physics crackpots: a 'theory'

What is a crackpot? But more importantly, why is a crackpot?

#physics

[Pope_of_the_Church_of_Tea]

The thing that amazes me about Kip Thorne is that despite all the garbage and spam emails he must get, he took the time to respond to an email a dear friend of mine sent when that friend was 11. He'd run out of physics books at his local library as a kid, and started emailing everyone he'd seen in documentaries on black holes because he was excited by the idea of spacetime warping for space travel. My friend flatly states that his email must have had bits of crackpottishness in it, but the main topic was just asking for reading recommendations. Thorne was the only one out of dozens of physicists who replied without being disparaging (of a child).

That friend then went on to become a physicist, and he told me that one of the first things he did when he started grad school was to email Kip Thorne and thank him for being the one person to reply and encourage his passion for the field a decade prior. A few months after that, my friend forwarded me the first crackpot email he himself received. 😂

[stevendzik]

As a recently retired engineer I want to thank you for the heads up. I don't have any crack pot ideas at the moment, but I will certainly keep an eye out for any signs of them in the future.

[kongdoogunthera]

As a current mechanical engineering student, I solemnly swear to never become a crackpot physicist once I retire. I am now afraid of a future for myself which I didn't even know existed

[alankott]

I am not a crackpot, I just love to yodel on top of Dunning-Kruger Mountain. I guess that is like crackpot karaoke.

[acollierastro]

My favorite crackpot 'theory':

Gravity doesn't exist. It appears that every mass is falling toward every other mass but in reality atoms are just expanding at C. They are not moving toward each other. Just getting bigger.

[you_just]

what are the units of consciousness?? well, that's why i'm asking YOU. you have the math background to find out the units. don't forget to name the unit after me though!

[jgw]

The comment about wishing a 'crackpot' would email you with a small problem, to me, highlighted a really stark contrast between the crackpot and the amateur. Despite (nominally) coming from a very similar place, a crackpot would never have an interest in a small problem, but an amateur would. Both are non-professionals in a field where they lack formal training, but one is doing it for an interest in the field, while the other is doing it for an interest in themselves. There are a small handful of fields in science where amateurs can make material contributions. Not necessarily groundbreaking, but useful and real (without applying any value judgement on "useful"). Astronomy, ornithology and entomology, and the ecology of hard-to-reach locations are big ones (not surprisingly, they are fields where making a rare observation is a meaningful contribution, which tends to favor those who spend a lot of time looking - especially in hard to reach places like caves). These are almost always 'tiny' problems, some might even call them obscure. And as such, whereas crackpots seem basically allergic to the literature, successful amateurs often require an encyclopedic familiarity: "I saw a bird that isn't supposed to live in this region" requires that you've read several books on what birds are endemic to that region. "I saw a comet that I can't find catalogued anywhere" requires that you are aware of the catalogues and how to use them. That requires a love and respect of the subject that crackpot fundamentally lacks, and what they have in its place is a grandiose view of themselves.

[NewoandMe]

In economics, a disappointing reality is that many universities DON'T use complicated math, paving the way for crackpot economists to smoothly ride their way to PhDs with an elementary (or lower) understanding of empirical analysis. The use of mathematics is shunned and discouraged by certain economic schools of thought. These economists are often well-known because they're loud and don't spend time doing vigorous research.

[Maxarcc]

I'm from the humanities and met quite a few people I'd call crackpot philosophers. I noticed that often times these people are clever enough to create this surprisingly internally consistent system, but not clever enough to notice that things referring to one another in a closed loop holds no ground for anyone but themselves. Sometimes it's pretty cool to probe their ideas to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. They can get really creative. It's as if Tolkien came up with his elven language, but now imagine that instead of writing The Lord of the Rings he started writing angry letters to his colleagues, scolding them for not believing elves are real. These people can be pretty smart at times, but they funnel their energy in all the wrong places. Instead of bothering faculties they should give world building and fantasy writing a go. I've read more than one crackpot idea on metaphysics that could create a pretty baller magic system.

[ynvch]

I'm an electrical engineer raised by physicists, a serious risk of type A crackpot. This is a very useful cautionary tale for me, thank you so much 😂

[WouldbeSage]

Great analogy. The chef analogy really illustrated it perfectly.

I'm a lawyer. Our crackpots would have to be the "sovereign citizen" types who think things like if you never step up past the banister in a courtroom, then the law can't be applied to you, etc.

[j]

5:41 "economics is a hard science"

First documented case of an academic having *too much* respect for a field that isn't their own

[ryanlange]

after 10 years in the military my own crackpot tendencies started showing, but instead of getting lost in the wilderness(both literally and figuratively) about halfway through a way too high level explanation of relativistic doppler shifting and realizing that I was out of my depth I said to myself: "hey...you know they literally have schools where you can learn this kind of stuff and then get a piece of paper so that you can prove you actually know this kind of stuff right?!"

3 years in and at this rate I'll definitely be graduating next fall with my undergrad in physics...everything is much more rewarding when you understand that a whole community exists out there so that you're not just mumbling to yourself in your cabin wishing you were better at math

[ScottHess]

I was a software engineer at a famously brainy tech company, and I was also very involved with the financial-planning/investing sub-community in the company. It was honestly depressing how many people who were objectively bright in one field thought that they could easily just run the table in another field. Even worse, because of the tight feedback loops, software engineering as a field FAMOUSLY frequently forces you to realize that your first intuitions on things are almost always grossly wrong, and even so, these smart people who were routinely wrong IN THEIR FIELD OF EXPERTISE assumed that they were smarter than trained people in investing.

I can't even imagine how bad some of these crackpot theories are. Well, I'm on Quora, so I can kind of imagine it, but I'd prefer not to.

[iantalbot]

As a physicist in Cambridge, I received crackpot emails but mostly from proponents of "non inertial propulsion", i.e. violating Newton's 3rd law. All of them were based on friction ratchet fallacies. I actually persisted with one who seemed quite open to learning and after about 10 emails they agreed that their theory was wrong and thanked me! But they were the only one.

[marksea]

"Non-mathematically rigorous" is a really generous description in every case I've seen.

[Incandescentiron]

As an engineer, I've had several marketing managers, after explaining why their idea would not work, would simply reply that they "BELIVED it would work". I started referring to this as "faith-based engineering". I've never seen one of these ideas work, but did watch one pursue it for three years before he finally gave up.

[stevenklinden]

My favorite crackpot e-mail that I've gotten was one giving me a "final notice" that Earth is going to fall into "null space". This was followed by some "equations", which were just a series of ratios equal to 1/3. This apparently proved that Earth is going to fall into null space. The final comment was a list of previous notices - all of which were Bible verses - and then a (very generous) note that the author gives permission for me to reproduce and disseminate this notice to others. It made an interesting change from the usual "Einstein was wrong" stuff.

[tatbenatar]

I once worked in a Physics Department at a university. I was only there for a brief time, but I did encounter a handful of crackpots who needed to talk to someone IMMEDIATELY about something that they had discovered.

My favourite may have been a man who told us that he had discovered the theory of everything. After not getting what he wanted from our front office (I assume adoration and a Nobel Prize), he began wandering the halls, looking for someone else to impart his wisdom upon. He found a professor with their door open and barged inside, declaring once more that he "had discovered the theory of everything!"

The professor's response? "Well, right now I'm just working on the theory of one thing."

Suffice it to say, we eventually needed to call security.

[nuilewis]

Who's here in 2024 after the whole Terrence Howard situation