F=ma

[Shiroikage]

Common characteristics of cranks

The second book of the philosopher and popular author Martin Gardner was a study of crank beliefs, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. More recently, the mathematician Underwood Dudley has written a series of books on mathematical cranks, including The Trisectors, Mathematical Cranks, and Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras Wrought. And in a 1992 UseNet post, the mathematician John Baez humorously proposed a "checklist", the Crackpot index, intended to "diagnose" cranky beliefs regarding contemporary physics.[2]

According to these authors, virtually universal characteristics of cranks include:

1. Cranks overestimate their own knowledge and ability, and underestimate that of acknowledged experts.
2. Cranks insist that their alleged discoveries are urgently important.
3. Cranks rarely if ever acknowledge any error, no matter how trivial.
4. Cranks love to talk about their own beliefs, often in inappropriate social situations, but they tend to be bad listeners, and often appear to be uninterested in anyone else's experience or opinions.

Some cranks exhibit a lack of academic achievement, in which case they typically assert that academic training in the subject of their crank belief is not only unnecessary for discovering "the truth", but actively harmful because they believe it "poisons" the minds by teaching falsehoods. Others greatly exaggerate their personal achievements, and may insist that some alleged achievement in some entirely unrelated area of human endeavor implies that their cranky opinion should be taken seriously.

Some cranks claim vast knowledge of any relevant literature, while others claim that familiarity with previous work is entirely unnecessary; regardless, cranks inevitably reveal that whether or not they believe themselves to be knowledgeable concerning relevant matters of fact, mainstream opinion, or previous work, they are not in fact well-informed concerning the topic of their belief.

In addition, many cranks

1. seriously misunderstand the mainstream opinion to which they believe that they are objecting,
2. stress that they have been working out their ideas for many decades, and claim that this fact alone entails that their belief cannot be dismissed as resting upon some simple error,
3. compare themselves with Galileo or Copernicus, implying that the mere unpopularity of some belief is in itself evidence of plausibility,
4. claim that their ideas are being suppressed, typically by secret intelligence organizations, mainstream science, powerful business interests, or other groups which, they allege, are terrified by the possibility of their allegedly revolutionary insights becoming widely known,
5. appear to regard themselves as persons of unique historical importance.

Cranks who contradict some mainstream opinion in some highly technical field, such as mathematics or physics, almost always

1. exhibit a marked lack of technical ability,
2. misunderstand or fail to use standard notation and terminology,
3. ignore fine distinctions which are essential to correctly understanding mainstream belief.

That is, cranks tend to ignore any previous insights which have been proven by experience to facilitate discussion and analysis of the topic of their cranky claims; indeed, they often assert that these innovations obscure rather than clarify the situation.[3]

In addition, cranky scientific "theories" do not in fact qualify as theories as this term is commonly understood within science. For example, crank "theories" in physics typically fail to result in testable predictions, which makes them unfalsifiable and hence unscientific. Or the crank may present their ideas in such a confused manner that it is impossible to determine what they are actually claiming.

Perhaps surprisingly, many cranks may appear quite normal when they are not passionately expounding their cranky belief, and they may even be successful in careers unrelated to their cranky belief. Others can (charitably) be characterized as underachievers in all walks of life.

Science fiction author and critic Bruce Sterling noted in his essay in CATSCAN 13:[4]

Online communication can wonderfully liberate the tender soul of some well-meaning personage who, for whatever reason, is physically uncharismatic. Unfortunately, online communication also fertilizes the eccentricities of hopeless cranks, who at last find themselves in firm possession of a wondrous soapbox that the Trilateral Commission and the Men In Black had previously denied them.

As noted above, in addition to a general lack of ability to accurately assess their own skills and knowledge, many cranks also exhibit deficiencies in reading comprehension, logical reasoning, and other cognitive abnormalities, which may contribute both to how they arrive at some bizarre counterfactual belief in the first place, and to how they are able to cling to such a belief in the face of all objections.

Hmm

[Woozie]

Max = pythagoras reincarnated. He's going to form a cult and drown people who prove his axioms wrong.

[Kuya]

Max, these fucks are just the jealous of the fact that when you were 7 you single handedly beat back apack of wolves.

