Entertaining Crackpottery

[lpetrich]

Turning back to my original subject, I remember long ago reading a book about the supposed lost continent of Mu, possibly James Churchward's book itself. It was like Atlantis, but it was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It sank, and its mountaintops became the numerous islands in the central Pacific Ocean. According to him, it "extended from somewhere north of Hawaii to the south as far as the Fijis and Easter Island."

Much of his argument was interpreting various myths and legends, what seemed to me like overinterpreting. I was more interested in the geology behind this alleged continent, but that book was rather hazy about that. However, I remember it having a diagram of lines of gas cells that collapsed and sank Mu. I found later that its geology is a big load of kûkae pua'a (inferred from Hawaiian Dictionaries).

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

pigshit

[ChildInAZoo]

Please provide a calculation of a galaxy rotation curve that matches the observed curve. Unless you are lying about the need for dark matter.

No. As I've said previously it would be too time consuming and it's fruitless. It doesn't tell us anything about the configuration of the non-uniform energy density - whether the energy is spatial or particulate.

Can you please provide any application of GR where energy is "spatial"?

[Svartalf]

Turning back to my original subject, I remember long ago reading a book about the supposed lost continent of Mu, possibly James Churchward's book itself. It was like Atlantis, but it was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It sank, and its mountaintops became the numerous islands in the central Pacific Ocean. According to him, it "extended from somewhere north of Hawaii to the south as far as the Fijis and Easter Island."

Much of his argument was interpreting various myths and legends, what seemed to me like overinterpreting. I was more interested in the geology behind this alleged continent, but that book was rather hazy about that. However, I remember it having a diagram of lines of gas cells that collapsed and sank Mu. I found later that its geology is a big load of kûkae pua'a (inferred from Hawaiian Dictionaries).

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

pigshit

Yeah, Churchward wrote directly in the line of theosophic "occult revelations" that got published all the way between the 1850s (or maybe 70s) till WWII ... There are days when I wonder whether it's a shame that I got an overdose of that stuff before I could get to him, because some of the stuff I've read about the Mu litterature feels like it might have been enormously more entertaining than the blavatsky crap and Mesoamerican deliriums about crystal skulls.

[lpetrich]

Madame Blavatsky and her fellow Theosophists had some grandiose theories of humanity's prehistory built upon a succession of "Root Races". Do these Wikipedia articles have a halfway-reasonable summary of those theories?
Theosophy
The Secret Doctrine
Ariosophy
Some Nazis were into such theorizing, which is how "Aryan" and the swastika got into Nazism. Never mind that some of their victims had better claim to "Aryan" than they did.

[Farsight]

Here's an entertaining example of crackpottery. That's all lpetrich wants to talk about. Crackpottery, not science. And he doesn't want anybody else to talk about science either. This forum is becoming a science-free zone.

[lpetrich]

Here's an entertaining example of crackpottery. That's all lpetrich wants to talk about. Crackpottery, not science. And he doesn't want anybody else to talk about science either. This forum is becoming a science-free zone.

That was my thread on multiverses. Farsight's definition of crackpottery seems to be any mainstream theory that he did not grow up with.

L. Sprague deCamp once wrote an excellent book on Lost Continents, discussing lots and lots of Atlantis lore and related subjects. It's been a long time since I read it, however.


Martin Gardner could have written a whole book on eccentric medical theories and therapies, and indeed he devoted a sizable part of his book to such theories and therapies, granting a chapter each to orgone therapy and dianetics.

Orgone therapy? That was big around 1950. It was invented by Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, who had been a Freudian Marxist. However, mainstream Communists did not like his theories about how the proletariat needs to be less uptight about sexuality, and the Nazis didn't enjoy having their movement described as a result of sexual repression. He ended up in Norway for a while, then in the U.S. of A. He claimed to have discovered bions, which suspiciously resemble bacteria.

His greatest "discovery" was, of course, orgone, which he claimed was a sort of vital force or energy. Orgone is an omnipresent cosmic force, it makes the sky blue, it makes gravity, weather, etc. ... WR claimed that lack of orgone was involved in many diseases, and he built orgone accumulators to recharge patients' orgone.

