Why is there so much crackpot physics?

[Zeuzzz]

Picture some one who has read your Baalbek thread.

That is a class thread. One of the funniest. Geemack is such a joker, and he's still doing it after eleven pages!

 

[dasmiller]

Never think you've seen it all when it comes to crackpottery:
LINK
According to this character, who was expelled from The University of Michigan, relativity is wrong, QM is wrong and he has redone the last 350 years of physics.

Some people, and particularly those who feel underappreciated by the internet, will periodically (I suspect daily) google themselves to see what's being said about them so that they may "correct" any "misperceptions."

So quoting someone like that may well draw a personal appearance from the quotee, so that he may defend himself from the allegation of crackpottery. Such an appearance wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, but I'd keep the possibility in mind when making posts like that.

In this case, I'd guess that his tenure on the JREF forum would be relatively brief, but sometimes I'm surprised.

 

[Perpetual Student]

It's quite amazing how you can read the exact same words as I type yet get the completely opposite meaning from them.

Picture my post but written by Perpetual Student.

oh noes, what just happened?

It would appear that you are preceded by your reputation.

 

[dafydd]

It would appear that you are preceded by your reputation.

He seems to be under the mistaken impression that Geemack is providing the entertainment in that thread.

 

[Zeuzzz]

I feel privileged.

 

[Anders Lindman]

... For example, the quoted text above.

I can back up my claim, such as:

"The Trail of Secrecy

The world of secrecy has run away from us, beyond the ability of free citizens to examine and critique. When we trace the evolution of this secrecy, we find it hard to pinpoint just when things turned south. This has been going on for a long time. ...

By way of illustration, I will relate something told to me by a scientist formerly with the National Security Agency. During a private conversation, he told me that at least some computers within the NSA were running at a clock speed of 650 MHz during the mid-1960s. ...

Now ask yourself, given (a) great secrecy, (b) great amounts of money, (c) several decades, (d) enough genius-level scientists working for you, and (e) extraterrestrial or alien technology to study, is it possible for key breakthroughs to be made without the rest of the world ever learning of them? Breakthroughs so substantial that they create new areas of scientific study, new technologies, new capabilities, new interactions with these “others,” and as a result a radically new understanding of humanity itself and the cosmos within which we live?

Would such changes result in a clandestine world so different that it might qualify as a separate civilization? One that has broken away from our own?

I think the answer to that is yes. " -- http://www.afterdisclosure.com/2011/04/breakaway.html

 

[Zeuzzz]

^ That guys imagination is awesome. I want to believe

I think UFOs say more about us than they do about aliens. We have little conceptual idea how species bound our notion of intelligent life is.

The problem is not finding it in the first place but recognizing it as intelligent alien life when we find it.

 

[Tubbythin]

None of the crackpot physicists who turn up here have ever overturned a fundamental law of physics.

They have in their own heads.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Good to see that this thread is active again.

It's been said before, but is worth repeating: given that those who spend so much time and energy promoting crackpot physics so spectacularly fail at communicating, why do they not try to adjust their message?

What is it that they spectacularly fail to communicate? And to whom?

The validity - and logical consistency - of the very crackpot physics they seem to be devoting their lives to! To, well, anyone; certainly I've not read anyone on this forum say - after reading the pages and pages (and pages) of material posted by an ardent promoter - that any of that crackpot physics is cool/insightful/valid/deserving of a Nobel/etc.

I mean, surely the promoters of such crackpot physics must know that they have failed - utterly - to make their case?

Yet, it seems all they do is repeat the same thing, over and over and over again. Not once trying to adjust the message, use a different approach, (answer questions), ...

Isn't there a saying about repeating the same thing, many times, but ... ?

 

[dasmiller]

I mean, surely the promoters of such crackpot physics must know that they have failed - utterly - to make their case?

Yet, it seems all they do is repeat the same thing, over and over and over again. Not once trying to adjust the message, use a different approach, (answer questions), ...

I think that many of them sincerely believe that we (the mainstreamers) are the ones who are being thickheaded. Thus, if the communication is failing, the problem is on our side, and why should they adjust their message when they're already laying it out perfectly clearly?

