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 Discussion on question by pupilzero: …

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user14111
May 13 14:25
The complement of an open set is closed. If $A$ is any subset of a discrete space $X$ then the complement $X\setminus A$ is open, so $A$ is closed.
user14111
May 13 14:25
In the case of a discrete topology, all sets are open and all sets are closed. So what?
 

 Discussion on question by whatever ow…

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user14111
Jan 25 10:22
@whateverowo You have a good imagination. When I post a helpful comment on stack exchange, I don't always choose my words as thoughtfully as I might if I were writing a book. Maybe that's why I sometime receive less gratitude than I expected.
user14111
Jan 25 10:22
@whateverowo I simply answered the title question as best I could. I thought it was a good answer, and I don't know what was rude about it.
user14111
Jan 25 10:22
No, the supremum of a set does not have to be in the set. If the supremum of a set is in the set, then it is the maximum. The whole reason the word supremum exists in mathematics is to have something to play the part of the maximum when a genuine maximum is not available.
 

 Discussion on question by John O'neil…

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user14111
Jan 16 11:16
You refer to a previous post of yours, but for some reason do not provide a link to that post.
 

 Discussion on question by leluch_l8r4…

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user14111
Apr 28, 2024 13:09
@spaceisdarkgreen Oops, I meant $f$ to take positive values!
user14111
Apr 28, 2024 13:09
@spaceisdarkgreen Actually the fact that any countable linearly ordered set $A$ is embeddable in $\mathbb R$ is easier than the stronger result that it can be embedded in $\mathbb Q$. First define a fumction $f:A\to\mathbb R$ so that $\sum_{x\in A}f(x)\lt\infty$ and then define the embedding $g(a)=\sum_{x\lt a}f(x)$.
user14111
Apr 28, 2024 13:09
The answer to 1. is that, if $\alpha$ is an ordinal number, a strictly decreasing function $f:\alpha\to\mathbb R$ exists if and only if $\alpha\lt\omega_1$.
 

 Discussion on question by Trevor Kafk…

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user14111
Dec 27, 2023 14:24
Exponentiation of complex numbers is a many-valued function when the exponent is not an enteger. The exponential function $\exp(z)$ is of course single-valued, being an entire function. By what you might call an abuse of notation, the expression $e^z$ is commonly understood to mean $\exp(z)$ rather than general complex exponentiation.
 

 Discussion on question by crazyduck: …

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user14111
Jul 5, 2021 17:24
I haven't seen Inception but if you're going to throw out science fiction because "the science is weak" or "isn't a central focus" you won't have much left. Maybe you could collect all the science fiction ever written into one volume.
 

 Discussion on answer by Valorum: What…

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user14111
Dec 24, 2020 12:47
From the online OED I just learned that this particular sense of "down to" is "chiefly Brit.", while "up to" in this sense is "orig. US" and originated in the game of poker. So my first guess was right, that it's a transpondian thing. Sure glad to have that cleared up.
user14111
Dec 24, 2020 12:47
@Hydrothermal Thank you. And I suppose this bizarre usage of "down to" is not a recent innovation? People have been talking that way for a hundred years and I never noticed it before? This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder if I've slipped across timelines on some foggy night. Because I swear I've spent most of the last hundred years in a world where up means up and down means down.
user14111
Dec 24, 2020 12:47
Down to them? Is that how they say "up to them" on your side of the pond? Or is it a generational thing, like saying "based off" for "based on"?
 

 Discussion on answer by user14111: Ol…

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user14111
Aug 28, 2020 15:29
@Revenant The author may have neglected or underestimated inflation: "A careful appraisement of the wealth on Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury, and likewise Earth, together with an accurate calculation of the remaining heat in the Sun and an appraisement of that heat at a very decent valuation per calorie, demonstrated that the total wealth of the Solar System amounted to $6,309,525,241,362.15."
user14111
Aug 28, 2020 15:29
@lucasbachmann Yep. It's also the earliest scienceifictional example of a mobile phone that I know of, as noted in my answer to this question: scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/196414/…
 