He got in trouble with the FDA for quackery, and the FDA even ordered the destruction of his orgone accumulators. The FDA also ordered the destruction of several of his books until references to orgone could be edited out of them. He was tossed in jail for a few years, and he died there.

[Farsight]

Farsight's definition of crackpottery seems to be any mainstream theory that he did not grow up with.

It isn't. I'm perfectly at home with examining new ideas, assessing the supporting scientific evidence, and modifying my view accordingly. My motto is: look to the evidence.

Your definition of crackpottery seems to be any non-mainstream theory. The presence or absence of scientific evidence is utterly irrelevant to you. Since you're so fond of talking about crackpottery, you might take care to check out this.

"Certain authors (see the references) who have studied the phenomenon of crankery agree that this is the essential defining characteristic of a crank: No argument or evidence can ever be sufficient to make a crank abandon his belief."

That's you, lpetrich.

[colubridae]

Farsight's definition of crackpottery seems to be any mainstream theory that he did not grow up with.

It isn't. I'm perfectly at home with examining new ideas, assessing the supporting scientific evidence, and modifying my view accordingly. My motto is: look to the evidence.

Your definition of crackpottery seems to be any non-mainstream theory. The presence or absence of scientific evidence is utterly irrelevant to you. Since you're so fond of talking about crackpottery, you might take care to check out this.

"Certain authors (see the references) who have studied the phenomenon of crankery agree that this is the essential defining characteristic of a crank: No argument or evidence can ever be sufficient to make a crank abandon his belief."

That's you, lpetrich.

Go away and pester someone else. Oh sorry you can't. no one else will have you.

[ChildInAZoo]

It isn't. I'm perfectly at home with examining new ideas, assessing the supporting scientific evidence, and modifying my view accordingly. My motto is: look to the evidence.

Please provide the evidence, the evidence that you supposedly based your claims on, that "spatial" gravity can account for our measurements of galaxy rotation curves.

[lpetrich]

Farsight's definition of crackpottery seems to be any mainstream theory that he did not grow up with.

It isn't. I'm perfectly at home with examining new ideas, assessing the supporting scientific evidence, and modifying my view accordingly. My motto is: look to the evidence.

After you. More seriously, the relationship between theory and observation is less straightforward than you seem to think it is.

Your definition of crackpottery seems to be any non-mainstream theory. The presence or absence of scientific evidence is utterly irrelevant to you. Since you're so fond of talking about crackpottery, you might take care to check out this.

Nice article.

"Certain authors (see the references) who have studied the phenomenon of crankery agree that this is the essential defining characteristic of a crank: No argument or evidence can ever be sufficient to make a crank abandon his belief."

That's you, lpetrich.

Farsight, I've seen a heck of a lot of evidence of that in your posts.

According to that Wikipedia article, cranks

1. overestimate their own knowledge and ability, and underestimate that of acknowledged experts.
2. insist that their alleged discoveries are urgently important.
3. rarely, if ever, acknowledge any error, no matter how trivial.
4. love to talk about their own beliefs, often in inappropriate social situations, but they tend to be bad listeners, and often appear to be uninterested in anyone else's experience or opinions.

Farsight, your posts here fit #1, #3, and even a bit of #4.

Also, many cranks

1. seriously misunderstand the mainstream opinion to which they believe that they are objecting,
2. stress that they have been working out their ideas for many decades, and claim that this fact alone entails that their belief cannot be dismissed as resting upon some simple error,
3. compare themselves with Galileo or Copernicus, implying that the mere unpopularity of some belief is in itself evidence of plausibility,
4. claim that their ideas are being suppressed, typically by secret intelligence organizations, mainstream science, powerful business interests, or other groups which, they allege, are terrified by the possibility of their allegedly revolutionary insights becoming widely known,
5. appear to regard themselves as persons of unique historical importance.

Farsight, your posts here fit #1 more-or-less #2 and #4. Not sure about #3, however.

Many cranks in highly technical fields

1. exhibit a marked lack of technical ability,
2. misunderstand or fail to use standard notation and terminology,
3. ignore fine distinctions which are essential to correctly understand mainstream belief.

Farsight, you posts here fit #1, complete with a "I don't need mathematics" attitude.