Also, I think they're unlikey to come at it from a different approach because they don't have a lot of approaches. In mainstream physics, there are often a number of very different ways to look at a problem and all (if valid) will give consistent results. For example, in my younger days, I knew several ways to look at how wings generated lift (look at the downwash angle, or do that vortex cross product trick, or simply integrate the pressure over the surface, etc). But often a crackpot will have seized onto one tidbit (often a misunderstood tidbit) and extrapolated endlessly from that. There aren't several different ways of looking at the problem that give the same answer, so the crackpot is often stuck with a single approach.

As for repetition, well, first, I've found that we tend to repeat ourselves a lot when dealing with the crackpots, so there's repetition on both sides. IMO, of course, the mainstreamers are repeating true things and the crackpots are often repeating their ignorance, but we're both repeating.

Second, I remember that with our former-resident Iron Sun advocate, he seemed to genuinely forget that his points had been refuted. I suspect that he simpy wasn't paying much attention to the refutations and sort of skipped over them, but it led to a lot of going around in circles (and ******* nearly got me suspended a few times).

Anyway, those are my musings for tonight.

 

[fuelair]

None of the crackpot physicists who turn up here have ever overturned a fundamental law of physics.

Though a great number of them have thoroughly exposed their fundaments.

 

[GeeMack]

Good to see that this thread is active again.

It's been said before, but is worth repeating: given that those who spend so much time and energy promoting crackpot physics so spectacularly fail at communicating, why do they not try to adjust their message?

What is it that they spectacularly fail to communicate? And to whom?

Absolutely. I've often asked that question directly to assorted crackpots, the Electric Sun and iron surface Sun nuts in particular. I'd say...

"Mozina, you've been parading your crazy conjecture all over the Internet for over half a decade now. You've written tens of thousands of posts on dozens of forums, literally millions of words. Let's just say for a second that your wacko idea is correct, that every single solar physicist on Earth is wrong and you are the sole bastion of truth. Let's just say for a second that the Sun does indeed have a solid iron surface just below the deepest point where any light can escape. If what you claim is true, given your millions of words trying to convince people of that, why have you been absolutely unable to convince even a single professional solar scientist, physicist, or even a grad student that you are correct?"
​

Some people are able to convince folks that they can read minds, for gods sake. Some people convince others that invisible magical beings are responsible for the course of nature, and can change its direction if we recite little rhyming requests. Convincing people of irrational, unscientific things clearly isn't impossible. Convincing people of scientific things should be, by comparison, a piece of cake.

The validity - and logical consistency - of the very crackpot physics they seem to be devoting their lives to! To, well, anyone; certainly I've not read anyone on this forum say - after reading the pages and pages (and pages) of material posted by an ardent promoter - that any of that crackpot physics is cool/insightful/valid/deserving of a Nobel/etc.

I mean, surely the promoters of such crackpot physics must know that they have failed - utterly - to make their case?

Yet, it seems all they do is repeat the same thing, over and over and over again. Not once trying to adjust the message, use a different approach, (answer questions), ...

Isn't there a saying about repeating the same thing, many times, but ... ?

Yep. Normal people, like people who aren't suffering from some mental illness that prevents them from thinking rationally, would recognize that it comes down to just a few possibilities. Either they are the most incompetent communicators ever to walk this planet, wholly incapable of presenting their "theories" in an articulate, cogent manner... or they are wrong. Sadly, some of the most rigid unyielding willful ignorance prevents them from recognizing either of those possibilities.

 

[GeeMack]

jhunter1163, please replace the post you just deleted from this thread. Thanks.

ETA: For anyone who missed it, jhunter1163's post was an agreement with the position I expressed in my above post.

 

[Perpetual Student]

Good to see that this thread is active again.

It's been said before, but is worth repeating: given that those who spend so much time and energy promoting crackpot physics so spectacularly fail at communicating, why do they not try to adjust their message?

What is it that they spectacularly fail to communicate? And to whom?