 Discussion on answer by Praxis: What …

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user14111
Aug 9, 2020 19:53
I searched for "first contact" with quotation marks and got one hit, on p. 175. There's a "first" and a "contact" but no first contact. The quotation marks were useless. google.com/books/edition/To_the_American_Indian/…
user14111
Aug 9, 2020 19:53
Don't worry, the OED people don't shoot from the hip. They check everything very carefully.
user14111
Aug 9, 2020 19:53
The discussion was about the search for early occurrences of the phrase "first contact", which is not (yet) in the actual OED, but is of interest to the science fiction citations project. That quotation you posted must have come from somewhere, bit I guess it's an unsolved mystery for now.
user14111
Aug 9, 2020 19:53
Sorry for being a nuisance. The reason I'm asking is, I passed on your citation to an OED editor, and he replied: "I agree that the passage quoted in the Stack Exchange entry represents the sense we want, but I'm unclear where it comes from. It's not in the 1916 book that the entry links to, it's not found in any other book in Google Books, and the only example of the passage I can find on Google is from the Stack Exchange entry itself." So I spent some time searching Google Books for it myself, but of course I didn't find it either.
user14111
Aug 9, 2020 19:53
What is the exact reference for that 1916 Lucy Thompson quotation? (Edition, page number). Are you sure it was from the 1916 edition? Haven't been able to find it.
user14111
Aug 9, 2020 19:53
According to ISFDB Leinster's "First Contact" is a novelette, not a novella. I guess they use the SFWA standards: 7500 to 17500 words for a novelette, 17500 to 40000 words for a novella. By the way, the story "First Contact" is not exactly the first occurrence of the term first contact in a stfnal context, but I think I'll post that as an answer.
 

 Discussion on question by DaveInCaz: …

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user14111
Aug 31, 2019 18:33
What's the difference between your question and this old one? Or are they duplicates?
user14111
Aug 31, 2019 18:33
Like Wonderland and Looking-Glass Land? Are those good examples of alternate dimensions/realities? Or do you want the alternate realities to be science-fictional, with pseudoscientific explanations?
 

 Discussion on answer by user14111: No…

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user14111
May 10, 2019 09:03
@Randal'Thor I won't get any policy change made period. For me to try to get policy changes made here would be an exercise in futility for reasons I know no nice way to express. I don't get paid for this. All I've gotten is a T-shirt, some stickers, and the satisfaction of helping some people find the stories they're looking for. When the aggravation gets to be too much, or I get fired for flouting some dumb-ass rule, my life will go on.
user14111
May 10, 2019 08:56
@Randal'Thor The non-reasons I've seen are (1) the author tag is part of the answer, not the question, and (2) adding the author tag may make someone look silly. To that I say (1) tags are applied to a question, they are not part of the question; and (2) "What is the superlative of 'so what'?"
user14111
May 10, 2019 06:25
@DannyMcG Naw, I couldn't be bothered to look up a real example. I know I've seen questions like that, not sure just which superheroes. Batman, Squirrel Girl, Wonder Wart-Hog?
user14111
May 10, 2019 06:25
@Randal'Thor I don't think it would look silly. I don't mind looking silly. On a site devoted mainly (about 2/3?) to silly questions (What's Pippi Lomgstocking's kill count? Does Harry wear boxers or briefs?) what's the big deal?
user14111
May 10, 2019 06:25
. . . (6) And how do you find a question that has been closed as a dupe having been answered only in comments? Tagging wold solve all these problems, and about the only thing the tagging system is good for.
user14111
May 10, 2019 06:25
. . .because answerers have been known to misspell (or even omit) the author's name. (5) Your suggested search works fine with Lafferty but may run into problems with Martin or Smith. Unless you can get all answerers to use the same canonical form of the name. The tagging system accomplishes that.
user14111
May 10, 2019 06:25
@Randal'Thor If tags aren't needed for searching (as you seem to imply) then they don't seem to have any use at all. Your first suggested search is what I've been using but tags would work better. (1) Limiting to accepted answers results in many false negatives. We can't accept answers for people but we can tag their questions for them. (2) Including unaccepted answers leads to false positives and multiple hits for the same question. (3) Searching for author's names in answers means that my answer to this question will turn up in a search for Ellison. (4) There will be false negatives . . .
user14111
May 10, 2019 06:25
(4) In the meta answer you linked to, the primary objection to adding author tags is that id questions are not always resolved unambiguously. That does not apply here: the evidence is overwhelming, the answer is upvoted and accepted, and there are no competing answers.
user14111
May 10, 2019 06:25
@Stormblessed I added the author tag. (1) As usual, your "consensus" consists of something like 23 upvotes, 7 downvotes, and 100s of abstentions. (2) Tags are for information retrieval, and I find it useful to be able to easily find story-id questions about works of a certain author. (3) Nothing is lost by adding tags. If anyone for some bizarre reason wants to see the original tags the edit history is still there. (continued in next comment)
 

 Discussion on question by ukemi: What…

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user14111
May 3, 2019 14:37
If the monsters are not real, then the story with that plot is not necessarily sci-fi, and therefore not necessarily on topic here?
user14111
May 3, 2019 14:37
The suspected "monsters" are not necessarily space aliens, right? People are suspecting the mischief is done by ghosts or witches or devils, but the villains turn out to be mortal human beings?
 

