Why is there so much crackpot physics?

Perpetual Student said:
I'm not sure, but probably at times. He has had many jobs as he has gone from project to project over some 40 years. What is your "lone engineer" theory?
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I can see how a lone engineer could become overconfident in his/her (though it seems like the physics crackpots are always men . . .) understanding of the world. They really dp understand how things work better than those around them, and those around them often think that the engineer really does understand everything scientific. In that situation, if you're accustomed to being able to figure stuff out pretty quickly, then when you run into something like SR or QM, it's easy to think that the problem must be with SR or QM, rather than with you.

But if you're working daily with lots of other engineers who are dealing with esoteric aspects of waveform combining, or radiation hardening, or fracture mechanics, or a zillion other specialties, then you're constantly being reminded that the world is simply complex and non-intuitive, and that even if you don't understand something, other people really, really do. You've probably even looked stupid once or twice when you were shown exactly how much you didn't understand about a complex subject. Even if you're a recognized expert in some deep technical subject, there are a lot of deep technical subjects, and being that expert merely makes you one more guy in the back of the room.

I work with a lot of really sharp engineers (there are literally thousands of other engineers at my work site). It tends to make one more humble.
 
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Kwalish Kid said:
Then you probably do not want a link to Farsight's television appearance.
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Are you talking about the show displayed on richplanet.net?
In it the Richard Hall guy asks Farsight what drew him to writing about physics? Richard suggests there was some frustration which brought Farsight to write the book Relativity+, Farsight confirms this.

Farsight explains that he has two teenage children, and that he is disappointed that his two teen age children gave up all of their science subjects. Farsight explains that when he asked his children about that, they said the most exciting thing they had done was timing a pendulum. Farsight explains that there was no wow factor to it (science subjects) anymore.

Farsight has told here that he wants to save physics (and the planet), he probably told them in some way as well. I can only imagine how his Relativity+ related online activities would come across to his children.
Perhaps Farsight"s embarrassing baseless absolute confidence has a very mundane explanation, namely that he is continually trying to save face with regards to his children.
 
Perpetual Student said:
Similarly, remember how often we saw Mozina quoting something Alfven said. It was very reminiscent of someone quoting sacred texts.
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Good point.

We should distinguish wrong physics (or science generally) from crackpot physics (or science). Michael Mozina's citations of Alfvén's holy scripture were crackpot physics. When judged by what was known at the time, I think Alfvén's cosmological mistakes were (mostly) just mistakes.

Alfvén seemed to enjoy writing provocatively, and in his love of provocation some of his cosmological writing may have walked too close to the line that divides wrong from crackpot. Had he kept up with research in astronomy and cosmology, as a younger or more cautious researcher would more likely have done, he'd have written less about cosmology, and what he'd have written would have looked better today.

Alfvén didn't understand general relativity very well, which limited his understanding of black holes and Big Bang cosmology. Like most engineers, Alfvén was far more comfortable with differential equations than non-Euclidean differential geometry, and he seems to have developed a low opinion of cosmology during his long struggle to earn respect for the importance of plasma physics in space. When his theories of the solar wind and terrestrial aurora were vindicated by experiment, he seems to have taken that as vindication for his low opinion of cosmology in general.

Einstein himself struggled with differential geometry (which was then known as absolute differential calculus). When he realized it was relevant, however, he got his friend Marcel Grossman to teach him. In 1912, Einstein wrote:

Einstein said:
I am now working exclusively on the gravitation problem and believe that I can overcome all difficulties with the help of a mathematician friend of mine here. But one thing is certain: never before in my life have I toiled any where near as much, and I have gained enormous respect for mathematics, whose more subtle parts I considered until now, in my ignorance, as pure luxury. Compared with this problem, the original theory of relativity is child's play.
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Einstein's "enormous respect for mathematics" is not often found within crackpot physics.

Kwalish Kid said:
Then you probably do not want a link to Farsight's television appearance.
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I've seen that. It's too long, though. Someone should make a highlight reel.

DavidS said:
If you're seeing that, your change and disposal frequencies aren't nearly as high as they should be.
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:blush:
 
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dasmiller said:
I can see how a lone engineer could become overconfident in his/her (though it seems like the physics crackpots are always men . . .) understanding of the world. They really dp understand how things work better than those around them, and those around them often think that the engineer really does understand everything scientific. In that situation, if you're accustomed to being able to figure stuff out pretty quickly, then when you run into something like SR or QM, it's easy to think that the problem must be with SR or QM, rather than with you.