The validity - and logical consistency - of the very crackpot physics they seem to be devoting their lives to! To, well, anyone; certainly I've not read anyone on this forum say - after reading the pages and pages (and pages) of material posted by an ardent promoter - that any of that crackpot physics is cool/insightful/valid/deserving of a Nobel/etc.

I mean, surely the promoters of such crackpot physics must know that they have failed - utterly - to make their case?

Yet, it seems all they do is repeat the same thing, over and over and over again. Not once trying to adjust the message, use a different approach, (answer questions), ...

Isn't there a saying about repeating the same thing, many times, but ... ?

Before getting involved with this forum, I had no idea about the world of crackpot physics. I was certainly aware of mystical type nutcase phonies like Uri Geller, Edgar Casey, etc. but this phenomenon of "serious" pseudo-physics crackpots took me by surprise. After four years, I still ponder about what drives them.
We are all laymen in many areas outside our own expertise, but normal people simply accept their limitations, respect the knowledge and judgement of those who have paid their dues and move on. Crackpot medicine (quackery) seems to be a similar phenomenon, but quacks are driven by money. In contrast, there is little money to be gained through crackpot physics.
So, some combination of ego, narcissism, other factors coupled with a lack of math skills seems to be at work -- but why? The world of physics is populated by tens of thousands of very knowledgeable and smart people who have spent the time and made the effort to really know their stuff. The crackpots, having done none of that, irrationally believe they know better. It's really very strange!

 

[GeeMack]

Before getting involved with this forum, I had no idea about the world of crackpot physics. I was certainly aware of mystical type nutcase phonies like Uri Geller, Edgar Casey, etc. but this phenomenon of "serious" pseudo-physics crackpots took me by surprise. After four years, I still ponder about what drives them.
We are all laymen in many areas outside our own expertise, but normal people simply accept their limitations, respect the knowledge and judgement of those who have paid their dues and move on. Crackpot medicine (quackery) seems to be a similar phenomenon, but quacks are driven by money. In contrast, there is little money to be gained through crackpot physics.
So, some combination of ego, narcissism, other factors coupled with a lack of math skills seems to be at work -- but why? The world of physics is populated by tens of thousands of very knowledgeable and smart people who have spent the time and made the effort to really know their stuff. The crackpots, having done none of that, irrationally believe they know better. It's really very strange!

Indeed. Much of that echos what I said here...

Yep. Normal people, like people who aren't suffering from some mental illness that prevents them from thinking rationally, would recognize that it comes down to just a few possibilities. Either they are the most incompetent communicators ever to walk this planet, wholly incapable of presenting their "theories" in an articulate, cogent manner... or they are wrong. Sadly, some of the most rigid unyielding willful ignorance prevents them from recognizing either of those possibilities.

 

[dafydd]

Before getting involved with this forum, I had no idea about the world of crackpot physics. I was certainly aware of mystical type nutcase phonies like Uri Geller, Edgar Casey, etc. but this phenomenon of "serious" pseudo-physics crackpots took me by surprise. After four years, I still ponder about what drives them.
We are all laymen in many areas outside our own expertise, but normal people simply accept their limitations, respect the knowledge and judgement of those who have paid their dues and move on. Crackpot medicine (quackery) seems to be a similar phenomenon, but quacks are driven by money. In contrast, there is little money to be gained through crackpot physics.
So, some combination of ego, narcissism, other factors coupled with a lack of math skills seems to be at work -- but why? The world of physics is populated by tens of thousands of very knowledgeable and smart people who have spent the time and made the effort to really know their stuff. The crackpots, having done none of that, irrationally believe they know better. It's really very strange!

It is amusing to witness these people, who have trouble with high school algebra, lecturing real physicists.

