When to exclude someone's written works or sources · community: discussion

@John Baez has a list of introductions to category theory in another thread in this Zulip by Peter Smith. I have also personally recommended Peter Smith's guide "Teach Yourself Logic" to people on occasion. There are lots of good resources on his blog.

However, Peter Smith is a bad person and should be persona non grata in the community of logicians and category theorists. He has committed some horrifying crimes, the specifics of which are perhaps better left unsaid. Certainly I would strongly encourage any convention or conference not to invite him. I would like to pose it as an open question for discussion: if the person themselves is absolutely unwelcome in the community because of their behavior, should that extend to their published work, blogs and so on?

Would it be better to compose alternative resources? I don't know, honestly. Is there any real harm in linking somebody to his blog or website? Is it worth warning people "Oh, yes, this is also a really bad guy who should not be welcome here"

Cole Comfort (Jun 28 2023 at 15:23):

If your research builds on the research of another person it is academically dishonest not to cite them.

If on the otherhand someone is a serial plagiarist then it is academically dishonest to cite them.

If you don't want to give someone a promotion because there is some non-academic reason why people don't like them, that is a different issue.

Jules Hedges (Jun 28 2023 at 15:40):

This much is the part that everyone agrees on, which sometimes makes life easier when dealing with very complicated issues

A gnarlier situation is when it goes beyond citing someone, to honouring them with naming scientific concepts. In our field, the big one is Freyd.

Cole Comfort (Jun 28 2023 at 15:45):

We shouldn't name things after people in the first place, no matter how great they are. I think it is better to have well structured naming conventions.

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jun 28 2023 at 19:54):

@Cole Comfort I agree in general, but theorems tend somewhat inevitably to get people's names attached to them, and avoiding those is trickier (although it's possible to be bullheaded about it and just drop a name sometimes)

Cole Comfort (Jun 28 2023 at 20:56):

Sometimes there are other names that are good alternatives. For a purely pragmatic reason I much prefer to use the term "effectful category" over "Freyd category." But it is not as entrenched as say, Yoneda's Lemma, which could just as easily be called something like "the embedding theorem" or the "representation theorem"

Spencer Breiner (Jun 28 2023 at 23:35):

I am quite opposed to this. If you or someone else has some specific behavior you would like to condemn, go ahead and do it publicly.

Steve Huntsman (Jun 29 2023 at 04:10):

Jean-Baptiste Vienney (Jun 29 2023 at 05:29):

That's probably a very controversial opinion but I don't feel a need to judge people by myself. If someone should be condemned for his crimes, courts are here for that. If the person wrote a good book on logic or category theory, I don't think that his book should be forgotten forever in addition to the proportionate punishment that would have been decided by relevant authorities, in accordance to the laws, if the crime has been recognized. Justice is something complex and I think judges are better than me to judge people. We no longer condemn people to death, in the same way I don't think that mob justice is something good in the panel of primitive ways to do justice. No need to "kill socially" someone because I think he is a bad person. Was someone be considered as a monster, I will not forbid myself to read his book on something completely unrelated to these crimes. I can accept that someone has dark and bright sides. Let's say people are "compositional systems". The mathematical intelligence of a person is something different than the rest of this person. It can be found in different persons, bad or not bad in terms of other components.

John Baez (Jun 29 2023 at 23:11):

I agree with Spencer, since it's too easy to say someone has done something horrible while providing no evidence. In this particular case it's fairly easy to find newspaper accounts of Peter Smith's conviction here and here.

Spencer Breiner (Jun 29 2023 at 23:16):

John Baez (Jun 29 2023 at 23:16):

I would tell you what keywords I googled, but the specifics are perhaps better left unsaid. :upside_down:

Eric M Downes (Mar 12 2024 at 05:23):

So... how do others feel about Teichmuller?
(I'm not trying to start a flamewar, honest.... its more an invitation to recall a moral subobject classifier larger than

\mathbb{B}

; we have choices beyond citing or eliding.)

In case anyone doesn't know, the man was a literal Nazi; he agitated against Jewish professors (including Courant) in 1930s Germany, and died on the Eastern front because his commitment to the Nazi cause was so fervent it compelled him to _volunteer_ for active SA service _after Stalingrad_. Such hateful Madness... He was also a brilliant functional analyst and algebraist whose theorems are inspired, at least to me.

