3 ms·

Time to break out John Baez's checklist: https://archive.org/details/TheCrackpotIndex https://archive.org/details/TheCrackpotIndex

FrustratedMonky 3y ago
Maybe better link, more readable : https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html
tgv 3y ago
Never heard of it, but it seems to give a good digest of the format. Unfortunately, it seems aimed at non-academic crackpots. It doesn't even award points for vacuous mentioning Schrödinger or Kant.
- jyounker 3y ago
  I was really turned off by the mention of Kant at first, but reading on it's relevant to the discussion. This is a real scientist applying Kant's idea to real phenomena in a useful way. Please read the paper in detail.
  - tgv 3y ago
    I had glossed it, and the part where they make a surprise move to Kant, is ... not very convincing. The way they describe it doesn't make sense. It's not as if there's any proof that a "Whole" is life or vice versa. It's just one of their assumptions. If we take their writing as some form of evidence for it, they claim children inherit your Parts, but that's not true. They also imply that Parts cannot exist outside the Whole, which is patently false when taken literally. But in the loose sense in which they seem to use it, I could totally see a piano as a Whole: keys, snares, hammers, sound board, it doesn't make sense outside a piano. Also, notable features of life aren't included nor implied by the concept Whole. They also call Collectively Autocatalytic Sets an "established mathematical theory", but it's a mathematical property that can be true of some domain. It doesn't prove anything. There aren't any proofs involving that property in the paper either. Later they call it a "chemical reaction system," which seems to be more to the point, but there are so many of those. It's just another idea, and not an original one either. Wikipedia: "Autocatalytic sets constitute just one of several current theories of life." That Autocatalytic sets by itself isn't enough to explain life may be a point, but there's no reason to assume they've found the magical ingredient in Kant.
jyounker 3y ago
The first author is Stuart Kaufmann: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Kauffman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Kauffman Not a crackpot.
gala8y 3y ago
that's great. it gets steep from 29 onward. and for a reason.
deleted 3y ago
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FrustratedMonky 3y ago

Maybe better link, more readable : https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html

tgv 3y ago

Never heard of it, but it seems to give a good digest of the format. Unfortunately, it seems aimed at non-academic crackpots. It doesn't even award points for vacuous mentioning Schrödinger or Kant.

jyounker 3y ago
I was really turned off by the mention of Kant at first, but reading on it's relevant to the discussion. This is a real scientist applying Kant's idea to real phenomena in a useful way. Please read the paper in detail.
- tgv 3y ago
  I had glossed it, and the part where they make a surprise move to Kant, is ... not very convincing. The way they describe it doesn't make sense. It's not as if there's any proof that a "Whole" is life or vice versa. It's just one of their assumptions. If we take their writing as some form of evidence for it, they claim children inherit your Parts, but that's not true. They also imply that Parts cannot exist outside the Whole, which is patently false when taken literally. But in the loose sense in which they seem to use it, I could totally see a piano as a Whole: keys, snares, hammers, sound board, it doesn't make sense outside a piano. Also, notable features of life aren't included nor implied by the concept Whole. They also call Collectively Autocatalytic Sets an "established mathematical theory", but it's a mathematical property that can be true of some domain. It doesn't prove anything. There aren't any proofs involving that property in the paper either. Later they call it a "chemical reaction system," which seems to be more to the point, but there are so many of those. It's just another idea, and not an original one either. Wikipedia: "Autocatalytic sets constitute just one of several current theories of life." That Autocatalytic sets by itself isn't enough to explain life may be a point, but there's no reason to assume they've found the magical ingredient in Kant.

jyounker 3y ago

The first author is Stuart Kaufmann: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Kauffman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Kauffman Not a crackpot.

gala8y 3y ago

that's great. it gets steep from 29 onward. and for a reason.

deleted 3y ago

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