I have been wondering about this recently due the reasonably large number of crackpots that seem to frequent this website. I was wondering if someone could help me understand the mind of a crackpot. I can understand people who come here with legitimate questions about science, things they haven't understood or think are interesting and want to know more about, whatever. Perhaps they even think that they have found an interesting flaw in a theory and are interested as to whether it is a genuine flaw, has been solved by later theory or is just a flaw in their understanding or math. I am however quite unable to understand the 'Crackpot', which I refer to here as the person who comes to forums such as these with either their own theory, or some perceived 'proof' that some well-accepted theory is wrong somehow, yet it is abundantly clear that their own theory has no foundation in actual science or their 'proof' is deeply flawed in many ways. The Crackpot will put HUGE amounts of time and effort into arguing their case against all logic and reason, fighting tooth and nail for something that they usually haven't even thought through very well themselves. Is it hugely inflated and misguided arrogance? Boredom? Actual insanity or some other mental disorder? It's just that there seem to be lot more of these people than I previously thought. Perhaps it's just that they migrate to places like this because no-one will listen to them anywhere else.
-=- With most humans, once they believe something, regardless of the reason(s) for the belief, nothing can refute the belief. Along with science crackpots, there are religion crackpots, political crackpots, ethics crackpots, military strategy crackpots, education crackpots, childrearing crackpots, etc.
This comes off as more of a rant than a genuine question, but I'll take a shot. It's possible that our presumptions of arrogance and/or unreasonable certainty in a "crackpot" are in fact misattributions. For example, say a crackpot posts a thread proposing some radical idea that they've been thinking about. It's possible that they are well aware that their idea is basically down to speculative musing, and that the posting of the thread is just a way for the person to organize their thoughts and gauge some feedback. However, if they present their ideas without couching them in speculative language, we see the illusion of certainty. This initial effect could then be compounded when the the so-called crackpot attempts to defend his idea in the face of empirical evidence and/or logic. This defense may in reality merely constitute further musing and thinking-through on the part of the crackpot, but again, if the defense is conducted in a way which gives inadequate acknowledgment to the speculative nature of the idea, then the illusion of arrogance is projected on top of the illusion of certainty. In this way a crackpot is made out of someone who is only trying to think through an idea. To sum up, my basic idea is that it's quite possible that poor communication alone can result in a person appearing as an arrogant, deluded crackpot, when in reality the only thing they are guilty of is failure to express their own uncertainty. Although naturally this explanation would not rule out the possibility that, all miscommunication aside, some people really are arrogant, deluded crackpots Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!. I'm just saying that we might benefit from being a little more charitable in our assumptions about the people making these outrageous claims.
Crackpots are the reason you're here aren't they??? Everyone loves an easy target...Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
It can be all or any of those things, and other things too. I think the primary motivator for many is the desire to feel important. Imagine if you could show that Einstein was wrong, or Darwin, or Hawking, in some fundamental way that only you managed to spot? That would make you an instant scientific star. The problem is that the crackpot never bothers to learn about the theories he (mostly it is "he") is criticising or trying to replace with a "new" theory. Either the crackpot doesn't have the ability (e.g. the maths required to do physics properly) or else he has basic misconceptions about what the scientific theory says (e.g. "relativity means everything is relative"). Combine a lack of knowledge with a degree of ego and you have your classic crackpot: Somebody who cannot understand corrections to his misconceptions or, if he does understand them, refuses to acknowledge his own mistakes. Somebody who fundamentally will not listen to anybody but himself. Somebody who ultimately is only after self-agrandisement. Then there's the other main type of crackpot - the one who actually has mental issues. Typically, this type produces posts full of semi-gibberish, in which one point does not connect with the next and scattergun tangents abound. Thoughts are put down in a stream-of-consciousness manner as they occur to the crackpot, with no thought for any structure or logic. Often, the thoughts themselves involve some kind of "alternative" conception of the world, not shared by any sane person. Many science sites, in particular, have "no crackpots" policies. Anything that has a whiff of crankiness is immediately expunged and the poster often banned. I like to think that sciforums gives people a fair hearing - with the exception of obvious spammers. We even have a "pseudoscience" forum. And failing that, there's always the Cesspool. More generally, though, I think the internet is a bit of a magnet for cranks. Cranks can publish their nonsense for free on the net. And the great thing is, it's anonymous too. So, the crank can live his ordinary life, only exposing his crankiness in relatively anonymous fora where he remains unaccountable. Not that all cranks are concerned about anonymity. A fair proportion actually WANT very much to be associated with their pet theories, because they truly believe their ideas will bring them the fame and recognition they believe they deserve.