As I work in industry I have no academic commitments required of me professionally, just those I consent to, but I personally would still cite Teichmuller's work, and would not avoid acknowledging him.

Where I do feel a commitment is to tell people they are welcome, and when appropriate, to acknowledge harm. That awful racists are not representative of mathematicians, and to give explicit invitation if anyone feels troubled or irritated to please speak after, because these things are important.

So when I have given presentations, especially to students, the occasion that, say RA Fisher or another eugenicist made a big contribution it would be important to mention, is an opportunity for welcoming an adult conversation that acknowledges the harm done, without derailing the talk. (Only offer this if you feel resourced enough to do so!) Things I have said in this context:

"X happened, and its awful to even think about. But we can do better, and to me, the math you all might do could be even more important, if you choose to do it. I hope you are never made to feel unwelcome, and for what its worth, I welcome you."

"Really bad people can make really beautiful things, and vice versa. This complexity bears deep reflection."

"Mathematicians/scientists are not saints, or even heros, nor monsters, they are just human, with all that entails. As a corollary: If we are human, we can do math."

In summary: It's complicated but can be connective to invite a human conversation if you are able? Admittedly I am not sure of the best way to do that in print. Perhaps an explicit note validating potential concerns in the acknowledgements?

I think this is definitely more challenging to apply to the case of someone still living who has assaulted others... but leaning into the heartfelt aspect of it yourself ahead of time, and finding a way you feel comfortable to do some good, would still be my personal approach.

David Michael Roberts (Mar 12 2024 at 06:12):

At least one statistician I know will use a different example data set than the massively common Iris data that Fisher published in the journal of Eugenics, because professional standards dictate they should cite the data source. It's less a function of Fisher having unpalatable views as having to cite that particular journal (incidentally, the Iris data was actually due to someone else, who just happened to only describe the data, not publish it, earlier; and Fisher also in his paper discussed using the classification technique used on the irises on of people, for rather unfortunate reasons). One might similarly choose to cite a secondary source rather than a paper by Teichmüller in Deutsche Mathematik, while also professionally acknowledging him as the originator of a piece of mathematics.

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Mar 12 2024 at 11:26):

I'm more familiar with the work of Landau, who is the other high profile Jewish prof mentioned on his Wikipedia page as someone he agitated against. I am a big fan of the genre of biographies of scientists, since it is often the case that important details of a person's life are obfuscated by discussing only their mathematics. Tarski comes to mind as someone I was surprised to discover abused his position to sexually harass his students (I don't wish for this to be compared with the actions of Teichmuller, it's bad in a different dimension, but the question of how to adequately address such issues still arises).

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Mar 12 2024 at 11:38):

I agree that it's better to mention it than not. One way of structuring introductions is an abridged historical retrospective of a subject; biographical details can fit into that context, at least parenthetically. According to the Arkor principle it's preferable to avoid naming mathematical things after people, so for something like Teichmuller spaces you can use a different name and mention the history in a remark justifying your choice not to use the conventional name. Maybe it will stick! With enough effort it might be possible to push for the renaming of Teichmuller theory, but that kind of thing requires campaigning for decades and being prepared to polarize a corner of the maths community.
If it's just a matter of incidental attribution, the acknowledgements might be a good solution for the mention of historical transgressions.

JR (Mar 12 2024 at 12:23):

Never exclude relevant work. Put a footnote saying "Teichmuller was a monster" and cite evidence if you must. But a lie of deliberate omission is a lie, and last I checked mathematicians--never mind academics--are supposed to pursue truth, or at least subobject classifiers.

Jules Hedges (Mar 12 2024 at 12:29):

Jules Hedges (Mar 12 2024 at 12:31):

Hitler himself was a published author and presumably historians sometimes have to cite his book. Same for the published works of Stalin, Mao etc etc

Jules Hedges (Mar 12 2024 at 12:36):

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Mar 12 2024 at 13:32):

I agree in principle, but I don't think one can ignore that unadorned citations lend the recipient academic credibility or obscure their non-academic impact on the world (it's not such an issue when someone is dead unless the person has some vocal proponents). Many departments have to suffer academics who are considered prolific enough (thanks to our citations) that their negative traits are overlooked...

