Posted on 01/10/2002 10:56:06 AM PST by buaya
THE CRACKPOT INDEX A simple method for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to physics.
A -5 point starting credit.
1 point for every statement that is widely agreed on to be false.
2 points for every statement that is clearly vacuous.
3 points for every statement that is logically inconsistent.
5 points for each such statement that is adhered to despite careful correction.
5 points for using a thought experiment that contradicts the results of a widely accepted real experiment.
5 points for each word in all capital letters (except for those with defective keyboards).
5 points for each mention of "Einstien", "Hawkins" or "Feynmann".
10 points for each claim that quantum mechanics is fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).
10 points for pointing out that you have gone to school, as if this were evidence of sanity.
10 points for beginning the description of your theory by saying how long you have been working on it.
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.
10 points for offering prize money to anyone who proves and/or finds any flaws in your theory.
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".
10 points for arguing that a current well-established theory is "only a theory", as if this were somehow a point against it.
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".
10 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to Einstein, or claim that special or general relativity are fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).
10 points for claiming that your work is on the cutting edge of a "paradigm shift".
20 points for suggesting that you deserve a Nobel prize.
20 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to Newton or claim that classical mechanics is fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).
20 points for every use of science fiction works or myths as if they were fact.
20 points for defending yourself by bringing up (real or imagined) ridicule accorded to your past theories.
20 points for each use of the phrase "hidebound reactionary".
20 points for each use of the phrase "self-appointed defender of the orthodoxy".
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.)
30 points for suggesting that Einstein, in his later years, was groping his way towards the ideas you now advocate.
30 points for claiming that your theories were developed by an extraterrestrial civilization (without good evidence).
40 points for comparing those who argue against your ideas to Nazis, stormtroopers, or brownshirts.
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.
40 points for comparing yourself to Galileo, suggesting that a modern-day Inquisition is hard at work on your case, and so on.
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.)
50 points for claiming you have a revolutionary theory but giving no concrete testable predictions.
An acquaintance of mine, a university science dept. head, told me a few years ago, that the stupidist things that will be done in the next couple of decades will be done in the name of science.
My problem with it is that it posits a new process--the pilot wave--that isn't mathematically necessary to explain the observed data.
It's worse than that, I'm afraid: the stupidest things will be done in the name of "the children".
What's your point. Quantum theory has always been regarded wit horror by those who best understand it. In the meantime, nearly everything you touch that uses electricity has some part that could not have been conceived or designed without quantum theory.
I find it odd that for thousands of years philosophers argued monism vs dualism, and now we have numbers to prove that both views of reality are true at the same time.
So what? It's a hidden variable theory.
(I had to go double check my recollections on this!) It's not at all a new process. DeBroglie proposed it as early as 1925, but abandoned it, ironically enough, precisely because Bohr pointed out to him that it's non-local.
Correct me if I'm missing something, but the fundamental difference between Bohm's (pilot wave) and Bohr's (standard) interpretation is Bohm's claims that a particle exists between the time it's created and the time it's observed and Bohr's claims that it doesn't. Which one strikes you as requiring more black magic?
For example, I will freely admit that every theory I have ever posted to FR is something made up on the spur of the moment, especially if I found it on the newswires. Doesn't mean I am not a crackpot, nor does it mean I am a scientist.
How many points? :)
IMHO, we commonly view reality in 3D and can rationalize some but not the ramifications of 4D. Furthermore, we have good evidence for 5D and more.
IMHO, the choice of coordinates we perceive is a limitation of our biology and not reality.
I think we need – really need – out of box thinkers (not crackpots though.) Otherwise, we shall just continue to pat one another on the back and slowly make few modest adjustments to accepted scientific doctrine.
The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is. Einstein's speech 'My Credo' to the German League of Human Rights, Berlin, autumn 1932, Einstein: A Life in Science, Michael White and John Gribbin, page 262
And now for the final question: what's my score?
I'm transparent like glass. You guys see right through me! Darn it...
(RW "...on that post alone" -- it occurred to me (but I abandoned the idea because I'm lazy, as well as a crackpot) that it might be fun to put together a simple post, say one paragraph, one long paragraph, that scores a perfect crackpot rating on the index. If anyone here has the energy to put together such a post, I'd love to be pinged for that...)
Mark W.
Look back: I specified local hidden variables straight away in post 17. That was specifically because of Bohm's interpretation.
Seriously, I'd appreciate your critique of any of theories on my favorite links.
I think that's a mischaracterization of the Copenhagen Interpretation. It would be more correct to say that (according to the CI) a particle's properties don't exist before they're measured.
Which one strikes you as requiring more black magic?
Neither. The nonlocality itself is the black magic, in my mind. There's a retroactivity about it, if you will, and that's what leads to all the counterintuitive shenanigans of objects at the quantum scale.
"Manuel will present his the evidence for his assertion in his paper, "The Origin of the Solar System with an Iron-rich Sun," at 10 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 10, at the AAS' 199th annual meeting at the Hilton Washington and Towers in Washington, D.C."
I see this meeting already happened, but I will be looking for a CI rating from the attendees.
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