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The theory is not being dismissed because it is offensive; it's being dismissed because it has all the signs of a crackpot theory and none of the signs of a leg

by ajkjk 10y ago

The theory is not being dismissed because it is offensive; it's being dismissed because it has all the signs of a crackpot theory and none of the signs of a legitimate one. It is trivial to tear it apart. But if someone tore it apart, using the trivial arguments, you would not believe them - you would say "oh, you're just rejecting him like everyone else", "you're part of the brainwashed mainstream". There are thousands of arguments like this online. People who somehow got to PhDs from weird unheard of schools, went off the deep end, and publish their 'theories', which aren't developed enough to even argue against, but are written in half-intelligible, imprecise language, claim to be "ignored by the establishment", claim to solve this-and-that problem with a method that the establishment wrote off prematurely, etc, whatever. They're all the same. This particular 'theory' (though that's not a fair word for it) scores easily over 100 on this list: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html, and so isn't even worth a person's time to look at. A simple line of reasoning to support this: If it was a legitimate theory, it would start with concrete statements about how it proposes the world works. Not vague, hand-waving stuff. It would start with math - lots of it. It would start with a precise explanation of how the experiments that prove an ether to be impossible missed the truth for 100 years. It would discuss examples where mainstream physics fails to predict the right result of experiment, and then show, with calculations an informed reader could follow, how it makes better ones. The guy is telling you he's right, and you're believing him, or at least taking him seriously -- like a sucker. He's telling you "no one else is believing me, but it's because I'm being ignored unjustly", but you've skipped the more likely explanation: "no one else is believing me because what I'm saying makes no sense". But I, who knows enough physics to parse this stuff am waiting for him to show me he's right, and he's not doing that at all. Nor is he showing anyone else, which is why he's being ignored. It's not all your fault, though. It's way easier to spot these crackpot theories when you've a) studied legitimate ones and b) seen so many other crackpot theories that say all the same stuff.

cm127 10y ago
You can't use a hypothetical to disprove a theory. Your entire comment is completely baseless: "These people don't follow my school of thought, so they must be wrong!" No offense, but using your ego to make an argument is pathetic. I'm aware the theory sounds crazy; I'm not an idiot. But I'm also not going to let my hubris dictate what I can or can't research. That's just stupid.
- ajkjk 10y ago
  No, you don't understand. I'm not trying to disprove a theory. I'm saying that the person who's writing what we're reading hasn't said anything even meaningful enough to dispute. The words they write don't have logical content as a theory. You can sort of squeeze them into statements that sound possible at a hand-waving level, but there's no scientific content. They're "not even wrong" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong). I'm not rejecting the guy cause of hubris or because I'm obsessed with the orthodoxy or something. I'm rejecting him cause his words are meaningless garbage, according to my ability to critically analyze what he's writing. Of course it's possible that I'm too dumb to understand them, but, statistically speaking, when I can understand most of the good physics out there, I come to trust my intuition on this stuff and write off people who can't communicate an idea at even a basic level without become super vague and defending themselves by saying "no one's taking them seriously" and "everyone else missed this" instead of an actual argument. I guess it boils down to this: If you can't tell this guy is crazy, how would you tell that anyone is crazy? Is there anything that can be written down that you wouldn't take seriously? Maybe something like "what if the world is made of tiny lemons, in various configurations?" Well, I draw the line way higher than that, and considerably higher than where this guy is, and I can see that he's below the line with five seconds of reading, and it's no surprise at all when 5 more minutes of reading, or 30, or whatever, completely corroborates my initial instinct. Edit: actually, it boils down to this: Your ability, cm127, to critically analyze theories and determine if they're scientifically meaningful is deficient. You don't have to believe me, of course, cause this is the internet, but I implore you to consider the possibility. Edit 2: also, you're wrong that "you can't use a hypothetical to disprove a theory" - well, almost wrong. You can use a hypothetical to argue against a theory. It's not that it's disproving. It's that the hypothetical shows you "here are some things that would probably be true if this theory was legitimate", and because those things are not true, it raises the probability (via Bayes rule) that the theory is incorrect. You are supposed to consider this, think "ah, well, that makes the theory more likely to be incorrect". That's the point of the argument. Also, it's really disingenuous to write off a whole post as baseless without responding to the points, each of which (I would argue) is a valid criticism.
  - 10y ago

by ajkjk 10y ago

cm127 10y ago

You can't use a hypothetical to disprove a theory. Your entire comment is completely baseless: "These people don't follow my school of thought, so they must be wrong!" No offense, but using your ego to make an argument is pathetic. I'm aware the theory sounds crazy; I'm not an idiot. But I'm also not going to let my hubris dictate what I can or can't research. That's just stupid.

ajkjk 10y ago
No, you don't understand. I'm not trying to disprove a theory. I'm saying that the person who's writing what we're reading hasn't said anything even meaningful enough to dispute. The words they write don't have logical content as a theory. You can sort of squeeze them into statements that sound possible at a hand-waving level, but there's no scientific content. They're "not even wrong" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong). I'm not rejecting the guy cause of hubris or because I'm obsessed with the orthodoxy or something. I'm rejecting him cause his words are meaningless garbage, according to my ability to critically analyze what he's writing. Of course it's possible that I'm too dumb to understand them, but, statistically speaking, when I can understand most of the good physics out there, I come to trust my intuition on this stuff and write off people who can't communicate an idea at even a basic level without become super vague and defending themselves by saying "no one's taking them seriously" and "everyone else missed this" instead of an actual argument. I guess it boils down to this: If you can't tell this guy is crazy, how would you tell that anyone is crazy? Is there anything that can be written down that you wouldn't take seriously? Maybe something like "what if the world is made of tiny lemons, in various configurations?" Well, I draw the line way higher than that, and considerably higher than where this guy is, and I can see that he's below the line with five seconds of reading, and it's no surprise at all when 5 more minutes of reading, or 30, or whatever, completely corroborates my initial instinct. Edit: actually, it boils down to this: Your ability, cm127, to critically analyze theories and determine if they're scientifically meaningful is deficient. You don't have to believe me, of course, cause this is the internet, but I implore you to consider the possibility. Edit 2: also, you're wrong that "you can't use a hypothetical to disprove a theory" - well, almost wrong. You can use a hypothetical to argue against a theory. It's not that it's disproving. It's that the hypothetical shows you "here are some things that would probably be true if this theory was legitimate", and because those things are not true, it raises the probability (via Bayes rule) that the theory is incorrect. You are supposed to consider this, think "ah, well, that makes the theory more likely to be incorrect". That's the point of the argument. Also, it's really disingenuous to write off a whole post as baseless without responding to the points, each of which (I would argue) is a valid criticism.
- 10y ago