Amar Hadzihasanovic (Mar 12 2024 at 13:41):

For what it's worth, and this may come from having been raised in a Catholic country, I feel queasy about actions being seen as flat-out permanently unforgivable, especially when someone has already been sufficiently punished in life. So my rule-of-thumb is to only engage in “symbolic” acts of re-balancing when it seems to me that the individuals in question have not suffered consequences. It's not like there's a shortage of monsters who have died wealthy and are still celebrated.

This applies for me to the case of Gentzen, who has starved to death in a prisoner camp, which seems to me an absolutely horrific fate for someone whose crimes were not obviously as serious as e.g. Teichmuller's. So I feel no compulsion to add to the blame.
On the other hand I will try to avoid crediting someone like Schrödinger who does not seem to have suffered remotely enough blame for his crimes of different nature.

Amar Hadzihasanovic (Mar 12 2024 at 13:42):

Of course I do not claim that there's any kind of objectivity in these matters; it's a rule-of-thumb as I said.

Amar Hadzihasanovic (Mar 12 2024 at 13:56):

I guess more to the point of this discussion, what I'm trying to say is that I don't think it's necessary to be prescriptive about the approach to have in these situations. The resulting “fame” or “infamy” that someone enjoys or suffers will be the result of the sum of small individual actions; I think the fact that we are asking the question, and doubting our own answer, reflects a process that is already happening as it should

Amar Hadzihasanovic (Mar 12 2024 at 13:58):

Like, I've got my own instinctive “re-balancing” acts, someone else here will add a footnote, someone will avoid one reference and instead use another one, someone will just mention “oh by the way this person was a nazi” during a talk, and I think that all together these acts will affect the perception of these figures in the community, and that's how it should be

Amar Hadzihasanovic (Mar 12 2024 at 13:59):

It's fine for everyone to do their own different thing according to their conscience! It works out in the aggregate

Matteo Capucci (he/him) (Mar 12 2024 at 14:12):

My personal opinion is that people aren't their work, and citing it isn't celebrating the person as a whole (it'd be quite hard to cite anyone if that was the intended purpose). I feel nowadays it makes sense remarking that while citing someone controversial, because the discourse is such that you might want to clarify your stance.
I would prefer to cite alternative material if it makes sense to do so (e.g. I'm citing an exposition and I might as well source it from someone nice instead).

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Mar 12 2024 at 14:19):

Again, citations are sometimes bluntly taken as a measure of success in academia and people get jobs because of this in spite of the fact that research is a job that involves interacting with people, and so the "person as a whole" is in this context measured by their citations. Hence, while we work on overhauling that system, I agree with and encourage this:

Bryce Clarke (Mar 12 2024 at 14:27):

Peter Freyd is an example of someone whose work is often celebrated in the category-theory community, but who also established the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. This alone makes me feel uneasy about citing his work, although I have done so when I felt it was necessary.

Jules Hedges (Mar 12 2024 at 15:20):

Yes, Freyd is to my knowledge the most relevant case to this discussion. Freyd categories are relatively important in theoretical computer science and sometimes come up, and I would very much prefer if they were named something different

Mike Shulman (Mar 12 2024 at 18:28):

I don't necessarily disagree with anything that's been said here, but it does in general make me uncomfortable to choose citations based on anything other than purely scientific criteria, especially when it comes to living people and current issues, since I feel like going too far in that direction starts flirting with attempts to impose ideological conformity on academia.

John Baez (Mar 12 2024 at 19:08):

As a somewhat pragmatic guy, I feel there are so many disasters underway that I need to triage them. So I wonder how often people actually feel the need to cite Teichmüller's original papers nowadays. Is this a pressing real issue in the case of Teichmüller, or just a theoretical one?

I wrote an introduction to Teichmüller spaces in This Week's Finds. I said his name, and I didn't comment on his politics because I didn't know about it back then, but I only cited things written in the 1980s and 1990s.

Eric M Downes (Mar 12 2024 at 19:26):

To be clear, I do not personally seek to rename Teichmuller spaces, etc. or if I did Arkor's Principle (teehee) would be the higher priority. Others disagree, and that's fine, in fact its great! If ever there was a subject deserving of multiple topoi it is moral judgement in complex environments. I want us to have the hard conversations around these things.

