What makes smart people become cranks?

[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.