[Note from moderator: I agree with Dusko's remarks below. After 48 hours no further items will be posted in this thread. Moderate language will be used in any contributions posted during that time.] am i the only one who is not enjoying these arguments on CATEGORIES any more? i started worrying: ** is there something special in category theory that attracts all these ** argumentative people? is it that being argumentative somehow helps you ** with math, and then arguing with the symbols on a piece of paper and on ** the blackboards then somehow overflows into your social life?... and then i remembered that sometime in the early 90s, when the mailing lists started spreading, there were such flame wars on every mailing list. and they went on deep into the mid 90es. so i thought, maybe the category theorists are not more argumentative than other people. maybe it's just that some of them started using email a bit later, so they are discovering the medium of flame war just now. so i waved my hand. but now great jean benabou brought my little name into his argument, together with claudio hermida. i am not sure what he means, but it sounds like claudio and i are the examples of unreliable sources. well, honestly, jean, i really don't have the remotest idea what i have done to deserve the unhonorable mention. not having worked in anything related to this area for more than 10 years, and not having done much worth mentioning before that, AND not really depending on this community either for my job or for my reputation, i am simply just surprised... even after 10 min of scouring my memory, the only *remote* possibility that occurs to me is that i gave a talk in oberwolfach, cca 1994, describing the preservation conditions necessary and sufficient for descent, and effective descent ((monadicity is sufficient, but not necessary)). after my talk, or maybe in the middle, jean benabou stood up and said: "Mathematics Should Be Beautiful." i started mumbling that i was sorry if mine was so ugly ((was it my hand drawn diagrams on the slides?)), but that some people would say that mathematics should first of all be true... by which point we were both talking --- and max kelly hushed us both down. (we miss you, max!) i really really respect jean benabou's work. i also respect paul taylor's work. i have learned a great deal from both of them. but i really don't like how they argue their cases on this mailing list. (and if i am alone in that, then maybe i dont even belong here.) i agree that mathematics should be beautiful. short of that, since the truth doesn't always obey everyone's taste, math should at least be elegant, or decent. but if we are able to produce beautiful, or elegant, or at least decent mathematical arguments --- why is it that we generate such unpleasant nonmathematical arguments? can we please please stop? all the best, -- dusko On Fri, 9 Nov 2007, JeanBenabou wrote:
Dear colleagues,
I have had, so far, no less than 22 answers to my mail about references for the "Beck" theorem mentioned in the Elephant, all of them supporting Peter Johnstone. An I am not counting "references" which "referred" to other "reliable references" such as Dusko Pavlovic an Claudio Hermida in one of the THIRTEEN mails sent by Marta Bunge! I intend to answer in detail to all these mails. It might take a few days, because I don't have such a powerful team helping me in my research: bibliography, recollections, etc. It takes ALL of my time, 12 hours a day, but I enjoy EVERY MINUTE OF IT. I congratulate Peter Johnstone to have such a numerous and faithful army of supporters. But as you say in English: "The more the merrier". So Johnstone might use the delay before my answer to find a few dozen more supporters. It will make me even more happy, and I'm afraid he will need ALL the support he can get!