To me there is something deeply uncomfortable, but also deeply true to the contradictions and complexities of life that a man as brilliant as Teichmuller could also be so hateful and cruel, or that Freyd could make such marvelous positive impacts, yet (all evidence suggests) betray the very people closest to him, and who trusted him, in such a horrible and scarring way.

I say this not as a celebration of such contradictions, but as an invitation to humility:

That's a very critical theme, I think, and I don't want it to be lost due to obscuring the bad stuff. If others insist on viewing citation as celebration, I would prefer to combat that directly, rather than taking responsibility for their misguided actions... that feels too controlling of others' experience to me, so long as there are positive alternatives. Again, others may differ and that's great.

So my personal compromise is when acknowledging abusers, to always acknowledge their abuse, be mindful that my audience feels welcome and has consented, while inviting the hard and humanizing conversations.

Eric M Downes (Mar 12 2024 at 19:29):

Thanks, and apologies -- to be clear there is nothing urgent about citing Teichmuller that I know of. Certainly nothing that should compete with your limited attention and empathy with Gaza, Ukraine, Climate Disruption, a second Trump presidency, and on and on.

Ralph Sarkis (Mar 12 2024 at 19:31):

I think it is hard to decide together what "purely scientfic criteria" means. The goal of science is to advance knowledge and understanding collaboratively. If I feel that citing a person's work will have bad repercussions on the working environment of my community (very naive e.g. this person is bad and they will receive more funding that could go to better people), then my decision to not cite the paper is based on what I think is a purely scientific criterion. It goes the other way too, I can decide to cite the work of good people because I feel it will improve the community. Of course, some balancing needs to be done: if I omit a key citation or if I cite someone's work in the wrong context, I make my paper worse.

JR (Mar 12 2024 at 20:13):

Really? Falsifiability is a pretty decent start. You don't have to be a philosopher studying the demarcation problem to figure out what to cite.

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Mar 12 2024 at 20:18):

Hmm I don't think falsifiability is relevant here @JR. Certainly there are scientific standards which one should hold one's sources to, but that doesn't determine which further criteria one uses to select amongst the sources that pass through that filter.

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Mar 12 2024 at 20:22):

For instance, I might choose to cite someone because I personally prefer their exposition, terminology or notation. That's really a subjective choice! And I think including or excluding a source on the basis of something complementary to the content of the article is valid too; the extent to which that's true is up for discussion here.

Mike Shulman (Mar 12 2024 at 21:01):

A subjective choice, yes, but one based on criteria that are relevant to science rather than to the identity, beliefs, or behavior of the author; so I would consider that a scientific criterion. Arguably, the whole point of science is replicability, which is to say, the content of the science doesn't depend on who did it. I find that to be a fairly clear description of what it means for a criterion to be purely scientific.

Mike Shulman (Mar 12 2024 at 21:02):

I'm not advocating for a rigid rule that only scientific criteria must be used when deciding whom to cite. But I think we should be wary when incorporating nonscientific criteria, and I find the dividing line between the two fairly clear.

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Mar 12 2024 at 21:09):

I disagree with this. For one thing, scientific writing is not divorced from ideology. For another, there are factors determining which research does or does not happen in the first place which are "non-scientific" by your description. Relatively little funding in science is dedicated to actually replicating science, for instance, so it doesn't seem like "the whole point" at all!

Tim Hosgood (Mar 12 2024 at 21:09):

this might be a description of "the platonic ideal of science", but i think that imagining this to be the reality is a very convenient myth that can be used to sidestep a lot of moral issues. surely science is only as good as how it's communicated — if something is entirely incomprehensible to everybody else, then its content is irrelevant. in the same way, if the person doing the science behaves in such a way that sections of the community are excluded/estranged/scared/threatened, then they are not doing good science.

