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Probably because it's the only piece of evidence you can understand with just high school physics. Most laypeople have trouble understanding that the universe i

Probably because it's the only piece of evidence you can understand with just high school physics. Most laypeople have trouble understanding that the universe is not expanding from a single point, so how would they be able to understand what the cosmic background radiation is, much less why its angular power spectrum has peaks at particular positions? It's a common pattern with crackpots as well, that they focus on "big" but easy to understand things like special relativity, which doesn't involve more math than you learn in high school. No crackpot ever revolutionizes condensed matter physics or statistical mechanics. Although the bullet cluster should be a clear indicator as well, the rest of the evidence of DM appears much more subtle to a layperson. Anyway, cosmology is a weird topic which not only HN reveals tons of arrogance over. Lots of misplaced skepticism. (Probably similar to the Covid topic.)

MrScruff 4y ago
Yes exactly. We've all experienced reading an account on our particular domain of expertise by a journalist and realising they have absolutely no clue what they're talking about. I find it amazing how presumably otherwise intelligent people reading Hacker News don't see the issue with offering lay opinions on Cosmology of all topics.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pantalaimon 4y ago
  Well there is a connection. Often I read news articles about science where I think "Wait, that doesn’t make sense." or "Hey, this assumption is not explained at all!" and without the original paper to read (or the knowledge to understand it) the only place to take this confusion is the comments section, with the hope that someone might explain it.
- mumblemumble 4y ago
  I think that's just a factor of the open nature of HN meaning there's always someone ready with a hot take, and plenty of social incentive to provide one. None of us is as dumb as all of us.
BrandoElFollito 4y ago
> No crackpot ever revolutionizes condensed matter physics or statistical mechanics Well, the memory of water still has a lot of support, as the scientific explanation for homeopathy. Lots and lots of crackpots here. I would not call this crackpot, but it took an awful amount of time for some to let go cold fusion. As for statistics - my personal hell is when I have to read some biology or biology-like document and there are numbers that are tortured to make them sing the way they are expected to. I do not even talk about economy, psychology, sociology and other similar ologies.
mabbo 4y ago
> Anyway, cosmology is a weird topic which not only HN reveals tons of arrogance over. Lots of misplaced skepticism. (Probably similar to the Covid topic.) It's the curse of being clever. People believe that since they're clever and were able to be successful at what they do, it must be that all other topics are similarly easy. And with easy access (via the internet) to the most basic introductions for lay people to any topic, the Dunning Kruger effect really kicks in. The more clever you are, the easier it is to fall into this trap. example: "Buy twitter and solve all its problems myself".
CuriouslyC 4y ago
Crackpots emerge when a conceptual model is weak. They don't care how strong a mathematical model is, which is why they ignore SM and other areas where "theory" literally means a mathematical model, and nothing else. Having a lot of crackpots proposing bad theories is a sign that your conceptual model is garbage, just a bad attempt to hand wave a bunch of math that happens to predict reality, and you should stop pretending. There are infinitely many mathematical systems that could describe "reality" all with divergent behavior in the parts of the system we haven't observed yet. Trying to make authoritative claims by analogy to coincidentally correspondent mathematical systems is foolhardy and vain.
- ouid 4y ago
  you seem to believe that there is some distinction between coneptual models and mathematical ones. Mathematics is the entirety of what we can conceive about a thing. It is not the gold standard for conceptualization, it is conceptualization itself.
- stouset 4y ago
  > Having a lot of crackpots proposing bad theories is a sign that your conceptual model is garbage We have crackpots proposing that the Earth is flat.

MrScruff 4y ago

Yes exactly. We've all experienced reading an account on our particular domain of expertise by a journalist and realising they have absolutely no clue what they're talking about. I find it amazing how presumably otherwise intelligent people reading Hacker News don't see the issue with offering lay opinions on Cosmology of all topics.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pantalaimon 4y ago
Well there is a connection. Often I read news articles about science where I think "Wait, that doesn’t make sense." or "Hey, this assumption is not explained at all!" and without the original paper to read (or the knowledge to understand it) the only place to take this confusion is the comments section, with the hope that someone might explain it.
mumblemumble 4y ago
I think that's just a factor of the open nature of HN meaning there's always someone ready with a hot take, and plenty of social incentive to provide one. None of us is as dumb as all of us.

BrandoElFollito 4y ago

> No crackpot ever revolutionizes condensed matter physics or statistical mechanics Well, the memory of water still has a lot of support, as the scientific explanation for homeopathy. Lots and lots of crackpots here. I would not call this crackpot, but it took an awful amount of time for some to let go cold fusion. As for statistics - my personal hell is when I have to read some biology or biology-like document and there are numbers that are tortured to make them sing the way they are expected to. I do not even talk about economy, psychology, sociology and other similar ologies.

mabbo 4y ago

> Anyway, cosmology is a weird topic which not only HN reveals tons of arrogance over. Lots of misplaced skepticism. (Probably similar to the Covid topic.) It's the curse of being clever. People believe that since they're clever and were able to be successful at what they do, it must be that all other topics are similarly easy. And with easy access (via the internet) to the most basic introductions for lay people to any topic, the Dunning Kruger effect really kicks in. The more clever you are, the easier it is to fall into this trap. example: "Buy twitter and solve all its problems myself".

CuriouslyC 4y ago

Crackpots emerge when a conceptual model is weak. They don't care how strong a mathematical model is, which is why they ignore SM and other areas where "theory" literally means a mathematical model, and nothing else. Having a lot of crackpots proposing bad theories is a sign that your conceptual model is garbage, just a bad attempt to hand wave a bunch of math that happens to predict reality, and you should stop pretending. There are infinitely many mathematical systems that could describe "reality" all with divergent behavior in the parts of the system we haven't observed yet. Trying to make authoritative claims by analogy to coincidentally correspondent mathematical systems is foolhardy and vain.

ouid 4y ago
you seem to believe that there is some distinction between coneptual models and mathematical ones. Mathematics is the entirety of what we can conceive about a thing. It is not the gold standard for conceptualization, it is conceptualization itself.
stouset 4y ago
> Having a lot of crackpots proposing bad theories is a sign that your conceptual model is garbage We have crackpots proposing that the Earth is flat.