[Max™]

Hmm

The LHC will not in fact find signs of a Higgs Boson, but rather it should discover a stable tetraquark configuration consisting of anti-down/up/anti-up/down quarks, rendering it completely non-interactive. It will have a rest mass of roughly 1.25 GeV, 0 spin (-1/2, 1/2, -1/2, 1/2), 0 charge (1/3, 2/3, -2/3, -1/3), and an undefinable half-life.

Has new physics been found at the ageing Tevatron? - space - 03 November 2008 - New Scientist

Hmmm.

The CDF muons appear to have come from the decay of a particle with a mass of about 1 GeV. So could they be a signature of dark matter? "We are trying to figure that out," says Weiner. "But I would be excited by the CDF data regardless."

Hmmm.



What's that?

A testable prediction?

Surprisingly accurate one completely unexpected by current models?


Yeah, eat it.

[Charismatic]

Max™, I have pretty large testicles.
Do you want to see them?

[Max™]

According to these authors, virtually universal characteristics of cranks include:

1. Cranks overestimate their own knowledge and ability, and underestimate that of acknowledged experts.

I am no smarter or more clever than anyone else, I do however have 20+ years of studying the work of a great man, whose efforts I am building on, Albert Einstein.

2. Cranks insist that their alleged discoveries are urgently important.

No rush, no one is going to give any non-string theory models much attention til the LHC shows that this extra dimension malarky is just mathematical masturbation at it's finest.

3. Cranks rarely if ever acknowledge any error, no matter how trivial.

I could be completely wrong, and have often been in the past. It's an important part of learning.

4. Cranks love to talk about their own beliefs, often in inappropriate social situations, but they tend to be bad listeners, and often appear to be uninterested in anyone else's experience or opinions.

I do lack a sense of tact, but I'm quite fond of listening, and love learning about other peoples point of view.

Some cranks exhibit a lack of academic achievement, in which case they typically assert that academic training in the subject of their crank belief is not only unnecessary for discovering "the truth", but actively harmful because they believe it "poisons" the minds by teaching falsehoods.

That's stupid, I am weaker in mathematics than I feel I should be, so I am studying math actively, I have been studying physics for 2 decades non-stop however. Literally 20+ years of work on the subject, I didn't just come to these conclusions overnight, people.

Others greatly exaggerate their personal achievements, and may insist that some alleged achievement in some entirely unrelated area of human endeavor implies that their cranky opinion should be taken seriously.

Nope, my work should be doubted and questioned, only then can it be determined if it is not wrong. Nothing I have done gives me reason to be taken seriously, beyond that which is obviously truthful (pointing out that the Bell inequality prevents localism AND causality, but no experiment favors either result over the other, only excludes that both are possible simultaneously), and my little prediction up there which will take the significantly higher energies of the LHC to be fully tested appropriately.

Some cranks claim vast knowledge of any relevant literature, while others claim that familiarity with previous work is entirely unnecessary; regardless, cranks inevitably reveal that whether or not they believe themselves to be knowledgeable concerning relevant matters of fact, mainstream opinion, or previous work, they are not in fact well-informed concerning the topic of their belief.

Quiz me on General Relativity, go ahead, it is the only area which I will claim to absolutely be an expert on. I am pretty well studied on the rest of physics, but I am a devoted student of Einstein and his works.

In addition, many cranks

1. seriously misunderstand the mainstream opinion to which they believe that they are objecting,

Nope, I understand fully the reasons why quantum mechanics is assumed generally to be non-local, rather than acausal. Causality is much harder to sacrifice logically it seems.

2. stress that they have been working out their ideas for many decades, and claim that this fact alone entails that their belief cannot be dismissed as resting upon some simple error,

I've been studying science for a couple decades, I've only been working out my specific model for the last year, when I noticed that there is no experimental reason to prefer to set a value in Einstein's equations for Gravitational Red Shift as it was set. That the only reason to set it there was to preserve a sense of causality, and that is when it clicked in my head what Einstein did. He came to the same conclusion I did, but did not like the idea of giving up causality.

If you can find an error in this, please do, I would love to know about it. I have checked far and wide for some disproof for the last year, and do not know of any before that.

3. compare themselves with Galileo or Copernicus, implying that the mere unpopularity of some belief is in itself evidence of plausibility,

That doesn't make sense.

