I know how it sounds, but it happened and it was very much not “and everyone clapped”.
It was not in some big venue, there was no audience for the exchange.
There was no wittiness in some snappy comeback, it was a plain statement of looking at the author.
There was no satisfying element of him realizing he was wrong or spinning out somehow, just a continuation of his argument largely unabated. This was in spite of the fact that it wasn’t some big complex phenomenon, it was a very specific problem with a provably correct solution (mathematically speaking), but he had already decided there could be no solution so he wasn’t receptive.
Things happen, though it’s rare that things go down on such a publicly standing satisfying way as documented on these internet stories.
And everyone clapped.
I know how it sounds, but it happened and it was very much not “and everyone clapped”.
It was not in some big venue, there was no audience for the exchange.
There was no wittiness in some snappy comeback, it was a plain statement of looking at the author.
There was no satisfying element of him realizing he was wrong or spinning out somehow, just a continuation of his argument largely unabated. This was in spite of the fact that it wasn’t some big complex phenomenon, it was a very specific problem with a provably correct solution (mathematically speaking), but he had already decided there could be no solution so he wasn’t receptive.
Things happen, though it’s rare that things go down on such a publicly standing satisfying way as documented on these internet stories.