Deposing Dictators

[Tim Peters]

[Stephen Horne, to Terry Reedy -- and much the same to everyone else
 who replies]
> ...
> you take that as an opportunity to twist my words
> ...
> After all, you're not the only one to deliberately twist my words.
> ...
> twisting it into a claim
> ...
> twisting my argument
> ...
> no argument that can counter having your words deliberately twisted
> and their meaning ignored.

Let me suggest an alternative:  your words aren't nearly as clear as you
think they are, and, not being telepathic, we can't guess "their meaning"
beyond what you actually write.

One example from your last reply to me, and I'll stop:

[you]
>>>   Discrete integer division makes perfect sense despite the fact
>>>   that specialist fields have outlawed it for specialist reasons
>>>   relating to specialist problems.

[me]
>> Nobody has "outlawed" any meaning for division, "specialist" or
>> otherwise.

[you]
> I didn't say a meaning of division was outlawed - I said that division
> itself was outlawed in certain specialist fields.

Well, the subject of your quoted sentence was "discrete integer division",
and I can't imagine what else the "it" in "outlawed it" could have referred
to.  You would have me *guess* that, to you, "discrete integer division"
means "division itself"?  Or that "it" referred to some unspecified concept
in some other paragraph?  I expect you'd think me deliberately twisting your
words if I ignored what you wrote to guess at some other meaning, but if I
respond to what you actually say then somehow that counts as twisting your
meaning too?

This is common in discussions with you.

You go on:

> An example is field theory, which outlaws division in all fields
> (except those based on modulo arithmetic with a prime base, IIRC)
> because division cannot be a perfect inverse of multiplication in
> such fields. That is the argument I was countering.

Alas, you don't RC:  every field supports division, and simply because the
existence of multiplicative inverses is a fundamental part of what it
*means* to be "a field".  It's not deep, it's how fields are defined (look
it up -- there is only one definition of field that I know of).  Then again,
it's hard to know what you think you're saying there:  you start with "all
fields", then say "except" in a parenthetical comment, then say "such
fields" as if that somehow qualified the earlier "all" (but how?!).

In the end, I have no idea what you're trying to say, because what you
actually *wrote* doesn't make sense.  Perhaps you're countering the argument
that "division itself should be outlawed"?  That's the only sense I can make
of it.  OTOH, that's not an argument anyone is making, so why you would
fritter away your (and our) time opposing it would also be a mystery.

afraid-i've-already-got-several-full-time-jobs-ly y'rs  - tim