4. claim that their ideas are being suppressed, typically by secret intelligence organizations, mainstream science, powerful business interests, or other groups which, they allege, are terrified by the possibility of their allegedly revolutionary insights becoming widely known,

Nope, it was only suppressed by Einstein, who was outspoken in his belief that the Universe should be local and causal.

5. appear to regard themselves as persons of unique historical importance.

Nope, it would be neat, but no one remembers physicists anyways, did you know Richard Feynman died in the 80's? Do you know who that was?

Didn't think so. T.T

Cranks who contradict some mainstream opinion in some highly technical field, such as mathematics or physics, almost always

1. exhibit a marked lack of technical ability,

I am unsatisfied with my own mathematical skills, but that is just because physics, particularly relativistic physics, is far less rigorous than pure mathematics, and I aspire to be a great mathematician as well as a physicist some day.

2. misunderstand or fail to use standard notation and terminology,

Woozie is irritated by my argument style, but I clearly understand what I am discussing, and why the notation is the way it is.

3. ignore fine distinctions which are essential to correctly understanding mainstream belief.

Quite the opposite, I understand the fine distinctions in physics very well, have you ever seen the LHC thread?

That is, cranks tend to ignore any previous insights which have been proven by experience to facilitate discussion and analysis of the topic of their cranky claims; indeed, they often assert that these innovations obscure rather than clarify the situation.[3]

I am specifically studying mathematics so I can produce a rigorous proof of my work.

In addition, cranky scientific "theories" do not in fact qualify as theories as this term is commonly understood within science. For example, crank "theories" in physics typically fail to result in testable predictions, which makes them unfalsifiable and hence unscientific. Or the crank may present their ideas in such a confused manner that it is impossible to determine what they are actually claiming.

If there is a Higgs, I am wrong.
I predicted a finding at a major particle accelerator.

Perhaps surprisingly, many cranks may appear quite normal when they are not passionately expounding their cranky belief, and they may even be successful in careers unrelated to their cranky belief. Others can (charitably) be characterized as underachievers in all walks of life.

I'm a young guy who likes to walk around in blue jeans, a t-shirt, and a fedora, ramble about existential bullshit with strangers, and feels most comfortable carrying a good sturdy stick. I don't think I'd be described as uneccentric by most... >.>, but hey.

Science fiction author and critic Bruce Sterling noted in his essay in CATSCAN 13:[4]

Online communication can wonderfully liberate the tender soul of some well-meaning personage who, for whatever reason, is physically uncharismatic. Unfortunately, online communication also fertilizes the eccentricities of hopeless cranks, who at last find themselves in firm possession of a wondrous soapbox that the Trilateral Commission and the Men In Black had previously denied them.

I do not have problems with face to face communication, though I do stutter at times when I get overly excited, strangely when I am discussing physics I do not.

I am much faster and more accurate at typing, and prefer the ability to pre-read my own words before sharing them, so as to attempt to make my point as clear and falsifiable as possible.

[Charismatic]

...I was being serious.

[Max™]

Sure, Domon, but I have to ask one thing first.

I notice you have a burning finger.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVOT_Ofk-_8

Are you this guy?

If so, can you smack Lil'Wayne in the face for being a goofy looking crackhead muhfucka?

[Mizango]

I understand you Max, it's all that matters.

Real niggas dawg

[Shiroikage]

Nope, it would be neat, but no one remembers physicists anyways, did you know Richard Feynman died in the 80's? Do you know who that was?

Of course I know who Richard Feynman is. I'm just about done my undergrad in biochemistry and he's my favourite scientist.

[_chuchu]

Of course I know who Richard Feynman is. I'm just about done my undergrad in biochemistry and he's my favourite scientist.

almost trolled

[#686578]

That's impossible given your current vector. I have a TI program that will graph this for you so you don't get confused about who you like any more.

Please forward this to me.

[Shiroikage]

My favourite spelling of favourite is favourite.

[Charismatic]

Unacceptable.

[Colenzo]

i'll allow it

[#686578]

Overruled.

[Howard Roark]

My favourite spelling of favourite is favourite.

tautology

[#686578]

Your sig is better this way.

[Howard Roark]

other was too long, I know

I just wanted a change and I had seen that statue in a gallery and liked it