Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Combinatorial hierarchy

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Daniel (talk) 10:38, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Combinatorial hierarchy

Combinatorial hierarchy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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Not notable. The article is 100% based on primary sources. No outside reception visible, this is Noyes and a handful of coauthors doing some numerology (called as such here - and this is the only outside mention I see). Bit-string physics seems to mean the same thing, so that redirect is part of the deletion here as well. mfb (talk) 21:29, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Mathematics-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 21:48, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. There are three brief third-party reviews of works in this line at MR0563221 and MR1888233 (subscription access needed) and at Zbl 1033.81008 (open). As MathSciNet and zbMATH reviews are routine for many areas of mathematics, I don't think they count towards notability, but if this somehow ends up being kept they could be used as sources. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:57, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. This is deep WP:FRINGE. Noyes self-published papers about it on his own journal, the "Journal of the Western Regional Chapter of the Alternative Natural Philosophy Association"[1]. They are self-admittedly outside the mainstream, which is not Wikipedia's thing. The fascinating story about it is told here [2]. Also note that the main reference [3] is published in the notoriously cranky Int. J. Theor. Phys. In summary: the theory itself is not published in any reliable source, there is a reliable source describing it as fringe (found by the nominator), and the authors themselves describe it as fringe. Kill it with fire. Tercer (talk) 22:21, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. I agree that the physics aspect of it is fringe or at best numerology; the mathematical side appears to be just standard Boolean algebra buried under a pile of obscurantist redefinitions. The question is whether it is notable as fringe and whether we have the reliable sources that identify it as such and clarify its connection to standard mathematics, allowing us to write a properly WP:NPOV article according to the consensus of mainstream scholarship. It appears that we do not have those sources. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:27, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, on the grounds that numerology is notable, and so is this more esoteric branch. Speculations that end in being debunked deserve a space here, if only to serve as a space for refutation. I suggest that all that is needed is some referenced debunking to the page. User:ElGazWellwood's thoughts at Talk:Combinatorial hierarchy also suggest support for maintaining. The page has about 14 links in article space, so is deemed relevant to several other pages, and also serves as a redirect destination for Bit-string physics (following a merge I completed some time ago - on the grounds that it was better to have one page on such a topic rather than two). I note that the bibliography contains a peer-review paper (Int. J. Theor. Phys.) and there are books as referenced sources; overall, this seem to meet WP:N. Klbrain (talk) 09:32, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Notability doesn't work like this, you need multiple independent sources about combinatorial hierarchy to stablish its notability, it is not inherited from numerology. Also, they need to be outside of Wikipedia, wikilinks don't count (and I removed some of them). Right now the only independent source we have is saying that combinatorial hierarchy is bunk. If you can find more sources saying that it is bunk, then sure, it is notable bunk and should have an article in Wikipedia. Otherwise, it's out. Tercer (talk) 10:52, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, incoming links from other Wikipedia pages don't count for notability, since anybody can add them, and the pages those links are coming from might even be deletion candidates themselves. This wouldn't be the first time that we've seen a walled garden of articles leaning on each other for spurious respectability. XOR'easter (talk) 15:46, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As the above, the only thing needed to convince editors that notability is met is to list independent sources about the topic. I agree that numerology is notable so that other article is unlikely to be deleted. —PaleoNeonate – 03:04, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete Numerology, and not influential or historically significant numerology at that. XOR'easter (talk) 14:15, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Seems not notable even as WP:FRINGE. Ebony Jackson (talk) 15:49, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete or Merge in Frederick Parker-Rhodes. The author seems more notable than combinatorial hierarchy and there's already a little coverage at the BLP article. If any important detail is missing there it could be merged, but a separate article is unnecessary and the topic by itself does not meet WP:GNG. —PaleoNeonate – 02:58, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - While the article as it stands doesn't have much useful content, the general area does seem to have received sympathetic attention from what appears to me to be non-weird work, e.g., it has substantial citations in Garcia-Morales (2015) Quantum mechanics and the principle of least radix economy, Foundations of Physics, and in Kauffman (2004) Non-commutative worlds, New Journal of Physics. Tercer, what do you make of these refs? — Charles Stewart (talk) 06:39, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Non-commutative worlds only has a trivial mention, and is authored by a collaborator of Noyes. Quantum mechanics and the principle of least radix economy does have a substantial coverage of the combinatorial hierarchy, but I wouldn't called it "non-weird work", it's quite crazy stuff. Also, it has only ever been cited by its author. Tercer (talk) 09:04, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Uh, wow, yeah, "least radix economy" is hella weird. Claiming that the laws of physics arise because the universe is a computer that dynamically adjusts the base it calculates in is ... well it's not mainstream, that's for sure. XOR'easter (talk) 15:06, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 16:07, 22 February 2021 (UTC)t[reply]

• Delete The 2018 CODATA recommended value for the reciprocal of the fine-structure constant is 137.035999084(21), more than 1.7×10⁶ standard deviations from the vaue predicted by this theory. Theory disproven. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 16:17, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.