didymos
Posts: 1828
Joined: Mar. 2008
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[quote=Zarquon,June 08 2009,02:17]Louis Savain spent years trolling sci.physics. He's one of the reasons for the crackpot index in the first place.[/quote]
Ah, yes. That would explain my results:
Anyway, as I noted above, I took a little trip to his site. Found out Mapou is just as full of paranoia and apparently willful incomprehension about physics as he is about biology. From his page "exposing" those dastardly cult-like physicists practicing their dogmatic, old, spacetime religion (wow, that's an oddly familiar notion. Now where have I encountered this sort of thing before...) who have duped the world regarding time (and space, but mostly time...I think). He even does the whole quote-mining routine, and manages to abuse poor Karl Popper in there too (more than once), plus he really seems to think that there's some sort of time-travel "religion" that's parasitized modern physics. Awesome.
Now, the best part, as I also noted above: he calls out John "Crackpot Index" Baez for being a crackpot. Yeah, really. The appropriate response was to therefore assess Mapou using that index (didn't realize how appropriate while I was doing this though):
1. A -5 point starting credit.
-5 points
2. 1 point for every statement that is widely agreed on to be false.
3. 2 points for every statement that is clearly vacuous.
4. 3 points for every statement that is logically inconsistent.
Oh, Jesus. Umm, OK, no way am I gonna list all of them for these three. Bad enough having to read the thing and try to find them all in the first place. Srsly. It's, like, a lot. As an example (4 teh onlookerz):
[quote]
Nothing can move in spacetime or in a time dimension-axis by definition.[/quote]
I do wonder if I'm somewhat overscoring by counting what are essentially repetitions; though when it comes to, say, the vacuous statements I guess they're all equivalent anyway. Plus, there's some significant overlap here. Enh, fuck it. I probably missed some anyway, since I'm not a physicist:
+100 points (I think. Close enough.)
5. 5 points for each such statement that is adhered to despite careful correction.
OK, unscored because I personally haven't tried to correct Mapou and while I'm certain many people have (in fact, he alludes to email he's received on the subject and I've even seen it happen on UD) I'm just not comfortable with a guess, even if it'd probably be egregiously low.
6. 5 points for using a thought experiment that contradicts the results of a widely accepted real experiment.
Well, his whole argument seems to basically be based on one (despite him lauding empiricism at one point and chiding those naughty physicists for trying to weave reality out of their interpretations of the math, which is more or less exactly what he's doing and doing poorly):
+5 points
7. 5 points for each word in all capital letters (except for those with defective keyboards).
+60 points
I figure hyperbolic stuff in bold with both gratuitous capitalization that falls short of ALLCAPS but does include exclamation points qualifies too, so I counted this in addition to the actual ALLCAPS stuff (only one word, shockingly, though repeated thrice):
[quote]Nothing Can Move in Spacetime! By Definition![/quote]
and this:
but am open to debate on this issue. For example, should Mapou score yet higher for having subsections with names like this?
| Quote | | Stop Acting Like Drones |
One could easily argue that a certain ALLCAPS attitude is expressed there, but on the other hand, it lacks an exclamation point. I decided to be relatively charitable.
8. 5 points for each mention of "Einstien", "Hawkins" or "Feynmann".
Surprisingly, 0 points.
9. 10 points for each claim that quantum mechanics is fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).
There's this (bolding mine):
| Quote |
In fact, [Deutsch] has built a career out of what he calls "quantum computers", fictitious magical machines conjured up out of an equally magical hat filled with zillions of changeless parallel universes. Dr. Deutsch is a veritable magician when it comes to making voodoo appear like legitimate science.
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I'm pretty sure a lot of people would be surprised to find out their experiments in this area are or were fictitious. By implication, he's disavowing QM with that remark. Plus, he's all about how introducing a time dimension is utter doom for a theory because all motion becomes impossible, and QM absolutely does have one:
+10 points
10. 10 points for pointing out that you have gone to school, as if this were evidence of sanity.
I'm sure he's done it, and it's definitely implied by various things on this page, but he doesn't actually say it:
0 points
11. 10 points for beginning the description of your theory by saying how long you have been working on it. (10 more for emphasizing that you worked on your own.)