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Mar 12 2024 at 21:10):

Tim Hosgood (Mar 12 2024 at 21:10):

science is a human endeavour, done by humans, used by humans, and affecting humans. because of this, sometimes it's better to be kind than to be right

Tim Hosgood (Mar 12 2024 at 21:11):

thanks, but i think you also raise a very good point — most working scientists are working scientists, and so funding dictates the science they can do. funding is directed by people and by popularity and by messy social structures. these things cannot be unentangled

Mike Shulman (Mar 12 2024 at 21:28):

I agree that non-scientific factors play a role in determining what science is done, but that's a different question from what the nature of science itself is, which is that it could in principle be replicated. And to the extent that ideology infects scientific writing I would argue that it makes it less scientific.

Mike Shulman (Mar 12 2024 at 21:31):

I did say that "choosing to cite someone because I personally prefer their exposition, terminology or notation" is "based on criteria that are relevant to science", so I would certainly include expository clarity as a scientific criterion.

Tim Hosgood (Mar 12 2024 at 21:35):

but you don't think that "fosters a safe environment for other scientists to do science" is also a scientific criterion?

Mike Shulman (Mar 12 2024 at 21:46):

Let me be clear: as a mathematician, I am defending a precise definition of a phrase, which should be possible to do separate from any moral judgment. With that in mind, I submit that whether a scientist fosters a safe environment for other scientists to do science is in fact not relevant to the scientific merits of the science they themselves do. (It might have an effect on it, by making it harder for them to have productive collaborations, and likewise it might affect the quality of the science done by the other scientists who feel unsafe, but there are many other nonscientific factors that also affect the quality of science, and that doesn't make those factors themselves scientific criteria.)

That does not mean I think it is okay to make other scientists feel unsafe; it only means I want to use words precisely and distinguish scientific criteria from nonscientific ones. When and whether to take nonscientific criteria into account is the moral question being discussed in this thread; and, as I said, I don't claim one should never do so, only that we should be cautious about it.

Mike Shulman (Mar 12 2024 at 21:54):

It's like "democracy". By and large, we think that democracy is good. But just because something is good doesn't make it democratic, and just because something is undemocratic doesn't make it bad. 51% of a population voting to strip away the rights of the other 49% is democratic, but not good. Thus, protections like the U.S. bill of rights, which prevent that sort of thing from happening, are undemocratic, but good. Likewise, just because something is ethically good doesn't make it a scientific criterion.

Tim Hosgood (Mar 12 2024 at 21:57):

i see where the level at which we disagree then. i believe that the amount you can "separate out politics/morality/ethics" is directly proportional to how non-real-life the thing you are talking about is. e.g. i could buy that you can give a precise definition of a set "free from moral judgement", but i don't believe one could do so for a definition of "scientific criterion" — the line here is just not clear cut in tangible way. i believe i could prod at your definition and get you to admit that there's a very fuzzy boundary between e.g. "good exposition" and "fostering a safe environment", and it's not always clear which is which, with some choice examples. but i think this is one of those times where peoples' minds will not be changed by a few words on zulip, so i'll bow out here

Mike Shulman (Mar 12 2024 at 22:00):

Eric M Downes (Mar 12 2024 at 22:57):

I really like the points both of you have made @Tim Hosgood @Mike Shulman , so thank you. This kind of civility, care, and principled disagreement is rare on the internet!

JR (Mar 13 2024 at 00:15):

David Michael Roberts (Mar 13 2024 at 07:47):

Maybe one might say "better to be kind than to be optimised" ("right" here might be a value judgment, or it might be literal logical correctness, it's ambiguous as stated). Doing science isn't like running a company on behalf of shareholders who want to maximise their return and grow the profit every year. As practicing scientists people get to choose how to spend their time and energy, and it might be that they want to make decisions that impact the chances others get to do science. There might be a spin-off benefit of having more viewpoints with different ways of thinking and so (on average) produce unexpected insights and so on, but this is hardly something you can optimise for. It's a bit of a random process, not unlike the way in which governments supply blue-sky research funding for all kinds of obscure things (in some countries, I guess) that do not seem to have immediate benefits.

But I agree with the gentle landing that others have come to about varying delineations and priorities and wishing to let this specific point rest.

