5 ms·

The unfortunate truth is that humans derive status from belittling others. Being highly educated is apparently no defense against this common weakness.

jjoonathan 5y ago
I don't get a status boost from letting google label 80% of my incoming email as spam, but I am quite glad that it does.
Delk 5y ago
To be fair, it might not be about the desire to belittle or to derive status. I can understand the frustration of those who are educated in a demanding field that also happens to attract people proposing uneducated and usually unsound theories. The wildest of theories -- especially the wildest of them -- would often take a lot of work to untangle and make sense of to the point where it's even possible to discuss and think about them critically. The vast, vast majority of those kinds of theories are wrong yet they take a lot of work to disprove. That probably has little to offer to the expert other than perhaps exercise in the Socratic method with an uncooperative partner. I'm not in the academia myself but I can totally see how the nth time someone offers their "insights" into something they almost certainly don't understand could make you think of them as crackpots.
- robocat 5y ago
  I mean, one has to wonder how many real physicists are chasing crackpot theories in exactly the same sense. The drive that results in self-delusion is probably the same mentally/emotionally. Also it isn’t just physicists on the receiving end. As a software engineer I get people wanting me to help them with their “crackpot” business ideas (although they sometimes don’t want to tell me their secret, and I heartily encourage them not to!). I have seen an acquaintance explore a crackpot electrical mechanism for perpetual energy. Mathematicians surely get their fair share of crackpots too!
  - ganzuul 5y ago
    Personally I think most of these problems could be easily resolved if we were taught the basics of how to manage emotions and ego in school. Unfortunately, that essential need is still controlled by certain institutional wills that I in turn label crackpot. - Not that I should be throwing stones, living in a house of glass...
  - Fomite 5y ago
    I mean, physicists are notorious for chasing crackpot theories in other fields for the exact same reason - they assume their background is sufficient to understand the current progress of a field, when it's not.
    - robocat 5y ago
      Yet Physicists sometimes hit the jackpot too: “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
      - _3u10 5y ago
        Classic.
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      Yeah, like that crackpot Alvarez and his nutty "an asteroid killed the dinosaurs" theory! It turned out to be right, of course. Sometimes entire fields get stuck in bad equilibria and need to be disrupted.
  - CuriouslyC 5y ago
    String theory is crackpot AF. It's not based on Occam's razor or empirical observation, just on the fact that if you accept a few really giant unfounded assumptions, then you end up with some neat math. We'd be better off with a theory of everything designed by a neural network, at least people wouldn't belabor under the mistaken assumption that "theory of everything" actually corresponds to anything real.
- mcguire 5y ago
  Further, there's the other half of the psychological stew: them as regard education in general and the attempt to untangle and think critically about wild theories as at best a waste of time and at worst a personal attack. I personally don't think of anyone as a "crackpot" unless they've demonstrated that they are impervious to the basic knowledge they need: "One or two seemed miffed that I didn’t immediately exclaim: ‘Genius!’,..."
- ganzuul 5y ago
  I would like to avoid to paint in detail the ugly picture behind the issue I'm talking about, since that feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy. - You are obviously right to assume the best about people but it is also prudent to remain vigilant whenever there is hierarchy and competition for resources. I don't have a solution... I do have a problem in that this drive-by dismissal of mine is getting attention when what I was excited about in another comment goes ignored. =\
  - kbenson 5y ago