 Discussion on question by sonofspy: S…

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user14111
Feb 22, 2019 14:58
@Gnemlock Nope. My argument is that, since it is so important to know what is or is not science fiction or fantasy, and since there are so many different definitions out there, it would be a good idea to specify an official definition for this site. I can't imagine why you would object to that. Until that is done, the topic police are going to have a hard time enforcing the law, because people won't agree on what it means.
user14111
Feb 22, 2019 14:58
@Gnemlock Yes they have definitions. Plural. That's the problem. So does "off topic" mean it doesn't fit any of those various definitions?
user14111
Feb 22, 2019 14:58
@Gnemlock Why didn't you link tothe main article on Definitions of science fiction? As you can see (and as is common knowedge) there are many competing definitions of science fiction. Which one, pray tell, is the official one for this site?
user14111
Feb 22, 2019 14:58
@Gnemlock Yes but where does it define "sci fi or fantasy element"? I've never been able to find that. Without knowing what's a "sci fi or fantasy element" the rule is void.
user14111
Feb 22, 2019 14:58
@PaulD.Waite If everyone gets a million dollars at birth and has to live on that for a lifetime because there is no other source of income? It would be hard to live on that today. Maybe when van Vogt wrote the story a million bucks was a lot of money.
user14111
Feb 22, 2019 14:58
@AndrewT. No, of course not. If the question sounds completely mundate, itis reasonable to ask the OP if the story is SFF, and to politely point out what this site is about. However, if someone says it's a SFF story, I would take his word for it. Innocent until proven guilty. In this instance, the OP did not explicitly assert that the story was stfnsl (perhaps thinking that wxould be redundant), but two commenters (me and Danny3414) remembered reading the same story as science fiction. Given that, voting to close as "off topic" seems, uh "not nice".
user14111
Feb 22, 2019 14:58
@Gnemlock How about we wait till we've identified the story, and then discuss whether it's science fiction or not? Arguing about the genre classification of an unknown story seems kind of futile.
user14111
Feb 22, 2019 14:58
@Kevin SFF is about violations of the laws of physics? Really? Is that what it says in this site's official definition of SFF? I'd go take a look at it now, but I've never been able to find it. By the way, I'm pretty sure that a lot of the old timers who wrote about interplanetary flight believed that it could be accomplished without violating the laws of physics. Some of them would be surprised to learn that they weren't writing science fiction.
user14111
Feb 22, 2019 14:58
@Gnemlock I don't believe there is a real world society, present or past, where everyone receives a million dollars (2017-or-earlier U.S. money) at birth, but if you know a counterexample tell me about it.
user14111
Feb 22, 2019 14:58
@TheLethalCarrot Giving someone a million dollars at birth is the real world. Giving everyone a million dollars at birth — assuming a million dollars means what it does now (probably more if the story was written some time ago) — is SF: an imaginary society, probably in the future or another world, probably some kind of utopia/dystopia. Besides, I"ve read a story like that, and by my recollection it was definitely science fiction: set in the future, with future technology, published in a science fiction anthology.
 

 Discussion on answer by Ty Hayes: Wer…

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user14111
Aug 2, 2018 13:02
@Flater I think the way they did it (either rendition) was just fine, and I can't see how it makes a damn's worth of difference whether they reversed it syllable by syllable or letter by letter or phoneme by phoneme, whatever sounds good or is easier to sing. I'm not the one who was asking if they did it "correctly". Whatever that means.
user14111
Aug 2, 2018 13:02
@Flater Maybe it's just my poor reading comprehension, but I thought the OP did specify correctness when he wrote "Is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious actually pronounced backwards correctly at this point?" I (pedantically) considered it a defect of the question that the OP failed to define what he meant by "correct" backwards pronunciation, leaving it open to various interpretations.
user14111
Aug 2, 2018 13:02
I'm not sure what "actually pronounced backwards correctly" even means. Are you? Spelling it backwards and "sounding it out" doesn't do the trick, you know. "Super" spelt backwards is "repus", which looks like it would rhyme with "creepers", which is how they say it, but that's not really revering the sounds in "super".
 

 Discussion on question by RichS: Did …

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user14111
Jul 10, 2018 15:13
@DonFusili Sorry, I don't do chat.
user14111
Jul 10, 2018 15:13
@DonFusili So your domain is a countably infinite set. This has nothing to do with irrationals. You could just as well say that 0 encodes all possible messages; the domain is {0,00,000,...}; 0 maps to the first message, 00 to the second message, and so on. Vacuous.