What are the effects of crackpot addiction on scientific discourse?

[phinds]

Never forget that crackpots are the forefathers of science.

Actually, I think they are the foreSKIN of science ... best cut off and tossed.

 

[Dale]

Ha! I was a little surprised Dale went along with it.

Yeah, normally I would just have deleted it, but Bandersnatch's plea was surprising enough for me to leave it visible.

Sorry Bandersnatch, crackpots tend to have a very short half-life here and the usual decay mode is deletion. That is part of the design of the forum and, by design, is not likely to change. Engage with promptness if you desire, but recognize that your responses to the nonsense will generally be deleted along with the nonsense.

 

[Bandersnatch]

No worries, I understand. I actually like it the way it is - it feels like being on a safari among dodos. I get to see them before they go extinct.

 

[Drakkith]

No worries, I understand. I actually like it the way it is - it feels like being on a safari among dodos. I get to see them before they go extinct.

Crackpots never go extinct. They're like gussied up cockroaches...

 

[OmCheeto]

Crackpots never go extinct. They're like gussied up cockroaches...

Oh! Halloween is coming up. I've never seen anyone dressed as a gussied up cockroach.

hmmm...

per google; No results found for "gussied up cockroach".

Yes!

:D

 

[DiracPool]

As if it was a good-hearted, bening thing.

Well, in all your highfalutin and erudite arrogance, nobody has seemed, after even 50 posts, to catch that our hero has misspelled "benign" in the original post. Especially since "I even stooped as low as to sneer at his horrible, horrible English." :p

 

[Bandersnatch]

Curses! I am undone.

 

[DiracPool]

Curses! I am undone.

I'm sure it was just a typo..:D

 

[davenn]

Bandersnatch,

You missed getting a response into this thread before it was closed ...
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/my-dad-proved-string-theory.788260/

Definitely the best one for Dec 2014, maybe the whole year ;)

Dave

 

[OmCheeto]

Bandersnatch,

You missed getting a response into this thread before it was closed ...
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/my-dad-proved-string-theory.788260/

Definitely the best one for Dec 2014, maybe the whole year ;)

Dave

Greg really needs to upgrade the "timestamp" thingy.

+/-60 seconds really doesn't tell us how entertainingly fast that thread was locked.

 

[phinds]

Bandersnatch,

You missed getting a response into this thread before it was closed ...
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/my-dad-proved-string-theory.788260/

Definitely the best one for Dec 2014, maybe the whole year ;)

Dave

Yeah, this guys dad is definitely a tin-foil hat kind of guy.

 

[davenn]

hahhaha

cant stop laughing ... there's tears in my eyes hahhaha

the mind really boggles with what some of these people come out with huh :)

 

[Silicon Waffle]

...a tin-foil hat ...

I know what a tin foil hat is but haven't been able to figure out what the speaker implies. :(

 

[phinds]

I know what a tin foil hat is but haven't been able to figure out what the speaker implies. :(

A guy who wears a tin-foil hat does so in order to be able to communicate with aliens who tell him all kinds of interesting things that no one else knows.

 

[Silicon Waffle]

A guy who wears a tin-foil hat does so in order to be able to communicate with aliens who tell him all kinds of interesting things that no one else knows.

Oh that guy should be suffering from some sort of schizoaffective disorder.

 

[phinds]

Oh that guy should be suffering from some sort of schizoaffective disorder.

Or, as it is more commonly called in layman's terms, he's a fruitcake.

 

[davenn]

A guy who wears a tin-foil hat does so in order to be able to communicate with aliens who tell him all kinds of interesting things that no one else knows.

no no no you have it around the wrong way
they wear tinfoil hats to stop the aliens reading their minds
classic example ... the movie "Signs"

 

[Bandersnatch]

Definitely the best one for Dec 2014, maybe the whole year

Oh, I disagree. It seems almost benign (see, @DiracPool I spelled it right this time, you cheeky git!) when compared to others I've seen, and what's more teeming with a Christmas spirit and filial love.

I like how what the son said ties in with what was mentioned in the thread about what makes people cranks - a smart person, often on the autistic spectrum, with nobody qualified or informed enough to challenge his ideas.

Thanks for spotting that one, though! I feel like one of those pokemon kids - got to catch 'em all.