    > I do have a problem in that this drive-by dismissal of mine is getting attention when what I was excited about in another comment goes ignored. =\ Isn't that explained by the GP's point? Some things are much easier to engage with than others, regardless of whether it's for or against. Your statement above is two sentences, and while it undoubtedly accurately describes some occurrences, it also likely doesn't describe others. Without statements to clarify how absolutely you intend it to apply, people are free to make their own assumptions and if that assumption casts your statement as absolutist, it's easy to refute. Communication can be hard, asynchronous communication even more so.
    - ganzuul 5y ago
      Sometimes I wonder if our school teachers' demand to read their minds was justified, and how we can sometimes immediately be aware of context in a way that machine learning consistently fails at. The article touches on this in how the author quickly deduces who is one of them and who is not. Perhaps therein lies the entire issue at hand.
bee_rider 5y ago
That's true, but also there exists a population that's unfortunately been misinformed by Quantum Pseudoscience Grifters. Physics (and medicine) seem to suffer particularly from this sort of thing. Enough misinformed people asking for real engagement will eventually wear even a patient person down (of course the ire should be more accurately targeted toward the grifters, not their victims). I mean -- as a programmer, my significant other thinks that my presence soothes the Machine Spirits and makes the computer magically cooperate. Imagine if this was a superstition! The random requests for IT support would be really annoying.
- cogman10 5y ago
  > ...misinformed by Quantum Pseudoscience Grifters. Physics (and medicine) seem to suffer particularly from this sort of thing. Quiet a few of the misinformed are HN commenters. Generally, the pattern appears to be "Foo is complex. Conspiracy theorist asserts there is a conspiracy making Foo complex. We cannot trust the mainstream experts because they are lying. Gishgallop with endless bad faith questions which take an enormous amount of time to answer properly but ultimately do not convince the question asker". The general takeaway, for me at least, is that even the most intelligent person can be sucked into crackpot conspiracy. The problem is "I'm an expert in this field, this means I'm smarter than most" and then thinking that intelligence in one area grants you insights into others. The worst part is conspiracies like to hide under the motto of "I'm just being a good skeptic". However, a good skeptic needs to actually dig deeper than just surface level assertions. A good skeptic needs to look into the counter claims to their conspiracy. What are the sources? Do the actually point to data or are they just naked assertions? Do the sources reference only other conspiracy websites? Do they have references? If this claim is actually true, why is it rejected by the mainstream? Who is actually benefiting from hiding the truth?
- fn-mote 5y ago
  > my significant other thinks that my presence soothes the Machine Spirits and makes the computer magically cooperate I love this. Also hilarious. In my experience, also true in certain cases. You observe something that is being done a way you would not do it. There is no reason to suspect this is the source of the problem, but you do it the way you think it should be done. Lo and behold, the process works and the problem is gone. In retrospect you can see why, maybe the filename ':/%20' was bad luck, or whatever. Looking at the process, though, it's hard to claim success was achieved by a rational scientific process...
wolverine876 5y ago
> The unfortunate truth is that humans derive status from belittling others. It's not a truth any more than 'humans murder others when they're angry'. Sometimes humans belittle others and sometimes they gain status from it. Sometimes they lose status, and I suspect they almost always lose a little self-respect and feel more intensely the shame that was so strong, they just tried to project it onto someone else. > Being highly educated is apparently no defense against this common weakness. I think it depends on the fields of study. If you study humanity, you may understand this behavior. If you study quarks, I agree it is little defense.
circlefavshape 5y ago
It's hard to understand what this is aimed at. The original article is rather sweet, and you're replying to a comment that's saying that "crackpots" are mostly just normal people who've misunderstood something. I don't see any belittling going on here

