On Tue, 21 May 2019 06:56:09 -0700 (PDT), "'fl' via Metamath" <[email protected]> wrote: > Without interfering in whatever is none of my business, I am opposed to an > excess of archiving. > It has a little paranoid flavour that can only affect the quality of the > debates.
The goal is to keep potentially important information, for the same reason that we use version control. I love history (I've listened to many history podcasts), including the history of mathematics. A common theme throughout the study of history is, "we know certain information used to exist, but now it's gone". For example, Stoic logic at one time was extremely popular & it was probably the most popular system around the Mediterranean & Persian areas. There's a lot we don't know about Stoic logic today, because what little is left is reconstructed from sparse sources. (Heck, we even have to reconstruct some of their *axioms*.) There are still debates about the meaning of Aristotle's modal logic; Rini has a very plausible interpretation, but there are also plausible yet different counter-interpretations. The problem is that there's so much that's lost that we have trouble understanding the context. And this is *Aristotle*, where have been many attempts to keep his works and yet we think we only have about 1/3 of them (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_work ). I don't think archiving the mailing list should squelch debate, especially since Google groups archives it anyway. I operate on the assumption that as soon as I post something publicly, it may live forever, so I'd better be prepared for that. If you want something to be private, a public mailing list is not a good place to send it :-). --- David A. Wheeler -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Metamath" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/metamath/E1hT75o-0002AG-JE%40rmmprod07.runbox.
