5 ms·

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 th

by 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.
  - doetoe 5y ago
    Occam's razor is a very useful guiding principle, but it still is a philosophical principle, not a requirement for a theory to be scientific. Observation of course is, and in fact string theory (potentially) is consistent with observed phenomena. Its main problem is that it is too difficult, if possible at all, to determine if it actually is, and in which form. Actually the same Sabine Hossenfelder wrote a book about that as you probably know
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    There isn't anything for it to compete with. Anyway, a string theorist on the faculty doesn't cost any more than a mathematician. For the others you are continually having to pay for LHCs, nanokelvin freezers, and optical tables.
    - tsimionescu 5y ago
      > There isn't anything for it to compete with. That's exactly the problem - instead of trying to produce new theories, people keep researching string theory, in massive numbers (relatively to the size of the field of theoretical foundations of physics, of course). Also, there are a few other interesting avenues to explore - coming up with a relativistic version of de Broglie-Bohm pilot wave mechanics (or as close as possible to get, given Bell's inequalities), for example.
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        It's hard to imagine how you could test any alternative, either. If the string people were putting all their effort into coming up with a testable prediction, we might be better off. But they are mostly trying to show their untestable thing is better than the next one over, instead.
- Delk 5y ago
  A theoretical computer science analog to the physics crackpots might be semi-knowledgeable people who purport to prove P vs. NP one way or the other or solve some other open mathematical question or disprove a known existing result. Quantum computing probably attracts some as well but that's a bit of an overlap with physics. Theoretical CS is of course niche enough that it probably doesn't attract mainstream people from outside of the field, so I suppose the field has its own crackpots. I suspect mathematics would be similar except somewhat more mainstream. Of course some day someone will probably come along and actually prove something about those open questions but claims of proofs are much more common than actual proofs. As for crackpot things within the academia itself, computer science also has areas such as AGI that are so hard to get actual scientific results from that it might be easy to deem it as just handwaving rather than actual research. Trying to build general AI with automated reasoning and knowledge bases back in the early days may not have been exactly a crackpot idea -- if anything, it was overly optimistic about hard logic -- but it certainly wasn't realistically going to succeed either, at least in hindsight.
- fourthark 5y ago
  Still haunted by interactions ten years ago with someone who claimed to have invented an impossibly efficient garbage collector supported by revolutionary data structures. You would think this would be empirically verifiable but I nor others could make heads or tails of his argument. When I saw the guy also had a theory of unified physics, I gave up. Still don't know, he might have been onto something.
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.

by Delk 5y ago

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.
- doetoe 5y ago
  Occam's razor is a very useful guiding principle, but it still is a philosophical principle, not a requirement for a theory to be scientific. Observation of course is, and in fact string theory (potentially) is consistent with observed phenomena. Its main problem is that it is too difficult, if possible at all, to determine if it actually is, and in which form. Actually the same Sabine Hossenfelder wrote a book about that as you probably know
- ncmncm 5y ago
  There isn't anything for it to compete with. Anyway, a string theorist on the faculty doesn't cost any more than a mathematician. For the others you are continually having to pay for LHCs, nanokelvin freezers, and optical tables.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    > There isn't anything for it to compete with. That's exactly the problem - instead of trying to produce new theories, people keep researching string theory, in massive numbers (relatively to the size of the field of theoretical foundations of physics, of course). Also, there are a few other interesting avenues to explore - coming up with a relativistic version of de Broglie-Bohm pilot wave mechanics (or as close as possible to get, given Bell's inequalities), for example.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      It's hard to imagine how you could test any alternative, either. If the string people were putting all their effort into coming up with a testable prediction, we might be better off. But they are mostly trying to show their untestable thing is better than the next one over, instead.
Delk 5y ago
A theoretical computer science analog to the physics crackpots might be semi-knowledgeable people who purport to prove P vs. NP one way or the other or solve some other open mathematical question or disprove a known existing result. Quantum computing probably attracts some as well but that's a bit of an overlap with physics. Theoretical CS is of course niche enough that it probably doesn't attract mainstream people from outside of the field, so I suppose the field has its own crackpots. I suspect mathematics would be similar except somewhat more mainstream. Of course some day someone will probably come along and actually prove something about those open questions but claims of proofs are much more common than actual proofs. As for crackpot things within the academia itself, computer science also has areas such as AGI that are so hard to get actual scientific results from that it might be easy to deem it as just handwaving rather than actual research. Trying to build general AI with automated reasoning and knowledge bases back in the early days may not have been exactly a crackpot idea -- if anything, it was overly optimistic about hard logic -- but it certainly wasn't realistically going to succeed either, at least in hindsight.
fourthark 5y ago
Still haunted by interactions ten years ago with someone who claimed to have invented an impossibly efficient garbage collector supported by revolutionary data structures. You would think this would be empirically verifiable but I nor others could make heads or tails of his argument. When I saw the guy also had a theory of unified physics, I gave up. Still don't know, he might have been onto something.

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.