Well, lack of theory and the fact that it's near the end aside, he's got this:
| Quote |
I have given this entire physics thing a lot of thought, time and motion being the tip of the iceberg. |
Yeah, I can't really, in good conscience, be lenient on this one:
+20 points
12. 10 points for mailing your theory to someone you don't know personally and asking them not to tell anyone else about it, for fear that your ideas will be stolen.
Given that he's had this page up since at least 2006 and encourages people to freely copy it, I don't think he's worried about stolen work. He seems to think he's on some sort of crusade to save physics education (and by "logical" extension, civilization itself), in fact. So:
0 points
However, I really think the fact that he posted this lunacy on the net (as part of a website with the domain name "rebelscience.org" no less) ought to count, so:
+10 fucking points anyway, damn it.
The index could probably use a bit of revising, as I see it. I mean, they do that with various psych assessment tools regularly, so I don't see why a quasi-serious one should be any exception.
13. 10 points for offering prize money to anyone who proves and/or finds any flaws in your theory.
Speaking of revisions, this shit counts, despite the lack of monetary enticements:
| Quote |
Readers should feel free to suggest more names to include in my list of notorious time travel crackpots. Please use the email address at the bottom of the page. This is important because the correctness of humanity's fundamental understanding of nature is crucial to further progress.
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The spirit behind his particular appeal is basically the same:
+10 points
14. 10 points for each new term you invent and use without properly defining it.
I'm counting idiosyncratic and nonsensical redefinitions of standard terms with associated typographical flourishes:
| Quote |
I italicize past and future here because they do not have the normal meaning of past and future. The immediate past and future of a particle are discrete, coexisting states of the dyadic properties of the particle. At any given moment, based on a universal conservation principle, nature must decide whether or not to change those properties. |
I'm also curious what this "universal conservation principle" is, since it doesn't really seem to come up again:
+10 points
15. 10 points for each statement along the lines of "I'm not good at math, but my theory is conceptually right, so all I need is for someone to express it in terms of equations".
I mean, he's not good at math, but he really seems to think he is (and he lacks a theory) so....
0 points
16. 10 points for arguing that a current well-established theory is "only a theory", as if this were somehow a point against it.
Page is just dripping with that attitude (i.e. passim):
+10 points
17. 10 points for arguing that while a current well-established theory predicts phenomena correctly, it doesn't explain "why" they occur, or fails to provide a "mechanism".
Nailed it:
| Quote |
What about gravity, you say? Well, spacetime physicists understand doodley-squat about the true physical mechanism of gravity.
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+10 points
18. 10 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to Einstein, or claim that special or general relativity are fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).
Einstein? Yeah, this totally counts:
| Quote |
I placed Albert Einstein at the bottom of the list because he, of all people, should have known better. |
+10 points
19. 10 points for claiming that your work is on the cutting edge of a "paradigm shift".
He clearly thinks that physics has been held back by a fundamental misconception, so obviously there will be some sort of "great leap forward" if his crusade succeeds, and he has this quote at the top of the page:
| Quote |
"How often is science improved, and turned into new directions by non-scientific influences! it is up to us, it is up to the citizens of a free society to either accept the chauvinism of science without contradiction or to overcome it by the counterforce of public action." Paul Feyerabend |
Yep:
+10 points
20. 20 points for emailing me and complaining about the crackpot index. (E.g., saying that it "suppresses original thinkers" or saying that I misspelled "Einstein" in item 8.)
Technically, impossible to score, because I am not John Baez. However, putting that same John Baez on a list of "notorious" (yes, he actually does use that word to describe them) crackpots is pretty special, so:
+20 points (I was tempted to go with 25, or even 30, but...)
21. 20 points for suggesting that you deserve a Nobel prize.
I suspect he'd like to, but he didn't:
0 points
22. 20 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to Newton or claim that classical mechanics is fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).
Well, Dembski certainly wins on this one, but Mapou apparently doesn't. However, dude gets 10 points for this:
| Quote |
Gödel is certainly the most often quoted yet inconsequential mathematician of the world.