"With most humans, once they believe something, regardless of the reason(s) for the belief, nothing can refute the belief." Perhaps this is what I actually fail to understand. How can anyone ever be that steadfast in their beliefs? I will certainly defend a number of mathematical and scientific principles on the grounds that they have a lot of evidence to support them, but I could never, at least in my own mind, 100% believe they are infallible. I can think of nothing that I could put a 100% infallible stake in. 99.999999999999% maybe, but never 100%. Even mathematical ideas, which are in a way immune to the fallibilities of the real world, I could never put that much stake in because we don't know where the universe or math itself comes from. ->Dub I can agree with that assessment to an extent. I certainly do not advocate writing people off as crackpots just because they have a radical idea. And I fully support the use of forums such as this to articulate ones ideas. Communication issues certainly confound the problem and I guess this highlights the importance of making oneself clearly understood, lest one be written off as a crackpot. I feel certain though that there is more to it than that. There are definitely some highly-articulate and seemingly intelligent people who are some of the worst offenders. The most dangerous ones even manage to convince gullible others that they are not crackpots. Although perhaps there should be a distinction made here between people who are crackpots and those who use radical or crackpot ideas to manipulate people for their own benefit, something a lot more criminal really. As a further observation I would say that otherwise reasonable people also sometimes have a tendancy to make 'crackpot-ish' statements, which means that assessing the 'crackpotedness' of a person or their position can be difficult and time consuming, especially if, as you point out, they communicate poorly.
Hehe, these are the worst. We have a member at another site I administer who is infamous for posting in this manner. When pressed, he once attempted to offer me support for his ideas by posting a few URLs to some scattered essays that, from what I could tell, had no discernible relation either to each other or to his obscure thesis. I guess he hoped that the credibility of those authors would rub off on him through some sort of mystical osmosis Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!. To make matters worse, English is not his first language (nor, I suspect, his second). I have since established the personal policy of ignoring his rants unless I smell a flame war brewing. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Of course -- there is almost certainly more to it than that. In fact, my theory likely only accounts for a minority of crackpots. I just like to remind people of the possibility. I try to be conservative in the assumptions and conclusions that I draw regarding other people, despite knowing that they probably don't give me the same consideration. Oh well Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Ah, this is SciForums. Sometimes a rant is fully justified. We do have our fair share of out and out crackpots (and sometimes it seems like we have other sites' fair shares too). In fact Kurros has beaten me to the punch by a day or so: I've been trying to formulate a sensitively-worded (okay, maybe not sensitively worded but at least not a foaming at the mouth diatribe) OP for a while. I wouldn't recognise a political crackpot, I'm too unsure of "real" ethics to dispute what an ethical crackpot is, any religion is crackpottery... but I can recognise a science crackpot and we have them in abundance. Sure, we have one or two who are "misattributed" as such, and in my experience they're fairly rapidly recognised and attitudes are readjusted. What we DO have is a certain flowering of "I know the real truth (but I'm not going to actually expound upon it*) and no-one else does. Everyone else is wrong and has been throughout history". In one particular instance it seems to be a case of "I'm right and in being right I will be recognised as such and heralded as the saviour of everything" (subtly stated but definitely there). In another we have "I'm right and this proves it. Oh I was wrong in that particular instance but THIS proves it" - the ever-retreating woo woo. We've also had the "I'll take selected sentences from (wherever) that agree with my delusion and ignore the rest of the document, the context and the overall premise, and I'll ignore anything presented from my selected sources that is presented by others that doesn't agree with my delusion" - I still haven't worked out that particular, um, psychosis yet. But possibly the weirdest we have is the "Yes that's what I said and your own words prove it: you said black is black and that's exactly what I'm saying - black is white" - these people have what, in other, circumstances, would be the eminently admirable trait of seeing the entire world from a different perspective from the rest of us. Of course we also have our subtler(?) woo woos who merely have a slightly skewed view: and many things reinforce that view because the original premise is that EVERYTHING presented is part of the cover-up: these are our conspiracy theorists.