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It's an article edited for lay audiences. It is for people who don't have the expertise to evaluate his proofs. You can look up his research, though, if you wa

• jackcosgrove 10y ago
  I get suspicious when some proof is so complex it must be mediated by an expert. I think the burden is on the prover to make their case, rather than on the audience to understand the case.
  • jcfrei 10y ago
    From your argument I take that you are very suspicious of quantum mechanics as well?
    • jackcosgrove 10y ago
      Your use of the word "very" is a giveaway that you're being snarky. I am definitely suspicious of scientists who act as the truth authority, and cast aspersions on lay people who don't understand their proofs. That attitude is antithetical to the spirit of science, which encourages skepticism and the democratization of thought.
      • selectron 10y ago
        Science is about reaching an expert consensus of the most probably explanation of the available evidence. It is not a democratization of thought - it is evidence that matters not majority opinion or vote of scientists. More generally, it takes a lifetime of study to truly understand even a small aspect of physics. How can you expect someone to explain a lifetime of study in an article for lay people without glossing over the details? I trust the opinions of one physics professor about quantum mechanics much more than 1 million lay people.
        • semi-extrinsic 10y ago
          I respectfully disagree: consensus is not an important building block of the scientific method. Also: it is generally held that someone who has completed a PhD in physics is an expert in their small aspect of physics, and that they understand well a broader aspect of physics. Getting a PhD takes a lot less than a lifetime (fortunately).
  • colordrops 10y ago
    Most modern math proofs are incomprehensible to anyone but experts. Is modern math suspicious?
    • chongli 10y ago
      I don't doubt that modern math proofs have been created by experts and checked by computers. Where I have a hard time is when the claim is made that these complicated proofs have any basis in the real world. That can't be checked by computer.
• maldusiecle 10y ago
  I think you've misunderstood my objection on every level. I'm not saying that every pop scientific article should be written so that a layperson can understand all proofs involved, and so on. I'm saying that given what I, as a layperson, can see in the article, his claims seems suspicious. They don't seem logically coherent. They seem to contradict themselves in obvious ways. If a thinker can't present his ideas in a logically coherent way, there's no reason for me to go through the very time-consuming process of reading a long series of academic papers. Reading his definition in that paper makes me even more suspicious of his argument here. It's a common problem among academics in specialist fields that they demonstrate a limited claim, and then state a much stronger claim for a popular audience. The claim in the abstract of the paper is that "perceptual systems tuned solely to fitness routinely outcompete those tuned to truth." The claim in the interview is that "an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness." Those aren't the same. The first is much stronger. My suspicion is that he's taking his eccentric or exaggerated views and presenting them on the same level as the more reasonable ideas from his research.