Dear Terry,
What about your higher authority, my wife needs me too.
You wrote:
1. When I wrote (a) that "Mathematical entities should all have physical correlates" I misused the word "physical". I should have written "real' and put that in a "possible worlds" context.:
-- I do not know negative people in reality, they merely occur as a result of an abstract formalism.
(b) and that "abstract entities such as complex numbers are the supreme reality" this was not expressing my view. It is one of the logical but unreasonable conclusions of the current structure of, and therefore the standard view in, mathematical science whether expressed or implied- one I strongly disagree with - because it is an inevitable part of mathematical science.
-- Is use of mathematics really the duty of mathematics?
2. I used Cantor (a) because his work is THE foundation of mathematics according to mathematicians; and (b) his diagonal argument is a proof we all know and accept (?).
-- Bourbaki claimed so. Read this , in particular below the heading "How to cope with what is behind Cantor's paradise?"
3. RE Points, Why indeed ?
-- Relations between numerically addressable points are indeed the zero-dimensional correlate to discrete mathematics.
4. I am not sure what you mean by basic mistakes. I assume for convenience that all the mathematics we have is logically correct, that is all
-- This might be a serious mistake. Read my essay and respond there.
5. I am not sure what you mean by by understanding QM os being partly wrong. I think that QM is 100% empirically correct.
-- Find in my essay examples related to Weyl, Schulman, Schroedinger, etc.
What about SUSY, quantum computers, etc.?
Therefore it is reasonable. This is not a problem for realists. Most of what we experience is probabilistic. For me the problem is that we don't have a 100% rational formalism. We have 2 rational pieces that don't fit well together.
-- Is the belief in an a priori existing future time rational?
Why waste time trying to understand it before we have the proper formalism. I spend most of my life, so does everyone, accepting and dealing with things we don't understand - other people. For physicists of course there is a job to be done. Find the right formalism - not an interpretation of the wrong formalism.
-- I doubt that set theory and given spacetime are correct fundamentals.
6. All useful theories must fit experiments i.e. empirical reality. How someone arrives at the best theory is an individual thing.
-- Arguments and experimental results by Gold, Kemp, and Ren, proved v. Békésy wrong.
I have followed the Uncle Al saga for many years. I look forward to a denouement. I agree someone should look. It won't be me. If you want people to do things for you Dale Carnegie is the standard authority. Otherwise you have to make it happen yourself. Uncle Al knows that, and it seems to be happening - but a lot more slowly than he or spectators like me would like. That's normal.
-- It seem to be normal that nobody cares about Galilei, Gompf et al., Aseltine, Terhardt, Ren, and me.
Regards, Eckard