Comment by NooneAtAll3
8 months ago
If you want to learn about actual Busy Beaver results, I suggest reading https://www.sligocki.com/ instead
Unlike Aaronson, he actually is on the forefront of Busy Beaver research, and is one of the people behind the https://bbchallenge.org website
>Unlike Aaronson, he actually is on the forefront of Busy Beaver research [...]
Extremely bad ad hominem, I enjoyed Aaronson's read, nothing wrong with it.
Gently, seconding peer: that is not ad hominem :)
Colloquially, I understand it's easy to think it means "saying something about someone that could be interpreted negatively" because that's the context it is read in it when it is used.
The meaning is saying a logical argument is incorrect because of who wrote the argument.
The wording implies that Aaronson does not know what he's talking about.
>If you want to learn about actual Busy Beaver results [...]
This is saying there is no discussion of the results in the article, which is not true.
>Unlike Aaronson, he actually is on the forefront of Busy Beaver research [...]
This implies Aaronson has no (or lesser) authority on the subject and suggests we should listen to somebody else who purportedly has more.
Nowhere in @NooneAtAll3's comment is there an argument made against/for the contents of the article, an example of that would be:
"Aaronson mentions X but this is not correct because Y" or something along those lines.
Instead, the comment, in it's full extent, is either discrediting (perhaps unintentionally) and/or appealing to the authority of people involved. That's ad hominem.
But the comment is not just saying something negative.
It is implying that claims from the article like "Then, three days ago, Tristan wrote again to say that mxdys has improved the bound again, to BB(6)>9_2_2_2" are not real results. The justification for these not being real results is solely based off whether author is actually on the forefront of research.
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That's not ad hominem at all.
Maybe Scott isn't at the forefront of the research by some standards, but I still consider him a prominent figure in the field. Independence of ZFC, Busy Baver Frontier paper, "Who Can Name the Bigger Number?" essay. He did a lot to popularise the topic and posed some interesting ideas or conjectures (Beeping Busy Beavers for example).
Can you elaborate on what's wrong with this post?
https://www.sligocki.com/ hasn't posted since April, and the very first link on that blog is a link to... Scott Aaronson.
Could I bother you for some more info?
I spent 5 minutes trying to verify any link in the post above links to Scott Aaronson, or mentions him, and found nothing. :\ (both the siglocki, and when I found nothing there, the busy beaver site)
The "first" link (after the home button) on bbchallenge is the header bar link to https://bbchallenge.org/story which cites Aaronson in the first sentence (double first!). I would not describe it like OP for someone trying to find the actual link ;)
"One Collatz Coincidence", the 2nd story on the blog, also mentions Aaronson
I don’t get it. What’s wrong with the post? And https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.04343 is interesting, no?