FOM: strike out?

[Harvey Friedman]

Well, it does at least appear that Simpson has struck out McLarty in 5:42PM
4/22/99. The points Simpson is making would completely explain the
experiences I reported in my earlier posting of 6:11PM 4/16/99:

Mclarty:

>Every textbook on cohomological number theory does
>this. Hartshorne ALGEBRAIC GEOMETRY does extensively. Wiles's paper
>justifies a key step by reference to a proof that uses universes in this
>sense. Papers in MODULAR FORMS AND FERMAT'S LAST THEOREM routinely do this.
>They could avoid it. But the authors want people to understand the argument.

Friedman:

This is where you make a claim that I directly refuted by talking to 3
experts.

These 3 experts, in no order, have the following properties:

They are fancy, very fancy, and very very fancy. All of them are algebraic
number theorists. Two of them know the Wiles' proof of FLT intimately and
have been involved in various ways, publicly and privately, with it before,
after, and during its publication.

YET NOT ONE OF THESE THREE EXPERTS COULD RECALL WHAT A UNIVERSE OR A TOPOS
IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They all heard of them, knew about them vaguely, but virtually never think
about them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And don't want to think
about them!!!!!!!

WHY? Because they have mentally eliminated them by restriction long, long,
long, long, ago.

So McLarty must be full of something or another.