Martti Karvonen (Mar 13 2024 at 09:41):

Could someone explain this example in more detail to a dummy? I know next to nothing of this particular organization or its background, but I've understood that nowadays mainstream psychology does not believe in repressed memories that can be suddenly uncovered by therapy etc, and there certainly were weird moral panics (in particular, the 80s satanic panics) based on the claimed existence of such repressed memories. From that POV, at least part of that foundations mission (discreting recovered memory therapy) seems to be close to the current scientific mainstream. I guess it's another matter if they also tried to paint always-had memories as false as well.

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Mar 13 2024 at 09:49):

But you didn't give a precise definition... and if you did I suspect it wouldn't be bulletproof as a classification of criteria for decision-making in the present discussion.

There is a tangential point to be made here about whom gets the credit for the scientific ideas (however you decide to measure their "scientific merit"). Exploitation of early career scientists is not uncommon, and the head of a research group who benefits from this exploitation gets credit. There have even been infamous cases of 'scientists' not allowing their employees to have credit for their findings. Far more typical is that a victim of this phenomenon will not speak out against it because they don't feel safe - they fear putting their career at risk, for instance. I would argue that this puts a wedge between an alleged author and their scientific work that is relevant in a discussion about how to attribute the source of ideas.

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Mar 13 2024 at 10:05):

I think the "History" section of that Wikipedia article should be enough to convince you, but besides the personal angle, one of the (several) problems is that their actions were to discredit victims of (alleged) child abuse without substantive scientific evidence about how memory does or does not work. It's somewhat incidental that mainstream psychology has come to retroactively validate some of their claims, at the time that the foundation was created there was not sufficient evidence; they effected the change in narrative by lobbying.

Jules Hedges (Mar 13 2024 at 11:26):

Renaming subfields and objects is a different and more plausible question. If mathematicians can agree to rename recursion theory to computability theory (here I'm speaking as a cultural computer scientist so I call it recursion theory), why not rename Teichmüller theory?

David Michael Roberts (Mar 13 2024 at 11:34):

Martti Karvonen (Mar 13 2024 at 12:42):

Thanks, this was helpful (should've went there directly). I also went off the deeper end and read two longer things, namely this and this. I guess what initially caused my confusion was that, while they were perhaps right to attack earlier ideas around repressed memories that can be recovered e.g. in hypnosis, the "false memory syndrome" peddled by the foundation is also quite dubious. Anyway, it's messed up to start a lobby foundation to fight against private accusations, especially when the apparent blanket policy was to believe and support anyone who has been claimed an abuser.

Mike Shulman (Mar 13 2024 at 15:23):

According to Wikipedia, science is "a rigorous, systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world." I include mathematics in that description by a sufficiently wide definition of "world". With that in mind, a "scientific" criterion is one that refers directly to the construction and organization of such knowledge.

Mike Shulman (Mar 13 2024 at 15:23):

Obviously no real-world definition is ever as "bulletproof" as a mathematical one, and I'm sure you can find fuzzy examples if you work hard enough. I'm just saying that in this case I think the fuzzy area is very narrow, with nearly all naturally-occurring examples clearly on one side or the other.

Mike Shulman (Mar 13 2024 at 15:25):

John Baez (Mar 13 2024 at 17:12):

Indeed I'd no objection to renaming that, and also renaming "Teichmüller space". I just don't know what else to call it.

In case anyone cares, Teichmüller space is the space of all Riemann surfaces of a given genus, modulo the action of the connected component of the diffeomorphism group. It's very nice because it's a finite-dimensional manifold with a simple explicit description.

People often want to mod out by the whole diffeomorphism group. This gives the "moduli space of Riemann surfaces" of the given genus, which is extremely interesting, but a lot more complicated. Also, the moduli space actually wants to be a stack, since some Riemann surfaces have symmetries. But none of these symmetries are in the connected component of the diffeomorphism group when the genus is > 1, so Teichmüller space doesn't want to be stacky except in genus 0 and 1.

By the way, this seems like something that homotopy type theorists would have fun formalizing. At least ones who like differential geometry, like Urs Schreiber or David Jaz Myers.

Anyway, none of this brings to mind a good alternative for the name "Teichmüller space", but someone should come up with one. Preferably someone who is a famous bigshot in complex geometry!

Tim Hosgood (Mar 13 2024 at 17:37):

Tim Hosgood (Mar 13 2024 at 17:43):

it's hard to resist pointing this out, but surely this definition implies that organised book burnings of e.g. works of Einstein are "scientifically bad', since they are directly opposed to knowledge building? in which case isn't this a scientific criterion to not cite Teichmuller?