But if you're working daily with lots of other engineers who are dealing with esoteric aspects of waveform combining, or radiation hardening, or fracture mechanics, or a zillion other specialties, then you're constantly being reminded that the world is simply complex and non-intuitive, and that even if you don't understand something, other people really, really do. You've probably even looked stupid once or twice when you were shown exactly how much you didn't understand about a complex subject. Even if you're a recognized expert in some deep technical subject, there are a lot of deep technical subjects, and being that expert merely makes you one more guy in the back of the room.

I work with a lot of really sharp engineers (there are literally thousands of other engineers at my work site). It tends to make one more humble.
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I appreciate those reassuring comments. My acquaintance gives me the impression of being a very capable engineer. Since he has been involved in the design and development of a lot of high end technology, I would imagine he has been around a lot of other engineers working in electronics. The similarity to the description in the links provided by catsmate1 were very striking. It's hard to understand the basis of his strange views.
 
Perpetual Student said:
He insists he is correct in his opinions because of his superior perspective as an engineer. I wonder if these guys convince each other of this stuff as they interact with each other in their work -- thereby creating some kind of subculture.
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Counter culture is the word.
 
It isn't counter-culture Zeuzzz. What it is is that people just love mystery and woo. They do, they love it, and they cling to it with utter conviction. And if you take issue with their time machines or their sky falling in, or their wormholes or white holes or branes or multiverse, they get all sniffy and say stuff like you don't understand the math, crackpot.
 
Um, I'm pretty sure the consensus among mainstream physicists is that time travel is impossible.
 
Don't be too sure about that, Dave. See for example this and this. I'd agree that most physicists think time travel is bunk, but some high-profile celebrity physicists peddle it and it gets a fair amount of publicity. OK it's more pop-science publicity than serious publicity, but it still gets out to the public who treat it seriously. For the record, we were talking about time travel on JREF a couple of weeks back here. I chimed in on post 110.
 
Farsight said:
Don't be too sure about that, Dave. See for example this and this. I'd agree that most physicists think time travel is bunk, but some high-profile celebrity physicists peddle it and it gets a fair amount of publicity. OK it's more pop-science publicity than serious publicity, but it still gets out to the public who treat it seriously.
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So, as I said, the consensus among mainstream physicists is that time travel is impossible.
 
godless dave said:
So, as I said, the consensus among mainstream physicists is that time travel is impossible.
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It's a grey area, that depends on the meaning of "consensus" and "mainstream". I venture to say that if it was true, Misner/Thorne/Wheeler's Gravitation wouldn't be held in high regard, because two out of the three authors would be somewhat discredited. See this for Thorne and this for Wheeler. Pity my hero Feynman gets a mention, but he was the junior partner there. Here's an article for general information.

My position is that anybody who thinks time travel is in any way possible needs to have a good old look at what clocks do. Be it a pendulum clock, a quartz wristwatch, or an atomic clock, they all "clock up" some kind of regular cyclic motion and show a cumulative result that we call the time. This empirical/operational description of what clocks do leaves no room for the notion that we travel forward through time at one second per second. Which then leaves no room for the notion that there's some way to travel backward through time. Which then leaves no room for the grandfather paradox. Your position seems to suggest that any "mainstream physicist" who pontificates about time travel and the grandfather paradox... isn't a mainstream physicist.
 
Got it.

Crackpot biologists just end up killing someone or something thus give up, or end up in jail.

Crackpot chemists just blow themselves up and end up killing themselves in a few years before sure of their brilliance.

Crackpot physicists have to be super clever to find faults or novel uses for such well established laws, so most just pretend they have, and there are a lot more of them as I doubt arguing over maths, laws and theories are as high risk arguing about which chemicals to mix or which organ to put where.

All great breakthrough physicists were crackpots for a while during their career. Or turned into one later. Nearly without exception. Could be seen as a compliment in a way.
 
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Farsight said:
My position is that anybody who thinks time travel is in any way possible needs to have a good old look at what clocks do. Be it a pendulum clock, a quartz wristwatch, or an atomic clock, they all "clock up" some kind of regular cyclic motion and show a cumulative result that we call the time.
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Clocks measure time, they don't create it.

Farsight said:
Your position seems to suggest that any "mainstream physicist" who pontificates about time travel and the grandfather paradox... isn't a mainstream physicist.
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I've never heard of a mainstream physicist pontificate about either of those things.
 
godless dave said:
Clocks measure time, they don't create it.
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Nobody said they create time. Listen to what I said. Go and look at what a clock actually does. You can't open up a clock and see the time being measured. You see some kind of regular cyclic motion, along with some kind counting mechanism to show a cumulative display.

godless dave said:
I've never heard of a mainstream physicist pontificate about either of those things.
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I've already referred to Thorne and Wheeler. Here's Hawking, and here's Kaku and Carroll. What sort of physicists are these guys? Fringe?
 
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