@SimplyBeautifulArt not to my knowledge, but perhaps it is

@amWhy what is with your hostile tone against people who are answering a question

@Starfall Sorry to disappoint!

well, it's not about disappointing me or not, it's that i would have expected better from you

your problem with this shouldn't be that you are disappointing someone

@SimplyBeautifulArt It's an older English statement... "Doing X, does not a good person make!"

@Starfall Very well then, I shall hereforth shut my mouth.

why

there will be no problems if you engage in a conversation without assuming that you know the other person's motives for doing what they did, or are doing

to be honest, i am not entirely sure what you think the motives of these people are, but it's very clear that you think you know what they are, and you're not very pleased by what you think

@Starfall And all I ask is that you extend such generosity to me as well, and not presume to know that I think I know the motives of others when I say what I say. Anyway, clearly you felt motivated to speak to me. So whatever I said or did to upset you, please know I did not intend to upset you.

@amWhy if you could just read your own comments with a clear mind, you would see that any person would conclude exactly what i concluded upon reading them

you accused people of "enabling", of "ingratiating themselves"

so either you are lying, which is not very nice of you, or you are not lying, in which case you do presume to know their motives

if you don't think they meant to do what they did, there's no reason to be hostile towards them, you can calmly point out that what they did has undesirable consequences instead of being condescending towards these people

@amWhy i don't care if you upset me or not, i am not sure why you would think that i care about that

i do care, however, about the fact that you are acting in a spirit which is almost entirely contrary to what you promote on your profile page

I take @SimplyBeautifulArt's position on this matter: :P

@BrevanEllefsen his position is to say :P

Regardless of any moral underpinnings, probably not a good idea to start a post with "help me cheat" though, especially when the body really isn't about cheating. This is purely from the perspective of getting more positive feedback/answers

unless of course the OP wants to raise controversy to cause people to view the post

to get a response faster?

@BrevanEllefsen that couldn't be more irrelevant to the discussion

the problem is @amWhy almost spitting in the face of users who answered the question

I am sure I could make it more irrelevant! Nevertheless, my comment was relevant IMO. I take no opinion on AmWhy though

To every man his own

@Starfall Now, you're the one whose spitting in the face of another user. If you want to have a mature discussion, come up with a time and place.

@amWhy i am not spitting in the face of another user at all

if this is not an accurate description of what you did, please let me know

you still have not addressed the points i raised earlier

I have, but you are not satisfied and have judged me before even pinging me.

@Starfall I take it for granted that I help a lot of people cheat on this site. Meh, I don't really care. I'll help them anyway as long as I see them try to do something. That being said, you perhaps consider my comments irrelevant because I don't really care if other people are for or against my policies as long as they don't conflict too much with site policies - if people want to complain about my methods, so be it.

@BrevanEllefsen your comments would be relevant to a discussion about whether this question is appropriate on this website or not

they are irrelevant to the discussion of why @amWhy is being hostile towards people who answered a well-formed, well-phrased question

even if @amWhy does not think that the question belongs on this site, that does not justify this behavior

@Starfall I feel that they are the same matter. If @amWhy can justify his supposed hostility with a well founded argument, then I appreciate his comments. The key here is having a well founded argument.

no, it is not

I am not sure if @amWhy has one, but I tend to give the benefit of the doubt

even if @amWhy demonstrated, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that this question is inappropriate for this site

that still does not excuse his behavior

or her behavior, whatever

@Starfall on this we shall disagree.

@BrevanEllefsen okay, so let's say that you are a user who is unfamiliar with the subtleties of the policy of this site

you answer a question which does not belong on this site, and is considered off-topic

@Starfall ok.

do you think that this gives me the right to say that you are "ingratiating yourself", or that you're an "enabler", and insinuate that you are entirely conscious of the rules you are breaking?

even suggest that you edited your answer to "give yourself a way out"

@Starfall Depends in my mind on whether there are legitimate policies in place that justify such a behavior. I can't walk into a restricted area and expect to not be escorted out simply because I wasn't aware of the policies

@BrevanEllefsen this is not about whether the site gives you the right to say this

this is about if you, yourself, think that this is a morally appropriate response to this behavior

@Starfall Ok then, I would probably avoid such contentious words. I consider judging another for doing so to be more volatile though.

