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On the’censored’ man’s attempted foray into a different field, physics: “ The paper qualifies that the author "is not a physicist" but an "entertainer", and it
by jwilber 5y ago
On the’censored’ man’s attempted foray into a different field, physics:
“ The paper qualifies that the author "is not a physicist" but an "entertainer", and it has received strong criticism from the scientific community, including having "no visible impact" and having "gaps both mathematical and physical in origin that jeopardize Geometric Unity as a well-defined theory, much less one that is a candidate for a theory of everything.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Weinstein#Physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Weinstein#Physics
- SnowProblem 5y agoWhat is this slander? That is a completely separate topic, one which wikipedia cannot do justice in a paragraph, and neither can you. Second, the tweet is about Brett's censored video, not Eric. Watch the video.
- jwilber 5y agoI looked the man up, found an interesting tidbit, and posted it. I can see how it comes off as me not liking him, but I really have no idea who he is, so I’ll explain why I posted that quote I saw: If an individual is in question for taking non-standard stances in an academic field, then any history of non-standard stances from said individual in other fields, and responses to them, are relevant IMO. If you disagree no worries, downvotes can reduce the opacity to zero.
- fastball 5y agoIf all someone can come up with are "standard stances" in their capacity as a scientist, they are a worse-than-useless scientist.
- jwilber 5y agoDepends on how you define standard.
- fastball 5y agoSure, you can define standard however you want and then the conversation is meaningless. But according to the standard definition of standard, which makes it synonymous with "average" or "norm", then my point very much stands.
- jwilber 5y agoRight. Well, in that case I disagree with your assertion that scientists who put out publications of average-in-that-field’s quality are “worse than useless”. Not how science works!
- fastball 5y agoYeahhhh, that's not what you said in your original comment at all. > if an individual is in question for taking non-standard stances in an academic field If you meant to say "low quality" then say that, but that is not what anyone takes to mean from "non-standard", as non-standard can equally mean exceptional if you are talking about quality.
- jwilber 5y agoI.e. it depends on how you define standard. But in this case I didn’t mean low-quality. It just turned out that’s how his work in that moment was judged by other experts in the field. Which is exactly why I brought it up, as I literally explained in my comment above - his history of non-standard ideas doesn’t have a great track record. I think that’s relevant. (But for some reason I’m here explaining it again.) Your point about less-than-useless (so harmful?) scientists is still absolutely ridiculous, as much scientific progress (and many scientific careers) comes from improving non-exceptional ideas in straightforward manners with expected results.
- sudosysgen 5y agoScience is an incremental march. Behind every revolutionary discovery are a thousand necessary results that are the result of a standard process.
- fastball 5y agoHaving a standard process is different from only espousing standard stances. How can you ever falsify anything if you only take the standard stance.
- Turing_Machine 5y agoFrom your own source: > Weinstein received his PhD in mathematical physics from Harvard University How is that "not a physicist"? I'm not saying that his theory is valid, mind you -- I don't know anything about it, nor am I myself qualified to judge that. But he clearly is a qualified physicist.
- tpush 5y agoWeinstein ist describing himself like that. Dude's just a (supposedly) entertaining grifter.
- Turing_Machine 5y agoJoking about something doesn't change the fact that he is a trained physicist, nor does it change the OP's misleading description. "Attempted foray into another field", indeed.
- tpush 5y agoHe's joking about being a physicist to deflect any criticism of his crackpot theory he peddled for years before putting up a half baked paper that was quickly found out to be basic quackery and adding insult to (cognitive) injury, put that paper behind a 'waitlist' that you have to sign up with your email for, presumably so he can market to the poor fellow wanting to read his amazing paper. There are so many intellectual red flags bundled into a person it beggars belief seeing so many people on HN being ensnared by such a totally obvious grifter.
- Turing_Machine 5y agoOr maybe he's just joking, period? The "paper" in question was apparently released on April 1.. He is, in fact, a trained mathematical physicist, with a PhD from Harvard, no less. That doesn't make his theory right. But it does mean that the OP's selective quoting is somewhere between misleading and outright deceptive.
- fighterpilot 5y agoWhy do people keep bringing up Eric Weinstein? He isn't the one who had his video taken down...
- meatmanek 5y agoHe's the one whose tweet was linked.
- fighterpilot 5y agoThe subject of discussion is the video that was taken down but almost half the replies are about Eric Weinstein's credibility as if that's relevant somehow.
- lupire 5y agoEric and Bret are partners.
- fighterpilot 5y agoBy partners, do you mean they're brothers that occasionally appear on each other's podcast? Does that make Eric's credibility relevant to the video in question though some sort of credibility transitivity?
- vintagemodel 5y agoAlbert Einstein was a Physicist and an Entertainer... edit: Richard Feynman wrote a book called "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surely_You%27re_Joking,_Mr._Feynman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surely_You%27re_Joking,_Mr._Fe...!).
- pvg 5y agoTheir Nobel prizes are for physics.