Thank you for providing an example. By the way, it looks to me like lukeprog never actually clarified for you what he meant by “mathematicians succeed and fail on this issue in a wide range of degrees”
As I added in my reply to him, his reply did help me with other parts of his argument. But I needed more iterations of questions and clarifications before I could understand that particular phrase better.
This doesn’t seem to me like wasted effort, though, because I expect that what he did clarify would have helped me to understand that particular phrase, had we continued to discuss it. So, while I can’t explain that particular phrase better than I could before, I expect that I am closer to understanding it. Certainly, partial illumination of the argument surrounding a specific sentence is normally the preamble to full illumination of that specific sentence, if this full illumination ever happens.
That’s generally consistent with my experience. As I alluded to at the start of this exchange, when I seek clarification of someone’s position, it’s unusual for the person to actually provide it. No matter how polite or respectful I am.
Which is why the idea of stating the other fellow’s position clearly is actually of limited utility at best in practice. At least on the sort of topics I am interested in grappling with.
Thank you for providing an example. By the way, it looks to me like lukeprog never actually clarified for you what he meant by “mathematicians succeed and fail on this issue in a wide range of degrees”
Agreed?
Yes.
As I added in my reply to him, his reply did help me with other parts of his argument. But I needed more iterations of questions and clarifications before I could understand that particular phrase better.
This doesn’t seem to me like wasted effort, though, because I expect that what he did clarify would have helped me to understand that particular phrase, had we continued to discuss it. So, while I can’t explain that particular phrase better than I could before, I expect that I am closer to understanding it. Certainly, partial illumination of the argument surrounding a specific sentence is normally the preamble to full illumination of that specific sentence, if this full illumination ever happens.
That’s generally consistent with my experience. As I alluded to at the start of this exchange, when I seek clarification of someone’s position, it’s unusual for the person to actually provide it. No matter how polite or respectful I am.
Which is why the idea of stating the other fellow’s position clearly is actually of limited utility at best in practice. At least on the sort of topics I am interested in grappling with.