User talk:Justanother

3RR

You've violated the Three Revert Rule on Scientology. Please stop, or I'll have to inform an administrator. --Davidstrauss 08:13, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I did no reverts and in fact I don't even know how to do a revert. My valid edits in the Scientology article were treated as vandalism by critical editors/admins violating the principle of Harmonious Editing, and IMHO, the spirit of wikipedia: that a person with a bit more knowledge can bring a bit more to the article. Justanother 22 August 2006

squaring the circle

You cannot say that they are the same area; the very point of the article is that that would require ascribing a finite value to pi (more precisely, the square root of pi). It is misleading and presumptive to put in the caption that they have the same area value. The graphic could also stand with no caption at all.

ps If you still think that the image shows a circle and square of the same area then copy it to your computer and zoom in on it. There is actually no circle in the image at all.

--Justanother 14:04, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You are confused. In the first place, it is not claimed that illustrations are exact. They never are. But they convey ideas well. In the second place, the value of π is indeed finite, and so is its square root; if you think otherwise, you're very very confused. Perhaps you mean that its decimal expansion is only finitely long (in popular confusions, that seems to matter). Michael Hardy 18:07, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have to confess, I've sometimes wondered if the people (is it two of them now?) who have expressed objections of this kind to this illustration, are under the impression that the impossibility of squaring the circle means that a square and a circle can never have the same area? That's not actually what it says; it just says you can't do the ruler-and-compass construction. Michael Hardy 21:43, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I said finite when I should have said constructible. My bad. From pi "An important consequence of the transcendence of π is the fact that it is not constructible." My point is that that caption is a lie. Do you argue that point with me?? You say "In the first place, it is not claimed that illustrations are exact.". But doesn't "A square and circle with the same area." make, for all intents, that exact claim? Why bother with that caption. Do you think that you can create a squared circle with pixels? I doubt it. This is not about mathematics, it is about whether a caption in a lie or not.--Justanother 15:54, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My points are:

It is indeed possible for a square and a circle to have the same area (the impossibility asserted by the theorem is not that that is impossible, but rather that the rule-and-compass construction is impossible.

Everybody knows that illustrations in geometry articles are ALWAYS approximations, whether made with pixels or with ink on paper. A theorem of geometry may say (paraphrasing) "This square has the same area as that rectangle", and accompany it with an illustration. The square and the rectangle as abstract mathematical objects do have EXACTLY the same area, and the square and the rectangle in the illustration in the book are approximations. Everyone realizes that they're obviously always approximations, so it is not a lie to say they have the same area. The assertion that two things have the same area is naturally understood to refer, not to the physical illustration, but to the abstract mathematical objects that they illustrate.

Michael Hardy 02:55, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I appreciate your point of view. I am not a mathematician and I actually came to the article by way of the Timecube, which was referenced in another article I was reading. I had never encountered the "squaring the circle" and I found it interesting. The more we discuss, the more interesting I find it. My conclusion is while a square and a circle can, in theory, have the same area, there is NO way to represent that in the physical universe, not with ink or pixels nor with molecules or atoms or subatomic particles or whatever. That is pretty cool to me and I found that the caption detracted from my feeling of wonder. I think the simple caption "Squaring the circle" serves well. --Justanother 14:05, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Scientology and beliefs

Terryeo has often insisted that there are no beliefs in Scientology, it is false to label Scientology as a belief system, the Church may promote beliefs but Scientology is just "knowledge," it has nothing to do with beliefs, etc., etc. It is an unproductive line of argument and it flies in the face of the standard understanding of "belief system" if you ask me. Any chance you could translate/mediate/weigh in on this? His latest is in the "religion references" section on Talk:Scientology. Thanks. BTfromLA 21:01, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. It'd sure cut down on the noise if Terryeo could be persuaded to ease off on some of the more idiosyncratic views that he so staunchly insists upon, including that one. I'm about to get very busy in the non-virtual world, so if I'm absent for a while--I wish you luck with your editing. BTfromLA 22:00, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tellin' U the truth, there ain't no belief in the body of information called Scientology, and none in Dianetics either. Have a ball with your "beliefs" sillyness. Terryeo 04:21, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Scientology article

Since you seem interested in contributing to the beliefs and practices part of the Scientology article, may I suggest that the ARC part needs some attention--the current description really doesn't make a lot of sense from a non-initiate's perspective. If the KRC triangle is similarly important, it might be introduced there, too. As always, I vote for keeping the descriptions concise--I just think the current short bit about ARC doesn't really communicate the concept clearly, and I don't understand it well enough to fill in the blanks myself. BTfromLA 17:32, 30 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]