jjoonathan 5y ago

I don't get a status boost from letting google label 80% of my incoming email as spam, but I am quite glad that it does.

Delk 5y ago

To be fair, it might not be about the desire to belittle or to derive status. I can understand the frustration of those who are educated in a demanding field that also happens to attract people proposing uneducated and usually unsound theories. The wildest of theories -- especially the wildest of them -- would often take a lot of work to untangle and make sense of to the point where it's even possible to discuss and think about them critically. The vast, vast majority of those kinds of theories are wrong yet they take a lot of work to disprove. That probably has little to offer to the expert other than perhaps exercise in the Socratic method with an uncooperative partner. I'm not in the academia myself but I can totally see how the nth time someone offers their "insights" into something they almost certainly don't understand could make you think of them as crackpots.

robocat 5y ago
I mean, one has to wonder how many real physicists are chasing crackpot theories in exactly the same sense. The drive that results in self-delusion is probably the same mentally/emotionally. Also it isn’t just physicists on the receiving end. As a software engineer I get people wanting me to help them with their “crackpot” business ideas (although they sometimes don’t want to tell me their secret, and I heartily encourage them not to!). I have seen an acquaintance explore a crackpot electrical mechanism for perpetual energy. Mathematicians surely get their fair share of crackpots too!
- ganzuul 5y ago
  Personally I think most of these problems could be easily resolved if we were taught the basics of how to manage emotions and ego in school. Unfortunately, that essential need is still controlled by certain institutional wills that I in turn label crackpot. - Not that I should be throwing stones, living in a house of glass...
- Fomite 5y ago
  I mean, physicists are notorious for chasing crackpot theories in other fields for the exact same reason - they assume their background is sufficient to understand the current progress of a field, when it's not.
  - robocat 5y ago
    Yet Physicists sometimes hit the jackpot too: “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
    - _3u10 5y ago
      Classic.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    Yeah, like that crackpot Alvarez and his nutty "an asteroid killed the dinosaurs" theory! It turned out to be right, of course. Sometimes entire fields get stuck in bad equilibria and need to be disrupted.
- CuriouslyC 5y ago
  String theory is crackpot AF. It's not based on Occam's razor or empirical observation, just on the fact that if you accept a few really giant unfounded assumptions, then you end up with some neat math. We'd be better off with a theory of everything designed by a neural network, at least people wouldn't belabor under the mistaken assumption that "theory of everything" actually corresponds to anything real.
mcguire 5y ago
Further, there's the other half of the psychological stew: them as regard education in general and the attempt to untangle and think critically about wild theories as at best a waste of time and at worst a personal attack. I personally don't think of anyone as a "crackpot" unless they've demonstrated that they are impervious to the basic knowledge they need: "One or two seemed miffed that I didn’t immediately exclaim: ‘Genius!’,..."
ganzuul 5y ago
I would like to avoid to paint in detail the ugly picture behind the issue I'm talking about, since that feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy. - You are obviously right to assume the best about people but it is also prudent to remain vigilant whenever there is hierarchy and competition for resources. I don't have a solution... I do have a problem in that this drive-by dismissal of mine is getting attention when what I was excited about in another comment goes ignored. =\
- kbenson 5y ago
  > I do have a problem in that this drive-by dismissal of mine is getting attention when what I was excited about in another comment goes ignored. =\ Isn't that explained by the GP's point? Some things are much easier to engage with than others, regardless of whether it's for or against. Your statement above is two sentences, and while it undoubtedly accurately describes some occurrences, it also likely doesn't describe others. Without statements to clarify how absolutely you intend it to apply, people are free to make their own assumptions and if that assumption casts your statement as absolutist, it's easy to refute. Communication can be hard, asynchronous communication even more so.
  - ganzuul 5y ago
    Sometimes I wonder if our school teachers' demand to read their minds was justified, and how we can sometimes immediately be aware of context in a way that machine learning consistently fails at. The article touches on this in how the author quickly deduces who is one of them and who is not. Perhaps therein lies the entire issue at hand.

bee_rider 5y ago

That's true, but also there exists a population that's unfortunately been misinformed by Quantum Pseudoscience Grifters. Physics (and medicine) seem to suffer particularly from this sort of thing. Enough misinformed people asking for real engagement will eventually wear even a patient person down (of course the ire should be more accurately targeted toward the grifters, not their victims). I mean -- as a programmer, my significant other thinks that my presence soothes the Machine Spirits and makes the computer magically cooperate. Imagine if this was a superstition! The random requests for IT support would be really annoying.

cogman10 5y ago
> ...misinformed by Quantum Pseudoscience Grifters. Physics (and medicine) seem to suffer particularly from this sort of thing. Quiet a few of the misinformed are HN commenters. Generally, the pattern appears to be "Foo is complex. Conspiracy theorist asserts there is a conspiracy making Foo complex. We cannot trust the mainstream experts because they are lying. Gishgallop with endless bad faith questions which take an enormous amount of time to answer properly but ultimately do not convince the question asker". The general takeaway, for me at least, is that even the most intelligent person can be sucked into crackpot conspiracy. The problem is "I'm an expert in this field, this means I'm smarter than most" and then thinking that intelligence in one area grants you insights into others. The worst part is conspiracies like to hide under the motto of "I'm just being a good skeptic". However, a good skeptic needs to actually dig deeper than just surface level assertions. A good skeptic needs to look into the counter claims to their conspiracy. What are the sources? Do the actually point to data or are they just naked assertions? Do the sources reference only other conspiracy websites? Do they have references? If this claim is actually true, why is it rejected by the mainstream? Who is actually benefiting from hiding the truth?
fn-mote 5y ago
> my significant other thinks that my presence soothes the Machine Spirits and makes the computer magically cooperate I love this. Also hilarious. In my experience, also true in certain cases. You observe something that is being done a way you would not do it. There is no reason to suspect this is the source of the problem, but you do it the way you think it should be done. Lo and behold, the process works and the problem is gone. In retrospect you can see why, maybe the filename ':/%20' was bad luck, or whatever. Looking at the process, though, it's hard to claim success was achieved by a rational scientific process...

wolverine876 5y ago

> The unfortunate truth is that humans derive status from belittling others. It's not a truth any more than 'humans murder others when they're angry'. Sometimes humans belittle others and sometimes they gain status from it. Sometimes they lose status, and I suspect they almost always lose a little self-respect and feel more intensely the shame that was so strong, they just tried to project it onto someone else. > Being highly educated is apparently no defense against this common weakness. I think it depends on the fields of study. If you study humanity, you may understand this behavior. If you study quarks, I agree it is little defense.

circlefavshape 5y ago

It's hard to understand what this is aimed at. The original article is rather sweet, and you're replying to a comment that's saying that "crackpots" are mostly just normal people who've misunderstood something. I don't see any belittling going on here