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Plus, the whole page is riddled with this smug sense of fundamental intellectual superiority over and/or outright denigration of the rationality/cognitive abilities of all sorts of physicists:
| Quote |
Isn't it strange that Dr. Thorne, Dr. Wheeler, Dr. Deutsch, Sir Stephen and company were not aware that nothing can move in spacetime? Being the celebrated mathematicians that they are, one would suppose it would be their business to know and understand something so trivial that it can be explained to high school kids. After all, it is not as if there is not a single physicist in the world who knows about this. I know of many who do. Could not just one of them write a line to Dr. Thorne or Sir Stephen and alert them of their error? How did they get their time travel papers past peer review? How did they get so darn famous? Did I hear someone say fraud? Or is it just plain incompetence and crackpottery?
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so I'm afraid I'm gonna have to add another 10 points for sheer sneering volume (at least. Again, I'm totally open to raising the score here folks):
+20 points
23. 20 points for every use of science fiction works or myths as if they were fact.
No, but he did compare people who accept the possibility of real time travel to rabid Trekkies. Actually, "equated...with" is a more accurate construction:
| Quote | | The nasty and shocking little truth is that time does not change, a million wormhole and time travel fanatics wearing their little Klingon and Ferengi outfits notwithstanding. |
Still:
0 points
24. 20 points for defending yourself by bringing up (real or imagined) ridicule accorded to your past theories.
That's a roger, dude:
| Quote |
One of my many enraged detractors tried to ridicule me by mentioning that "the great physicist George Carlin once said, "There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past."" Of course, it was his way of mocking my ideas since George Carlin is the well-known American standup comedian. Little did my "critic" realize, however, that Mr. Carlin is light years closer to the truth on time than some of the most "brilliant" minds of the physics community.
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and:
| Quote |
I get angry emails from people accusing me of badmouthing relativity, one of the most corroborated theories of physics.
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One thing I'm unclear on is whether each instance counts. I'm guessing no, so:
+20 points
25. 20 points for naming something after yourself. (E.g., talking about the "The Evans Field Equation" when your name happens to be Evans.)
Unfortunately no, although I'm trying to come up with something good to go with the "Mapou Effect". However, he actually quotes himself at the top of the page, and it's his "devastating" Trekkie comment from later in the same fucking webpage, so I'm gonna have to give the full amount for that:
+20 points
I'd like to think that given his obsession with/vengeance quest against the idea of self-reference in our concept of time, this is actually a clever and even elegant bit of self-denigration, but unfortunately I'm a realist and I know in my heart that Mapou is just another irony-deficient jackass who hangs out at UD. Maybe slightly more "special" than some of the others, though.
26. 20 points for talking about how great your theory is, but never actually explaining it.
Technically, he doesn't even really have one, just some warmed-over Zeno and a little calculus jargon, but he's really enthusiastic about it, so I'm not sure what to do here. Ummmm:
+10 points
27. 20 points for each use of the phrase "hidebound reactionary".
This is pretty damn close:
| Quote |
It is the end result of an incestuous intellectual orgy that has been going on for over a century. It is also the culmination of a scientific coup d'état that took place in the early part of the twentieth century. A group of revolutionaries, fresh from the resounding empirical victories of Einstein's theory of relativity, established themselves as the sole interpreters and oracles of the new science. They fended off all public scrutiny by encircling themselves within an unassailable wall of scientific jargon and mathematical formalism. Any criticism of their world view is met with the usual sneering retort that relativity is one of the most corroborated theories in the history of physics. Dissenting views are given little exposure. |
28. 20 points for each use of the phrase "self-appointed defender of the orthodoxy".