 

[phinds]

no no no you have it around the wrong way
they wear tinfoil hats to stop the aliens reading their minds
classic example ... the movie "Signs"

Actually, it happens both ways. The prevention form is usually for the CIA and the antenna form is for aliens

 

[ShayanJ]

Facing a crackpot is a good test of your knowledge. I guess if we were going to have some kind of a "Knights of the Calabi-Yau table" for the real science guys, it would be good to have a crackpot test among the qualification tests for letting people in.
Special for Bandersnatch
I'm currently struggling with a crackpot claim(although the guy telling it isn't a crackpot, he's just reciting from someone else and wants to know why should the thing be wrong). Its about perpetual motion machines and how they can get electricity from them. One design is having cylinder with magnets mounted on its surface and a block with a cylindrical hole in it with magnets mounted on the inner surface of the hole. Then the cylinder is placed inside the hole of the block such that it can rotate around the hole's axis. The point is, because of the repulsion of magnets(the same faces are placed outward), the thing rotates and rotates and rotates and apparently there is nothing to stop it. He even showed me films of such a device while it rotates really fast. I tried to deal with a simplified case mathematically. I assumed there is only one magnet on the inner cylinder and two magnets on the inner surface of the hole but I got two complicated differential equations filling one page which I couldn't think of even solving numerically. One of my friends suggested that the magnets will lose their magnetic properties and the device will stop. Till now, this is the best answer.

 

[Bandersnatch]

@Shyan something like this?
https://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/unwork.htm#cheng
Follow the "answer and discussion" link for analysis.

 

[davenn]

Actually, it happens both ways. The prevention form is usually for the CIA and the antenna form is for aliens

Ahso there is a method in their madness ;) LOL

 

[OmCheeto]

@Shyan something like this?
https://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/unwork.htm#cheng
Follow the "answer and discussion" link for analysis.

Shyan's description sounds more like my design.

Where is this crackpot! Let me at him!

 

[ShayanJ]

@Shyan something like this?
https://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/unwork.htm#cheng
Follow the "answer and discussion" link for analysis.

That's pretty much the same idea but not exactly the same thing. But actually the explanations there didn't satisfy me.
At first its says the magnetic field is nearly zero, which doesn't solve the issue because any non zero torque will rotate the inner cylinder. Next it says the device isn't extracting the magnetic energy. But it doesn't address the question where the energy come from. We can't say its just the input energy because at first there are designs which need no initial push and second the cylinder's rotation gets faster and faster as it continues till it reaches a maximum speed. If the energy was only the input energy, we wouldn't observe an increase in speed.You can search for it and see the films of such devices rotating.
A guy named John Searl is the headpot(head crackpot!) in this issue.

 

[ShayanJ]

Let's have some crackpotology!:D
This seems to be very related scientific study.

 

[Bandersnatch]

I'm afraid going into too much detail in analysing specific crackpots might push this thread off the edge of the forum rules it's been straddling since its conception.

Having said that...

By "nearly zero" he seems to mean that there can be bumps in the field - alingments of lower potential to which the device will move and stay there. With enough magnets you should be able to even out the field to remove those.

I've never seen a device that'd "work" without a nudge. Usually it's set up so as to start in a high potential position (using either magnetic or gravitational potential) and given a gentle push to start rotation. The wheel (or whatever assembly) then falls into low potential position, gaining speed, and climbs again to the high potential, where, while slowing down, it's got enough momentum from the initial nudge to pass over the potential crest. These are always low-friction devices, so it's hard to tell whether it's slowing down in the short time the videos encompass. It's only the extra input energy that needs to be dissipated, but with low enough friction it can take a good while.

But the design you described earlier is different from those in the Simanek link. I don't see how it's supposed to produce any torques. It just presents opposite poles to each other symmetrically. If you even out the field by adding enough magnets, it'll just sit there, and if not it'll move to the nearest equilibrium state.

That Searl guy's device though... I just can't get what he's trying to do. He connects it to electricity and extracts electricity. Wouldn't it be more efficient to just skip the whole device part? Use a bit of wire instead?

it would be good to have a crackpot test among the qualification tests for letting people in.

Heh, I wouldn't qualify, most likely. It's just that the Dunning-Kruger is strong with me.