** I arrived at Sci originally because Google gave me a lead here when I was looking for information to debunk a UFO crackpot, Sci provided it and the crackpot was convinced (that was another site altogether, with milder crackpots), and Sci also showed a largely previously unsuspected world of crackpottery. Yes I knew people read "UFOs ARE HERE and Eating my cornflakes"-style books, but I never once dreamt that people actually believed those books except as a "Haha, wouldn't it be weird if it was real". And Hell, I discovered that Sci seems to be (or was at the time) Believer Central, so I stayed and did my bit for rationality. I'm still in doubt as to whether they go away educated or simply go away. And it's that doubt that A) wakes me up screaming at 2 AM*** and B) makes Sci lose some of its lustre now and again. * Either the crackpot in question daren't present anything because they're aware that it would be pulled apart and exposed for what it is or they're so far gone there's no actual underlying structure to present, except as "well I'm sure there is but I haven't actually formulated it". ** There are varying degrees of CT: from the Illuminati CT (they're fun, even when they can't spell, use grammar or form a coherent sentence - older SciForumers will remember Duendy with varying degrees of *cough* fondness) down to "the big companies are lying to us" or even "Tesla had everything sorted and he was shut down for X reason". *** In sorrow/ panic at the state of the world of course: H. G. Wells' catastrophe is overtaking education it seems at times. But that's probably always been true, we're on a knife edge... [Edit] One thing they ALL seem to have in common is a phenomenally poor grasp of spelling, grammar and the niceties of coherency. We've previously had a couple of threads in Pseudosci/ Parapsych about the consistent mis-spelling of particular words from ALL believers in psychic phenomena [EndEdit]
True, but the threads in Parapsych remarked that some of the misspellings are consistent, even from a dozen or so different posters. IIRC "preminition" was one of them. There was considerable speculation on why, but I don't think we reached any conclusion/ consensus as to why. (Not that that's new in that sub-forum).
Hmm... that's interesting. Maybe it's because those posters hang out with each other on psychic forums too much, so they pick up each other's misspellings. A community of cranks will presumably develop its own lingo over time, just like other communities develop their own jargon and ways of speaking.
Kurros, your question has two parts; 1 why do we post and 2 why are we not swayed by rationality. Why do any of us post anything? Which of us really knows our won motivations? We can know our motivations one or two levels deep but below that the source of our actions is lost in a unconscious soup of brain chemistry, psychology and perhaps sanskaras. "Boredom" is the best short answer to part 1 of your question and you already came up with that answer. A desire for risk free human interaction might be another answer. Maybe we like to talk and we are isolated or the people we live with have different interests. We can listen to the media and read web pages all day long but do we ever get to tell our opinions? Is it natural to take in so many ideas without ever putting out our ideas? Would this ever have happened in the tribal settings in which humans lived for the past million years. On part 2 rationality look at the Solipsism topics and remember that their is no true rationality. Their is just relative rationality based on consensus assumptions. So some person refuses to believe consensus assumptions and the people holding the consensus assumptions have forgotten that consensus assumptions are still just assumptions and are not facts. So often people have different assumptions based on different experiences. Logic needs assumptions but assumptions are not logical. The rationality you are talking about is functional rationality and is subjective and not real true rationality. If we cared about real rationality we would all shut up and nobody would post to Scifurums.
I think that hosting (a reasonable amount of) crackpottery provides a valuable service. The resulting discussions show our younger members how the scientific method works. A hypothesis is an attempt to predict the behavior of the natural universe by deriving a theory logically from empirical observation of its present and past behavior. Hypotheses that don't involve logical reasoning or empirical observation are generally not science. All hypotheses are subject to peer review. Errors or deficiencies in the evidence (methods, reasoning, choice and scope of observation, etc.) must be corrected. If the corrected evidence falsifies the hypothesis it must be corrected or discarded. If it merely fails to support it then more work is required. The Rule of Laplace is one of the most important components of the scientific method in an academy of quaternary research like SciForums: Extraordinary assertions require extraordinary evidence before anyone is obliged to treat them with respect. I have never found a formal definition of "extraordinary," but it generally refers to a hypothesis that contradicts more than one canonical scientific theory. After all, occasionally one theory is disproven, but the probability of two going down together is rather small. The purpose of this rule is to rationally deploy the resources of science so they are not dissipated on disproving crackpottery. It's up to the crackpots to make a convincing case, not to us to painstakingly refute each of them in turn. Demonstrating these principles in action is a useful tool in science education and one that is not always stressed adequately and coherently in science classes.
Those crackpots usually believe the things they do because experience has taught them to. Either that or the belief is just forced and ingenuine.