Mike Shulman (Mar 13 2024 at 18:18):

Sorry, I guess I phrased my last sentence misleadingly (I was in a hurry this morning). When talking about a scientific criterion regarding a particular scientific paper, the science referred to is the content of the paper, not the identity of its authors or their other activities. I did say that earlier, so I assumed it was understood; but yes, the phrase "construction and organization" could in a vacuum be taken to refer to those other activities as you said. So maybe it would be better to say something like "a scientific property of a paper is one that refers directly to the knowledge built and organized by the paper itself".

Tim Hosgood (Mar 13 2024 at 18:39):

ok, so i guess what i'm try to get at is that "meta-scientific properties" that talk about the meta-knowledge of the existence/context of a paper should be treated on the same level as "scientific properties", much in the same way that one can miss part of the actual scientific story by looking at only 1-truncated categorical things instead of higher levels :wink:

Mike Shulman (Mar 13 2024 at 18:41):

If that means you agree that there is a distinction, even if you think we should ignore the distinction, then I'm glad -- that wasn't clear to me from your last comment yesterday.

Tim Hosgood (Mar 13 2024 at 18:47):

i would go as far as to say... there is no meaningful distinction, but if you'd like to do some ad-hoc reasoning and draw some fuzzy non-canonical lines, then go ahead :smile: to me this point is somewhat irrelevant, because i have yet to ever observe a single instance of somebody "doing just science" without actually doing "science + meta-science + meta-meta-science + ...", so i don't think i have any real strong feelings about what happens in this toy model of the world where one can accurately separate science from it's inherently human context :shrug:

Mike Shulman (Mar 13 2024 at 18:47):

Tim Hosgood (Mar 13 2024 at 18:48):

as in, you actually know people who do science without any of the human context? or just you don't like the conclusion that i draw from this?

Mike Shulman (Mar 13 2024 at 18:50):

My comments in this thread were and always have been specifically about how to choose citations, rather than any other aspect of "doing science". In that limited situation, yes, I do myself in nearly all cases choose citations based entirely on the scientific content of the papers cited rather than on any "human context" surrounding their writing.

Tim Hosgood (Mar 13 2024 at 18:54):

Mike Shulman (Mar 13 2024 at 18:54):

I don't have any specific exceptions in mind, I just didn't want to make a blanket statement and be proven wrong later.

Tim Hosgood (Mar 13 2024 at 18:55):

Mike Shulman (Mar 13 2024 at 18:57):

More, I can imagine situations in which I might involve nonscientific criteria in deciding what papers to cite, some of which have been raised by others in this thread. I just don't recall ever having been in any such situation in my life yet.

Eric M Downes (Mar 14 2024 at 19:50):

By the way, [Teichmüller Space] seems like something that homotopy type theorists would have fun formalizing.  At least ones who like differential geometry, like Urs Schreiber or David Jaz Myers.

Looks like someone from Kyoto has worked on the synthetic version already, so thats at least a baby step in such a direction. https://www.cajpn.org/pp01/0101.pdf

Mike Shulman (Mar 14 2024 at 19:57):

I don't know if you intended to suggest a connection to the phrase "synthetic homotopy theory", but it looks to me as though the meaning of "synthetic" in that paper is unrelated.

John Baez (Mar 14 2024 at 21:44):

Indeed, they call a certain metric on the usual Teichmuller space the "synthetic" metric, but it's not even clear why they use that term.

Eric M Downes (Mar 15 2024 at 14:30):

I was wrong, it is unconnected, and if I had slowed down I'd have seen that easily. Sorry for wasting your time.