 

[ShayanJ]

Sorry for posting in sequence, but things keep coming to my mind!
I think its a good idea to have a SSEC(Special Science and Explanations for Crackpots) team. I know this seems a waste of time and man power but people can volunteer for it(which I think Bandersnatch surely will). It can be like this(I know this may seem too much but I really like building such structures so I say it at least for its fun:D):
PF can have a section which is hidden to users and only staff and SSEC members can see it. Then any crackpot threads, instead of being deleted, goes into that section. The SSEC, at first, has only a research branch that its members read and discuss the incoming threads and try to classify crackpots into groups and subgroups and find the main misunderstanding causing each subgroup to be a crackpot. They may even come up with a general theory of crackpots too. After some time spending on research, they may come up with effective ways for guiding crackpots to the real science and then they can form an operations branch which uses the theories and ideas from the research branch and treats crackpots. They even may come start some projects for crackpot prevention which treats the potentially crackpot people before they become crackpots. Of course its possible that the research branch finds no conclusive, concise, consistent and useful theory for crackpots and then we can reduce the size of SSEC or even eliminate it.

Anyway, you're right Bandersnatch, its not a place for discussing specific crackpots. So I just put it aside.
And about that qualification test, we know someone is not a crackpot by just seeing he's pursuing real science and he's good at it. But a knight of the Calabi-Yau table should be able to deal with crackpots. So we give the volunteer a crackpot and ask him\her to deal with "it"(hehe). I wouldn't pass this test.
(Looks like I'm fantasizing too much, but this is sometimes my hobby!:D)

 

[Borek]

A guy who wears a tin-foil hat does so in order to be able to communicate with aliens who tell him all kinds of interesting things that no one else knows.

You got it wrong, tin foil is there to STOP the aliens communication. Hat off and they speak directly to your brain.

I have read yesterday that the fact nobody tries to contact us is an obvious sign the alien intelligence does exists in space.

 

[OmCheeto]

...John Searl is the headpot(head crackpot!) in this issue.

Searl! Never mind. He's like the godfather of crackpots.

I know this may seem too much but I really like building such structures so I say it at least for its fun:D

I built one, one day. I even posted a picture of it here.
From that experience, I can spot immediately why the device Bandersnatch linked to in post #71 won't work, even without reading the "answer & discussion"section.

 

[ShayanJ]

I built one, one day. I even posted a picture of it here.
From that experience, I can spot immediately why the device Bandersnatch linked to in post #71 won't work, even without reading the "answer & discussion"section.

Actually by "building such structures", I meant fantasizing things like SSEC! I sometimes like to make up such things!
Anyway, its really relieving that you have built it and understood why it doesn't work. Can you explain?

 

[mfb]

they may come up with effective ways for guiding crackpots to the real science

Some are beyond hope, and the recent example is certainly in that category: not even basic knowlede about the theory he tries to criticize and then claiming everything is wrong based on very basic misconceptions.
I wonder how all that is supposed to be related to string theory. The main text does not mention it at all.

Related: snarxiv vs arxiv

 

[OmCheeto]

Actually by "building such structures", I meant fantasizing things like SSEC! I sometimes like to make up such things!
Anyway, its really relieving that you have built it and understood why it doesn't work. Can you explain?

There are no known magnetic shields.
It's as simple as that.
If there were a material that could actually shield a magnetic field, then perpetual motion would be possible.
Materials advertised as magnetic shields, are actually magnetic field diverters, or sponges. You can pick your own adjective.

The reason the "PM machine" I built, didn't work, was because the iron plate polarized, and locked the magnets in place.
It's the same thing with Bandersnatch's linked design.
I actually didn't much care for the "answer & discussion" answers I saw. It was almost as if the author did everything in his head, with textbook theories.
If there's anything I've learned about magnets, it's that once there are more than two(including ferromagnetic materials), the visualization capability of my brain fails.

Probably the most embarrassing thing I've ever posted here at the forum, was an "oh my god this is a PM machine and I know the answer and they are going to lock it soon so I have to answer this quickly without any punctuation or anything" moment.

I totally got it wrong, realized it (based on my tuna fish cans with magnets experiment), went back to correct it, and the thread was locked.

I try not to do that, anymore.

 

[Bandersnatch]

I wonder how all that is supposed to be related to string theory

I took it as the son making fun of his dad's zeal. Same with the Nobel prize mention.