Given that they have a justified argument

@BrevanEllefsen they do not have a justified argument

again, you're conflating the two different questions here

@Starfall A justified argument to me is simply a logical rationale for the decision

their argument for one question doesn't translate to an argument for the other, this is evident since you yourself have refused to acknowledge that this translation happens

@Starfall that being said

I am in no mood to argue right now

yes, and what i am saying is that there is no logical rationale to be seen

in addition, i am not "judging" anyone, this is a warning

I respect that you have your position. I never intended to start a quarrel with you. There is no way you will convince me of your correctness, and it seems it is equally true that I cannot convince you

if you think that this response is morally appropriate, i think you should be revising what you consider to be "morally appropriate"

but we have not disagreed on anything yet

@Starfall We fundamentally disagree on the concept of a moral justification.

no, we do not

i am almost certain that we do not

Ok. Then perhaps we do not

regardless, I am done arguing

There is nothing to be accomplished by us arguing

of course there is

i want to understand why you think what you think

that's why i am having this argument

it's not to convince you that i am right

Hmm... I see what you are saying.

right now, i still don't understand your position

Nevertheless, I feel no need to explain my position unless it fundamentally violates site rules. I am done arguing, and request that you respect this.

fine

@BrevanEllefsen i don't think you should make claims if you are not willing to stand by them in the face of criticism

i suppose that's just my opinion, though

@Starfall Oh, I stand by them. I just don't want to argue them. Fundamental difference in my mind

what do you think an argument is? :o

@Starfall Haha, meta-arguing.

i see this kind of behavior from lots of people, most of the time, it's worse than the affair with this question; but i almost never take the time to sit down and explain to people why i think what they are doing is wrong, and why they should refrain from doing it

it's because i don't think that i can get anywhere even if i do this, and most of the time, i simply don't care

hmmm.

@BrevanEllefsen do you wonder why you dream what you do often

or is it just the case when you dream of how to evaluate an integral?

@Starfall I often contemplate on my dreams a little bit, but rarely do I ponder for an extensive amount of time.

@Starfall This is one of those exceptional cases

hmmm

i suppose they can come in handy when you want to change the subject

fair enough

Ramanujan claimed to get his ideas from Namagiri

while he slept

yeah, because people wouldn't believe that he figured it out on his own

so I don't undervalue the power of a dream to be sure

especially since he was quite terrible at writing proofs

Meh, I don't really care that he didn't prove things

Brilliant conjectures are their own merits in my mind

especially when so many were proven true

brilliant conjectures tend to be a lot easier to make than brilliant theories

or brilliant proofs

in number theory, conjectures are dime a dozen

we have so many conjectures

with some of them, we don't even have the slightest idea where to begin to try to prove them

i think you misunderstand ramanujan

it wasn't that ramanujan was just "making conjectures"

he could come up with arguments, in his own mind, for why something was true

it wasn't just pure conjecture

True. I suppose that is why I called them "Brilliant Conjectures"

couldnt think of a good term for them

but since he had been mostly self taught until hardy took notice of him, he was very alien to the language we used to write down proofs

he was unable to communicate the arguments he had

and he didn't have enough time to remedy this shortcoming

his cooperation with hardy was short lived

yeah :(

most of ramanujan's results come from his notebook that he kept in india, which only contains statements of results, not their proofs

this is likely because ramanujan figured out the proofs elsewhere

and he was keeping the notebook for himself

so he did not feel the need to write down proofs that he already knew

that's interesting

hadn't thought of that before

this whole nonsense about "ramanujan having divine insight", or anything resembling that, is just that: nonsense

he was just a very good mathematician

like many others before him

Well, if Ramanujan claimed divine insight I don't dare doubt him XD Not that I think divine insight is needed to do good mathematics

well, ramanujan was a very religious man

and he is certainly not the only one to attribute his success to god