One subsection is entitled "Entrenched Orthodoxy" and says:
| Quote |
Can we expect the spacetime physics orthodoxy to just accept that its understanding of time is flawed? Does anybody really believe that Dr. Kip Thorne, Sir Stephen Hawking, Dr. John A. Wheeler and the others are suddenly going to announce to the world that they were wrong about time? Do not hold your breath. You can catch a science fiction writer in an error and that is no big deal. But a scientist is betting his or her career. Still, should humanity suffer through hundreds of years of ignorance just because a few careers are at stake? The current scientific belief in the existence of a time dimension has been around for over a hundred years. Even though many people realized from its inception that spacetime was motionless, it has not stopped generations of physicists from believing in a time dimension on a par with the other three spatial dimensions. It is now a religious institution and its practitioners are entrenched more than ever. They will not accept defeat easily. It is a matter of prestige, authority, credibility and the fear of being displaced. They will fight teeth and nails all the way to the end. |
There's plenty more like that, so I think this is more than fair:
+60 points for the last two together
29. 30 points for suggesting that a famous figure secretly disbelieved in a theory which he or she publicly supported. (E.g., that Feynman was a closet opponent of special relativity, as deduced by reading between the lines in his freshman physics textbooks.)
See above. Definitely implied:
+30 points
30. 30 points for suggesting that Einstein, in his later years, was groping his way towards the ideas you now advocate.
No, but I submit that quasi-coyly accusing (but not having the actual balls to actually accuse) Einstein of plagiarising GR from his ex-wife is grounds for a new 30-pointer:
| Quote |
As mentioned earlier, in 1949, Einstein's friend, Kurt Gödel, announced to the world that the spacetime of general relativity allows time travel via closed time-like loops. Einstein agreed with Gödel's finding but he was not very happy about it. He could not fathom how his grand theory would allow something as ridiculous as time travel. This gives some credence to accusations by Einstein's critics that he was not the true author of general relativity and that he was a mediocre plagiarizer at best. Some say that Einstein's first wife, Mileva Maric Einstein, was the real author of relativity and that Einstein was forced to give her his entire Nobel prize money to keep her quiet. Just hearsay but one never knows.
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So, yeah:
+30 points
31. 30 points for claiming that your theories were developed by an extraterrestrial civilization (without good evidence).
Well, no. However, he does compare society to the Borg Collective and manages to hybridize it with that "Ah, the mind of a child" bullshit and the United Negro College Fund slogan:
| Quote |
I often marvel that young people can have so much more insight into the nature of things than some of society's most celebrated and admired scientists and thinkers. Is it because the young have not yet been completely indoctrinated into the Borg-like hive mentality that is so prevalent in society. A mind is terrible thing to assimilate. |
And for a guy who's so seemingly down on Trek fans, he sure manages to reference it a lot, with the correct spelling for each alien race mentioned, and he even knows enough to make weak-ass Borg jokes. Yeah, I'm gonna have to award the full amount, because it's excessively douchebaggish, irony-deprived, and it does technically involve aliens:
+30 points
32. 30 points for allusions to a delay in your work while you spent time in an asylum, or references to the psychiatrist who tried to talk you out of your theory.
0 points, though I've so far confined my investigations to this one webpage, so who knows.
33. 40 points for comparing those who argue against your ideas to Nazis, stormtroopers, or brownshirts.
Yes, though he doesn't use those specific terms, he clearly conceptualizes the scientific "establishment" as quasi-fascistic at times. Plus he really like to whip out the "Trekkie" slur, which he seems to view as just as bad as those. Another example:
| Quote |
In my opinion, Scientific American is mostly a propaganda rag for the charlatans and crackpots of the scientific community. Their dependence on advertising revenues makes them suspect at best. Their idea of science publishing is to develop a readership among wild-eyed Star-Trek fanatics. |
Man, it's a good thing DaveTard no longer wields the ban-hammer over there. But anyway:
+40 points
34. 40 points for claiming that the "scientific establishment" is engaged in a "conspiracy" to prevent your work from gaining its well-deserved fame, or suchlike.
Enh, same fucking difference:
| Quote |
Theoretical physicists pride themselves in that their science is firmly based on empirical evidence but pay only lip service to empiricism when it suits their agenda.
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There's plenty more like it in stuff I've already quoted, too. Yet, despite all the rhetoric like that above, and this:
| Quote |
There is a cult led by a small but influential cadre of physicists and mathematicians whose credo is "physics is math" and who think they are free to create physics simply by manipulating spacetime equations using abstract what-if scenarios |
he actually claims to believe:
| Quote |
[t]here is no conspiracy, mind you, just a vested interest in continuing the status quo. |
Still:
+40 points
35. 40 points for comparing yourself to Galileo, suggesting that a modern-day Inquisition is hard at work on your case, and so on.
