What makes smart people become cranks?

[Ryan_m_b]

One step would be to avoid getting old, as more than one Nobel Laureate has gone round the crank bend in latter years. Shockley and his eugenics obsession comes most infamously to mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley#Statements_about_populations_and_genetics

That's an interesting point. Perhaps continually being showered with accolades and praise gives one a false sense of superior capability. What such accolades are meant to represent is achievement in a specific field, but it could be difficult to take them this way.

 

[OmCheeto]

That's an interesting point. Perhaps continually being showered with accolades and praise gives one a false sense of superior capability. What such accolades are meant to represent is achievement in a specific field, but it could be difficult to take them this way.

"... a false sense of superior capability."

Interesting. I've been interacting with two classes of humans for a few years, that seem to have this.
One set, is retired career military officers. After years of telling people what to do, with absolute authority, it seems to make them think all of their opinions, are the only correct opinions.
The other set, is retired parents. Same situation. (Mostly my sisters. They are very bossy, and have a "cure" for everything that ails me. I call it "Dr. Mom" syndrome.)
Of course, there are exceptions.

The person I know is not a scientist, but he is highly intelligent yet unchecked by people around him. And what feedback he does get fuels his paranoia.

"unchecked", and an inability to accept or even listen to feedback. Bingo!

I'm so glad this forum doesn't allow crank ideas. The feedback on my warp drive engine, and perpetual motion machine, would probably leave me in a state of permanent depression.

 

[Danger]

The feedback on my warp drive engine

So many of your ideas are warped that I doubt anyone would notice if one of them happens to be an engine... :p

 

[OmCheeto]

So many of your ideas are warped that I doubt anyone would notice if one of them happens to be an engine... :p

Speaking of which... My sister dropped by last week, and picked up one of my two "gradient formers". Like me, she didn't know what the hell it was. But they look so much like something you would find in Austin Powers' suitcase, she was too afraid to ask what I used it for.

Perhaps that's one reason cranks are cranks. They are afraid, they might be wrong. Most people don't like being wrong.

ps. I picked up the gradient formers out of the trash at work, as they looked like they would be perfectly sized vacuum chambers for mice. Some of my friends were all excited about taxidermy pope mice, and one of my friends was interested in taxidermy, so I nabbed them for him. Fortunately for me, mice are fairly rare around here.
And no, this was not something I invented. I just found one suitable for mice, that didn't cost $13,000.

pps. Kids nowadays, are kind of weird. But I like weird, so that's ok with me.

 

[Pete Cortez]

And, moreover, what should aspiring scientists and engineers do to avoid becoming crackpots?

Work as much as you can. Crackpots don't have to deliver the goods. Pros, and active students, do.

 

[Danger]

taxidermy pope mice

To be fair, you should also have rabbi mice and mullah mice and a Scientologist rat...

 

[my2cts]

Narcism is part of being a crank. Narcism is also part of being a dictator.
And a long life with a Nobel medal around your neck may _induce_ narcism.

 

[my2cts]

Einstein worked in isolation so he fulfills the first vriteria of Gardnerts list as presented above.
I guess he also invented some terminology.
Be careful with this type of list.
Some cranks do not meet all the criteria and some excellent scientists meet some of them.

 

[Chronos]

An essential element in achieving pottery grand mastership is the inability or unwillingness to recognize facts inconsistent with your belief system.

 

[Danger]

pottery grand mastership

Do I sense a new PF ribbon in the works?

 

[OmCheeto]

To be fair, you should also have rabbi mice and mullah mice and a Scientologist rat...

It was a couple of years ago, when the pope mouse appeared. There was also an Elvis mouse.
Googling it this morning, I discovered that it appears to have become a bit of a minor cult craze.
Personally, I can't imagine the stench of a chessboard full of rotten mice.
But leave it to some kid reporter at HuffPo...

This Taxidermied Mice Chess Set Is The COOLEST. THING. EVER. (PHOTOS)

 

[Danger]

Personally, I can't imagine the stench of a chessboard full of rotten mice.

That is excellent! I like mice, having had pet rats, but in this case I don't see any cruelty because the mice were already dead. I watched Lucy play with and then slowly eat a mouse last week, so I figure that these ones had it a lot better on the whole. There's no odour to stuffed animals, other than whatever ambient stuff might get trapped in the fur.
I can think of a nice bigger version: opossums for pawns, armadillos for rooks, meerkats for bishops...

edit: I suppose that for the sake of those who don't already know me well, I should point out that Lucy is my cat, not my wife.

 

[OmCheeto]

Narcism is part of being a crank. Narcism is also part of being a dictator.
And a long life with a Nobel medal around your neck may _induce_ narcism.

You forgot Time magazines "Man of the Year".

Good grief. Going through the list...
The whole "Obama" thing, now makes sense.