I've collected several sets of pseudoscience criteria. Martin Gardner in Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science stated about a crackpot that

1. He considers himself a genius.
2. He regards all colleagues, without exception, as ignorant blockheads.
3. He believes himself persecuted or unjustly measured or discriminated against.
4. He has strong compulsions to go after the most famous or accepted leaders of that field and the most-accepted theories.
5. He has a tendency to talk and write in complex jargon, in some cases using figures of speech or descriptions that he himself has coined.

Farsight, you posts here fit #3 and #4 and somewhat fit #2. Your claim that time is an outcome of motion fits #4 very well.

[Farsight]

Look to the scientific evidence lpetrich. LIke pair production, spin angular momentum, magnetic dipole moment, Einstein-de Haas, Stern-Gerlach, annihilation, electron optics. Only a quack dismisses it and justifies it using crank pseudoscience ad-hominems.

And then warbles on about the multiverse and a second time dimension. For which there is no evidence at all. LOL.

Have you noticed that your support there is a little... thin? Woooo!

[lpetrich]

Look to the scientific evidence lpetrich. LIke pair production, spin angular momentum, magnetic dipole moment, Einstein-de Haas, Stern-Gerlach, annihilation, electron optics.

Farsight, that sort of "hypothesis testing" is a VERY good reason for journal editors to reject your papers. You have completely failed to take into account how mainstream physics accounts for these effects, complete with getting the numbers right.

Only a quack dismisses it and justifies it using crank pseudoscience ad-hominems.

Farsight, your posts fit several pseudoscience criteria remarkably well. You claim that your papers are rejected because journal editors are closed-minded, rather than there being any problem with your theories or your presentation of them. Some of your theories are inversions of well-established ones, something common among pseudoscientific theories. You show little understanding of mainstream theories, and you think that quote mining is a good way to understand something. You treat mathematics as irrelevant for the most fundamental sorts of physics.

Your theories don't even have the fun factor of George Francis Gillette's theories.

And then warbles on about the multiverse and a second time dimension. For which there is no evidence at all. LOL.

A remarkably literal-minded objection. I was considering what sort of Universe this would be if there was more than one time dimension.

Farsight, you seem to have a very closed mind to all new theories but yours. It's like the only legitimate theories are yours and those you grew up with. That was the point of my mentioning atoms and what you would have thought of them in past centuries.

[ChildInAZoo]

Farsight, your posts fit several pseudoscience criteria remarkably well. You claim that your papers are rejected because journal editors are closed-minded, rather than there being any problem with your theories or your presentation of them.

Indeed. I begain by merely asking questions about the presentation of Farsight's theories and he soon began insulting me.

[lpetrich]

Yes, so many crackpots moan and groan about how their theories are not accepted because of all the orthodox oxen of science, to use George Francis Gillette's phrase. It is never their fault, it would seem; it is never any problem with their theories or their presentation of those theories.

Look at how many of them compare themselves to Galileo. I like how Isaac Asimov had once described him as the patron saint of self-pitying crackpots.

More recently, some of them like to talk about Thomas Kuhn and paradigm shifts, implying that their theories represent a new paradigm shift.

Turning to Farsight, he seems to think that his papers aren't getting published because journal editors prefer to accept papers on string theory and multiverses and dark matter and dark energy and the like.

[Farsight]

Turning to Farsight, he seems to think that his papers aren't getting published because journal editors prefer to accept papers on string theory and multiverses and dark matter and dark energy and the like.

Not so. Space is dark, it has its stress-energy, stress is akin to pressure, and the universe appears to be expanding. There's no issue with dark energy. Vacuum energy has a mass equivalence, it can be treated as dark matter, and gravitational anomalies are a certainty. And whatever my view of particulate dark matter such as WIMPs, it's testable science.

The multiverse is in a different league. It offers no testable prediction whatsoever and is unsupported by scientific evidence. String theory is in the same camp, but was at least a serious attempt at mathematical formalism. A universe made of mathematics is in another league again. Seeing this accepted by FoP fair took my breath away. But I'd say my papers were rejected because journal editors habitually demand mathematical formalism, and like you, cannot see that this cannot apply to an analysis of mathematical terms.

Indeed. I begain by merely asking questions about the presentation of Farsight's theories and he soon began insulting me.

This isn't true, I'm a model poster, and your posts were abusive, not mine.