 

[Farsight]

Oops, my mistake, as Clinger pointed out, I wrote 0.2 instead of 0.02 - a fifth instead of a fiftieth. The square root of a fiftieth is appoximately a seventh. And there was a typo where I put a ² outside the brackets. Aw, it was late, and I was using the size option, it's fiddly. Shall we try again? The real reason why there’s so much crackpot physics is conviction. And arrogance, and pride, and hubris. Some people will use anything they can to dismiss something that proves them wrong, be it experiment and evidence and explanation, and even Einstein. They come out with accusations like they never use any mathematics, but when you do, they dismiss that too. Then they make some new accusation, or change the subject, or pull some other slippery stunt. Let's try again with that invariant Lorentz interval:

You can work it through using a pair of parallel-mirror light-clocks. Event1 is when we set them running, keeping clock1 as the local clock whilst sending clock2 travelling on an out-and-back trip. Event2 is when they meet back up. We see the light moving like this ǁ in the local clock1, and each reflection adds 1 to t1. But because it’s just sitting there, x1 y1 and z1 are zero. We see light moving like this /\ in the travelling clock2. Treat one side of the angled path as a right-angled triangle, and the hypotenuse is the lightpath where c=1 in natural units, the base is the speed v as a fraction of c, and the height gives the Lorentz factor γ = 1/√(1-v²/c²). If the travelling clock2 is doing .99c the Lorentz factor is 1/√(1-0.99²/1²) = 1/√(1-0.98) = 1/√0.02 = 1/0.142 = 7. So there's a sevenfold time dilation. That means t2 is a seventh of t1. And because it’s only on a straight-line out-and-back trip, x2 is non-zero whilst y2 and z2 are zero.

When the two clocks meet back up we can be confident that delta s is the same for both clocks because the travelling clock covered a total distance x2 = vt1 = 0.99t1. Whatever the value of t1, delta s1= t1 and delta s2 = √(-0.142t1²) + √(0.99t1²) = 0.02t1 + 0.98t1 = t1. Simple. What’s even simpler is to look at what you’re dealing with, and realise the two total light-path lengths between event1 and event2 are the same in both clocks. That’s what underlies the invariant interval. Macroscopic motion comes at the cost of a reduced local rate of motion. That’s why there’s a minus on the t.

Note that there's no literal time flowing in those parallel-mirror light-clocks, just light moving back and forth between the mirrors. All a clock does is “clock up" some kind of regular cyclic local motion. That’s really useful for when you’re looking at things like black holes, when you’re really up against the crackpots. They will tell you about the waterfall analogy, where space is supposedly falling into a black hole. That's abject nonsense. It's like saying the sky is falling in, and it absolutely contradicts general relativity. But if you point that out, the crackpots will call you a crackpot. Or a heretic, or something else. And as ever they will dismiss experiment and evidence and explanation, and even Einstein.

 

[tusenfem]

Oops, my mistake,

and still a more glaring mistake

 

[DeiRenDopa]

I think that many of them sincerely believe that we (the mainstreamers) are the ones who are being thickheaded. Thus, if the communication is failing, the problem is on our side, and why should they adjust their message when they're already laying it out perfectly clearly?

Yes of course, except that, having failed to get the message across, why bother keeping on keeping on? Why not simply stop, walk away, and go do some research (based on the Truth)?

GM mentioned MM in an earlier post (now gone, I think): as far as I know no one, across dozens (?) of sites, even claimed to understand his claims (as a coherent body of logically connected ideas), much less was convinced of their validity. If you visit the Thunderdolts website, you'll see that, even among those who share the meme 'Mainstream is WRONG!!!!!!', almost no one seems to understand MM's claims, much less is able to articulate them or start doing some research based on them (to be clear, 'Mainstream is WRONG!!!!!!' doesn't count).

Here we have FS (to take another example). So far as I can tell, no one has said they even understand 'Farsight GR'. I certainly don't, even though I did try mighty hard (one cannot enter into a meaningful dialog - IMHO - on something like FGR unless one actually understands it). And it seems I am not alone; while I certainly haven't read more than a small fraction of the material posted even in this website, I have yet to read anything by any JREF member that could be construed as meaning "yes, I understand what you're saying FS, but ..."

As posts here about FGR - by its one and only proponent - stretch back several years (at least), I wonder why FS simply hasn't stopped posting here? I mean, couldn't the immense amount of time and energy be better spent doing FGR-based research? Or writing papers, to be submitted to some relevant, peer-reviewed journal?