Stream: community: discussion

Topic: When to exclude someone's written works or sources

Patrick Nicodemus (Jun 28 2023 at 15:17):

Cole Comfort (Jun 28 2023 at 15:23):

Jules Hedges (Jun 28 2023 at 15:40):

Cole Comfort (Jun 28 2023 at 15:45):

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jun 28 2023 at 19:54):

Cole Comfort (Jun 28 2023 at 20:56):

Spencer Breiner (Jun 28 2023 at 23:35):

Steve Huntsman (Jun 29 2023 at 04:10):

Jean-Baptiste Vienney (Jun 29 2023 at 05:29):

John Baez (Jun 29 2023 at 23:11):

Spencer Breiner (Jun 29 2023 at 23:16):

John Baez (Jun 29 2023 at 23:16):

Eric M Downes (Mar 12 2024 at 05:23):

David Michael Roberts (Mar 12 2024 at 06:12):

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Mar 12 2024 at 11:26):

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Mar 12 2024 at 11:38):

JR (Mar 12 2024 at 12:23):

Jules Hedges (Mar 12 2024 at 12:29):

Jules Hedges (Mar 12 2024 at 12:31):

Jules Hedges (Mar 12 2024 at 12:36):

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Mar 12 2024 at 13:32):

Amar Hadzihasanovic (Mar 12 2024 at 13:41):

Amar Hadzihasanovic (Mar 12 2024 at 13:42):

Amar Hadzihasanovic (Mar 12 2024 at 13:56):

Amar Hadzihasanovic (Mar 12 2024 at 13:58):

Amar Hadzihasanovic (Mar 12 2024 at 13:59):

Matteo Capucci (he/him) (Mar 12 2024 at 14:12):

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Mar 12 2024 at 14:19):

Bryce Clarke (Mar 12 2024 at 14:27):

Jules Hedges (Mar 12 2024 at 15:20):

Mike Shulman (Mar 12 2024 at 18:28):

John Baez (Mar 12 2024 at 19:08):

Eric M Downes (Mar 12 2024 at 19:26):

Eric M Downes (Mar 12 2024 at 19:29):

Ralph Sarkis (Mar 12 2024 at 19:31):

JR (Mar 12 2024 at 20:13):

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Mar 12 2024 at 20:18):

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Mar 12 2024 at 20:22):

Mike Shulman (Mar 12 2024 at 21:01):

Mike Shulman (Mar 12 2024 at 21:02):

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Mar 12 2024 at 21:09):

Tim Hosgood (Mar 12 2024 at 21:09):

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Mar 12 2024 at 21:10):

Tim Hosgood (Mar 12 2024 at 21:10):

Tim Hosgood (Mar 12 2024 at 21:11):

Mike Shulman (Mar 12 2024 at 21:28):

Mike Shulman (Mar 12 2024 at 21:31):

Tim Hosgood (Mar 12 2024 at 21:35):

Mike Shulman (Mar 12 2024 at 21:46):

Mike Shulman (Mar 12 2024 at 21:54):

Tim Hosgood (Mar 12 2024 at 21:57):

Mike Shulman (Mar 12 2024 at 22:00):

Eric M Downes (Mar 12 2024 at 22:57):

JR (Mar 13 2024 at 00:15):

David Michael Roberts (Mar 13 2024 at 07:47):

Martti Karvonen (Mar 13 2024 at 09:41):

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Mar 13 2024 at 09:49):

Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Mar 13 2024 at 10:05):

Jules Hedges (Mar 13 2024 at 11:26):

David Michael Roberts (Mar 13 2024 at 11:34):

Martti Karvonen (Mar 13 2024 at 12:42):

Mike Shulman (Mar 13 2024 at 15:23):

Mike Shulman (Mar 13 2024 at 15:23):

Mike Shulman (Mar 13 2024 at 15:25):

John Baez (Mar 13 2024 at 17:12):

Tim Hosgood (Mar 13 2024 at 17:37):

Tim Hosgood (Mar 13 2024 at 17:43):

Mike Shulman (Mar 13 2024 at 18:18):

Tim Hosgood (Mar 13 2024 at 18:39):

Mike Shulman (Mar 13 2024 at 18:41):

Tim Hosgood (Mar 13 2024 at 18:47):

Mike Shulman (Mar 13 2024 at 18:47):

Tim Hosgood (Mar 13 2024 at 18:48):

Mike Shulman (Mar 13 2024 at 18:50):

Tim Hosgood (Mar 13 2024 at 18:54):

Mike Shulman (Mar 13 2024 at 18:54):

Tim Hosgood (Mar 13 2024 at 18:55):

Mike Shulman (Mar 13 2024 at 18:57):