 

[mheslep]

That's an interesting point. Perhaps continually being showered with accolades and praise gives one a false sense of superior capability. What such accolades are meant to represent is achievement in a specific field, but it could be difficult to take them this way.

Yes I suspect large ego's brought on by years of accolades are a path to crankdom, but I don't think fundamental, as certainly the title is open to those with no accolades, nor ability superior in any way. And I don't think the superior capability need be false; I think the capability of Shockley in his latter years was still extremely high after hearing the detail of some his arguments.

I suspect a fundamental aspect of crankdom is a lack of mental "plasticity", as I think its called, i.e. the ability to consider various objections to particular line of reasoning. For instance, in Shockley's case he devoted a large effort to working out the various genetic arguments in great detail, while being either oblivious or dismissive to the obvious possibility of abuse by granting any government or group the power over others to selectively breed, and this not long after world war related to eugenics killed millions.

 

[Nikitin]

Shockley was a world renown physicist who late in life turned to extensive discourse and interviews on eugenics. He sometimes started a discussion in front of adult audiences by holding up an all caps small sign with the single word "DYSGENICS". "Crank" is an understated label as applied to Shockley.

He is certainly a good old fashioned racist, especially as he keeps shifting from eugenics to inferiority of blacks, but he's not a crank. I watched for 8 minutes, and I can't say I saw that any of his opinions were based on crank-science. Rather, his views on what a good society is the same as a 19th century robber Baron.

 

[Pete Cortez]

Shockley was a world renown physicist who late in life turned to extensive discourse and interviews on eugenics. He sometimes started a discussion in front of adult audiences by holding up an all caps small sign with the single word "DYSGENICS". "Crank" is an understated label as applied to Shockley.

Shockley introducing more pseudoscience into fields rife with it isn't surprising; the social sciences are just bar arguments with polling data. He just picked an increasingly unpopular tribe with which to associate. For all we know, someone spouting the same ideas might be lecture circuit rocket start a generation from now.

 

[RonL]

I tend to think DaveC hit me right between the eyes with his first post, I would hope That I am highly intelligent, but not being able to defend the statement I would never be so bold as to say it.
Getting smart, in most cases, takes time and I would tend to think that lots of people in later life start to realize their ideas and goals are going to take longer to realize than what life expectancy they have left will allow them to learn and explain, in desperation they might began to state their thinking and it will in most cases be confusing to those that try to understand.
I think Einstein had the ability to hold onto his thoughts until the appropriate time and Tesla did not. It might be really sad to know what died with them.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

He is certainly a good old fashioned racist, especially as he keeps shifting from eugenics to inferiority of blacks, but he's not a crank. I watched for 8 minutes, and I can't say I saw that any of his opinions were based on crank-science. Rather, his views on what a good society is the same as a 19th century robber Baron.

He espouses that his views are rational and supported by evidence, thought whilst also stating he has faith. I'd say he was a crank.

 

[DivergentSpectrum]

A smart person will consider the idea that they may be crazy.
Only egotistical morons will deny any possibility that theyre wrong.

 

[Danger]

A smart person will consider the idea that they may be crazy.

I not only consider it; I embrace it and am pretty sure that it's correct.

 

[OmCheeto]

A smart person will consider the idea that they may be crazy.
Only egotistical morons will deny any possibility that theyre wrong.

This is why I never built my perpetual motion machine.
Although all the science(to date), told me it should have worked, I decided that there had to be some flaw in the current theories of science.
At least, on a layman level.

IMHO, there is still a lot of opinion as to how things work.

See "the Meissner Effect".
Wait! They've changed the definition since I last looked.
Though, it's quite possible that I didn't catch that part of the definition, 10 years ago.
Thank god I didn't waste any money on that.
Though superconductors and liquid nitrogen seem like they would be a lot of fun to play with.
I spent at least a year playing with Bucky Cubes.
You can make refrigerator magnet Bucky Borg Cubes out of them, that mere mortals cannot remove.

Cool, eh.

ps. I decided about a week after I purchased them, that Bucky Cubes should have the following warning label:
Not suitable for children under the age of 60.
These suckers actually are dangerous.

 

[DaveC426913]

ps. I decided about a week after I purchased them, that Bucky Cubes should have the following warning label:
Not suitable for children under the age of 60.
These suckers actually are dangerous.

Don't even get me started...

 

[zoobyshoe]

I don't think anyone starts out as a non-crank or non-crackpot and then converts. It's more like everyone starts out completely gullible and then we acquire varying degrees of rational thinking ability. To the degree anyone thinks rationally, they do so by having overcome the irrational ideas of childhood.

It seems strange when a person has learned to think perfectly logically within some science or math framework but still retains belief in some essentially irrational system of ideas as well. I think the explanation for that is mostly that the irrational beliefs were in place first and are tied up in the person's mind with their identity.