No, but as noted his domain is rebelscience.org and he's definitely all mavericky and stuff, which is what Galileo-comparers are often going for. He mentions Galilieo though:
| Quote |
The embarrassing truth is that, centuries after Newton and Galileo, we still have no idea what causes gravity, a million relativists insisting otherwise notwithstanding. |
Fuck it:
+40 points
36. 40 points for claiming that when your theory is finally appreciated, present-day science will be seen for the sham it truly is. (30 more points for fantasizing about show trials in which scientists who mocked your theories will be forced to recant.)
37. 50 points for claiming you have a revolutionary theory but giving no concrete testable predictions.
I'm lumping these together. As best I can tell, he's not really claiming to have a theory, just "common sense" but seems to think that he'll revolutionize things anyway if enough people would just listen (and he does explicitly refer to a "coming physics revolution". There's definitely some "show trial"-esque stuff brewing in his fevered imagination, as clearly seen here:
| Quote |
If your name is on my list of spacetime crackpots and you wish to write a rebuttal, or an admission that you were wrong, I will be glad to publish it on this site. Along with my comments, of course. |
here:
| Quote |
The World Deserves an Apology
The gentlemen on my crackpot list, especially Dr. Thorne, Dr. Wheeler and Sir Stephen Hawking owe the world an apology. All physics teachers in the world who have taught our young students that there is a time dimension or that bodies move in spacetime or that relativity permits time travel should apologize to their students. Thanks to this ongoing brainwashing (intentional or not, it makes no difference in the long run), countless numbers of young aspiring physicists are left chasing after a red herring called spacetime. This sort of crackpottery coming from admired leaders is costing and has cost humanity decades if not centuries of wasted minds and wasted effort. There is no excuse for it. |
and, Holy Fucking Robespierre Batman, here:
| Quote | | To succeed, the rebels must form a hostile political stronghold outside the walls and hope that they can gain enough converts from the the lay public (the despised peasantry) and enough defections from the enemy camp to eventually breach through. Once they are in, they must pillage and destroy the old order through terror. The leaders of the fortified castle must be put in chains, tarred and feathered and paraded through the streets for all to see (allegorically of course). This is war! |
Allegorical? Suuuuuurrre. Oh, and he has nothing testable, just vague notions about:
| Quote | | a new physics based exclusively on particles, their properties and their interactions |
Indeed:
+90 points
Oh, and if we don't do something about modern theoretical physics (and not, say, greenhouse gas emissions or just pollution in general), it's literally the end of the goddamn world:
| Quote | | Unless we (humanity) revolutionize our physical sciences, we are doomed because our teeming masses are fast exhausting the natural resources of our world. This in turn leads to all sorts of unpleasantness such as ecological disasters, diseases, societal friction and devastating wars. We need room to expand. We are certainly not going to colonize the solar system with our primitive chemical propulsion systems (or cockamamie contraptions like solar sails) let alone the star systems beyond. Even if we could move at the speed of light, mass migration to other stars is out of the question. And we do not have much time to find a solution. The ecological and societal clocks are ticking. We cannot wait another one or two hundred years for the spacetime physics establishment to realize its errors. We need a plan of action and we need it now! |
+50 more points for that
Total Crackpot Index Score: 760 points
Mind you, that's just the one page. Anyway, I really like that after all of that batshit insanity and calling the proles to arms and stuff he plainly admits:
| Quote |
Well, there is no plan yet. This is anticlimactic I know, but I am working on it. |
and that at the bottom of the page we find:
So, umm, guess it's not that urgent after all, eh Mapou?. LO-fucking-L.
To conclude:
1. Mapou is one hell of a tard. I'm now a fan.
2. I think one good revision to the Crackpot Index would be to really boost up the point awards, so you could say: "IT'S OVER 9000!"
ETA: Can someone tell me why closed quote tags are being ignored?
Edited by Lou FCD on June 08 2009,12:14
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I wouldn't be bothered reading about the selfish gene because it has never been identified. -- Denyse O'Leary, professional moron
Again "how much". I don't think that's a good way to be quantitative.-- gpuccio
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