence, no reason on my part to answer any requests on the matter, particularly from dismissive people. You may say all you like that I have an obligation to show that the coincidences are of a certain degree I suggest they are, but I submit to you my impression from the fact that they can't be recognized as such on their face is sufficient evidence to me that nobody here would understand my arguments anyway. I may as well explain the proof of the Poincare Conjecture to a class of kindergartners if people here compare the coincidences to someone knocking on one's door shortly after having thought of him or her.

A reminder of what your first post on this thread was:

THWOTH wrote:Yeah, but is three the perfect number?

Someone wrote:My attitude is that until someone grasps the actual scale of the coincidences on his or her own without my spelling out a statistical argument I have to infer an absence of people qualified to discuss the subject and, hence, no reason on my part to answer any requests on the matter, particularly from dismissive people.

Heaven forbid that you infer an absence of your own ability to present your arguments in a coherent manner.

You may say all you like that I have an obligation to show that the coincidences are of a certain degree I suggest they are,

You only have that obligation if you intend to convince people that your collection of coincidences are in any way significant, or in any way lead to a necessary conclusion. If you are intentionally ducking that obligation, you have no right to whine and complain when we dismiss whatever you think your point is.

but I submit to you my impression from the fact that they can't be recognized as such on their face is sufficient evidence to me that nobody here would understand my arguments anyway.

Right back atcha, kiddo - if you can't or won't present your argument with at least a hint of a connection to the conclusion, that's sufficient evidence to us that your argument is, shall we say, at the very most, incomplete.

A professor of rhetoric in the early 1980's at Clarkson College of Technology (now Clarkson University) once told me "Speculation on the possible reaction to evidence is no excuse for failing to present the evidence," and that applies very well to your situation here. There's an obvious logical fallacy in your approach, which can be illustrated with an analogous counter-example. I have proof that whatever you think your point is is wrong. In fact, your position is so wrong, your nose would fall off in embarrassment. But I have no reason to believe that you would understand my argument, so I won't bother to present it. Still think I've got a killer argument? If not, then consider that's why we don't think too much of your missing argument.

I may as well explain the proof of the Poincare Conjecture to a class of kindergartners if people here compare the coincidences to someone knocking on one's door shortly after having thought of him or her.

You can present whatever you want to the kindergartners, with very expectable results. But having someone knock on one's door shortly after thinking of him or her is a common example of a coinicidence, with a very explainable basis. Your analogy to the kindergarten class is invalid.

Someone wrote:A reminder of what your first post on this thread was:

THWOTH wrote:Yeah, but is three the perfect number?

A reminder of what josephchoi's first post on this thread was:

josephchoi wrote:what's your point though? That therefore god?

Seems like you're doing a lot of unnecessary work setting up the premises if you explicitly don't intend to reach (or reveal) a conclusion.

You're all simply wrong. For the sake of argument, why don't we just say that I've presented a bunch of coincidences in number theory and the history of their discovery only and am asking what they might mean? You would have two choices: The coincidences seem to mean something because of their large to enormous scale, or they probably mean nothing because of their small to medium scale. Instead the reaction I've gotten has been that nobody cares or can discern what their scale is; they simply can't mean anything.

Someone wrote:A reminder of what your first post on this thread was:

THWOTH wrote:Yeah, but is three the perfect number?

As you are aware, this was an aside and an indirect comment on the off-topic nature of your post in the parent discussion 'Fundamental Question To All Supernaturalists.'

I may not be a qualified and accredited mathematician but that does not immunise your from the responsibility of addressing my comments honestly, nor does it disbar you from the responsibility of explaining your hypothesis, your conclusion, and the role the mathematics plays in same; a responsibility which is, after all, simply the obligation of the party proposing a claim to explain their point. This is the absolute minimum one should be prepared to do if one wishes others to take a claims for knowledge and truth seriously, in a both the specific and general sense.

[/thread]

Someone wrote:The coincidences seem to mean something because of their large to enormous scale, or they probably mean nothing because of their small to medium scale.

As I understand it you seem to be arguing on the basis that the impropability is so huge that you think it demands an explanation, and that this explanation must be some sort of intent or meaning.

If so, then I'm sorry but it seems to me you are simply wrong.

There are events happening all the time of which if we were to try and calculate their propability, would arrive at values that would be ludicrous and unfathomable(as in, possibly equal to or greater than that which you are trying to argue for). It doesn't mean they are the product of some sort of intent or meaning.
Consider for example the propability at their birth, in the core of a supernova before the formation of our solar system, that the specific atoms that now make up a particular grain of sand on a particular beach, on this earth, would have made their way into and so constitute that grain of sand, and lie in that exact position they now do, at this specific time.

Now consider additionally the presense and configuration of the grain of sand next to it, and the propability that the atoms that constitue the air arround it, that brush across it's surface, and have been doing so for the entirety of it's existence, would have moved around in the specific way they did, and now have been in contact with that grain of sand.

Etc. etc. etc.

I simply don't see enormous impropabilities in and of themselves producing some sort of evidence for intent or meaning.

THWOTH wrote:

Someone wrote:A reminder of what your first post on this thread was:

THWOTH wrote:Yeah, but is three the perfect number?

As you are aware, this was an aside and an indirect comment on the off-topic nature of your post in the parent discussion 'Fundamental Question To All Supernaturalists.'

I may not be a qualified and accredited mathematician but that does not immunise your from the responsibility of addressing my comments honestly, nor does it disbar you from the responsibility of explaining your hypothesis, your conclusion, and the role the mathematics plays in same; a responsibility which is, after all, simply the obligation of the party proposing a claim to explain their point. This is the absolute minimum one should be prepared to do if one wishes others to take a claims for knowledge and truth seriously, in a both the specific and general sense.

[/thread]

The fact that it was treated as off-topic hardly proves that it was, and your claim that your first post was anything in particular is only your claim. You've disrespected the content of my coincidences from then until now, and I can only assume it's because you are rather poorly qualified to understand them.