Take another example, Zz. At least part of his motivation - by his own words - is pure trolling, so it's understandable why he still posts crackpot physics (at least in part). But beyond that, after having the crackpot physics exposed (often by the same JREF members, e.g. ben), he nearly always stops posting. And in the case of this crackpot physics, quite a few JREF members do claim to at least understand that physics (or key aspects of it anyway), myself included.

Also, I think they're unlikey to come at it from a different approach because they don't have a lot of approaches. In mainstream physics, there are often a number of very different ways to look at a problem and all (if valid) will give consistent results. For example, in my younger days, I knew several ways to look at how wings generated lift (look at the downwash angle, or do that vortex cross product trick, or simply integrate the pressure over the surface, etc). But often a crackpot will have seized onto one tidbit (often a misunderstood tidbit) and extrapolated endlessly from that. There aren't several different ways of looking at the problem that give the same answer, so the crackpot is often stuck with a single approach.

True, that.

What I meant was slightly different though.

Take FGR as an example. The approaches FS has used, to try to explain it, are very limited in number and scope. Approaches that have not been used - as far as I know - include things like a clear statement of postulates, followed by derivations (using equations, mathematics, etc), leading to conclusions; exposition of FGR-based models, showing the match with experimental results; and responding to clear critiques with point-by-point explanations which tie directly back to FGR.

As for repetition, well, first, I've found that we tend to repeat ourselves a lot when dealing with the crackpots, so there's repetition on both sides. IMO, of course, the mainstreamers are repeating true things and the crackpots are often repeating their ignorance, but we're both repeating.

Again, no doubt.

But, in my experience, it usually takes but a page or two of focused dialog to get to the point of adequate mutual understanding; beyond that it's mostly content-free repetition. And often "the mainstreamers" are - on the whole - posting questions (which, though often repeated, do not get answered by the crackpot physics proponent, no matter how many different ways they are asked).

Second, I remember that with our former-resident Iron Sun advocate, he seemed to genuinely forget that his points had been refuted. I suspect that he simpy wasn't paying much attention to the refutations and sort of skipped over them, but it led to a lot of going around in circles (and ******* nearly got me suspended a few times).

And in Zz's case, the motivation for 'apparent forgetting' may have been (and still be?) trolling.

But here's a thought: to the extent that crackpot physics resembles textual analysis of documents accepted as inerrant, 'research' - to a proponent of such crackpot physics - consists of what 'mainstreamers' see as 'quote mining'. And that may be the reason (or one reason) why you never see a proponent of crackpot physics proposing a new experiment (or a new analysis of existing experimental results), or new astronomical observations (ditto), or new areas of mathematical physics. Because, as Tom Bridgman has long maintained, crackpot physics resembles creationism more than it does a branch of science.

If that is so, then a possible explanation for the apparently irrational behavior is that, to the advocates/proponents, it's proselytizing.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

It is amusing to witness these people, who have trouble with high school algebra, lecturing real physicists.

Oh yes, what strange part of our psyche finds amusement in others' making complete and utter fools of themselves?

On TV there are shows with enormous numbers of regular viewers, watching people make fools of themselves; but, in many cases, there's a clear motivation ... $$$. In the case of proponents of crackpot physics, what is the motivation?

Or perhaps they simply do not realize just how much amusement - of this kind - they are providing what should be the audience they are trying convince (of the validity of the crackpot physics they're promoting); how many a time has the advice "when you're in a hole, stop digging" been offered (only to be completely ignored)?

Equally amusing is some of the pithy responses from "the mainstreamers": some contain what resemble 'in jokes', jokes at the crackpot physics proponent's expense, jokes which (almost) all the other readers 'get', but jokes which go whoosh, right over said proponent's head!

Before my post here, yesterday, I spent well over an hour reading another thread (the one which is linked to, near PS' 'revival post'); I was howling with laughter, and couldn't tear myself away (I don't like turkey anyway)! Am I cruel, to get so much pleasure from another's best efforts to get egg on their face?

More seriously, surely crackpot physics proponents recognize that their 'best efforts' provide such (unintended) amusement? Even if they - apparently - have no idea why? And if they so realize, why oh why don't they stop?!? Or at least seriously re-examine their message, their approach?