 

[Bandersnatch]

Here's an fun talk from a speaker that apparently shares the love of crackpots:

The first 35mins consists of a few tasty highlights from a collection of crackpots from the local physics department mail inbox. At about 35:00 the speaker briefly mentions the value of using crank science as a pedagogical tool. At ~44:00 the Q&A session begins.

Unfortunately, the video ends in the middle of Q&A (at around 1h), and the remaining hour is just the first one repeated.

The slides from the talk can be found here:
http://www.slideshare.net/starkeffect/pathological-physics

At one point he mentions an interesting observation of the curious overabundance of retired engineers among the crackpot crowd he's been exposed to (and apparently a complete lack of women).

 

[OmCheeto]

I would mention the fact, that the last thing he mentioned in the video, was something that popped into my head one day.
But that fact leads to my new speculative theory on why certain people are crazy, and some aren't.
:)

 

[jack476]

RationalWiki is always a decent place to read about some higher-profile crackpots and the responses by people who actually have some sense, though they tend to prefer going after creationism and alternative medicine than physics and math cranks.

Since I work in my school's physics department, I'm on the email list, and we do regularly get spammed by people with...let's be generous and call them "unusual and uninformed" ideas. Most of the time it's just one solitary rant, other times it's more concerted spam. We've had this one guy repeatedly sending us papers of his "theories" where he spends 20 pages raving about how the Bible is the grand-unified theory who keeps making sock puppet emails, we get our fair share of conspiracy theorists (mostly moon landing and occasionally 9/11 stuff) and Fermat's Last Theorem proofs as well. It makes me sad, really, they're not stupid, it sounds from their emails that they are intelligent and well-meaning but just suffering from some kind of delusions or don't know how to go about acquiring real physical knowledge (ie take a class or find a textbook), and every single time they cook up one of those...ugh..."theories", they're getting further away from ever understanding any real physics.

 

[Bystander]

Got a live one just hit Earth Forum. Do NOT miss it.

 

[phinds]

Got a live one just hit Earth Forum. Do NOT miss it.

Hilarious. Thanks for pointing it out before it gets deleted. How it simply got "closed for moderation" instead of immediately deleted, I can't even guess.

 

[Bystander]

I'm going to have to learn that flagging trick --- saw that and thought of you and Bandersnatch and couldn't figure out how to send up a fast flare for you.

 

[berkeman]

I'm going to have to learn that flagging trick --- saw that and thought of you and Bandersnatch and couldn't figure out how to send up a fast flare for you.

You just type @ and start typing their username, and you will get a pop-up box showing the matching usernames. Click on their username, and the forum software fills in their username after the @ and makes is a flag thing. Very useful :)

Oh, and I just closed it and Reported it so that a Physics Mentor can decide whether to ban or just delete and infract. If it were just a bit worse, I probably would have gone ahead and deleted/banned myself.

 

[Bystander]

You just type @ and start typing their username, and

Thank you very much --- see if I can remember that for next time.

 

[berkeman]

After a Mentor discussion and consensus, he be gone. :-)

 

[mfb]

Had a look at the Earth forum and the only thread recent enough was started by Astronuc :D. The crackpot thread was deleted too fast.

The first part is too good to hide:

I'm conducting a Transdisciplinary research in the last 6 years on this issue, and what I found was the biggest "Scientific Dogma" of the history.

 

[Bystander]

The first part is too good to hide:

Excellent. I was being a good boy and not preserving any of it for posterity --- almost kicked myself when the "he be gone" message came through.

 

[mainliner]

Lol very funny :)

allthough i didn't expect the pack hunting from such scientific minds :)

lol crackpots lol what is the world coming to .

 

[mfb]

Well, it's all about collecting crackpot points! ;)

 

[mainliner]

Well, it's all about collecting crackpot points! ;)

OMG LMAO!

anyone know how to make a crackpot detector ? ... ;)

 

[Bystander]

a crackpot detector ?

Hit the forum search (upper right on the screen) for "crackpot index" for four or five that have been done over the past few years.

 

[mainliner]

Hit the forum search (upper right on the screen) for "crackpot index" for four or five that have been done over the past few years.

lol well its nice to see you've all got it well organised .

 

[phinds]

lol well its nice to see you've all got it well organised .

Oh, we're ready for them but NOTHING slows them down a bit.