----- Original Message ---- From: Fred lunnon <fred.lunnon@gmail.com> To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Saturday, August 4, 2007 6:37:26 AM Subject: Re: [math-fun] Letter from Grozny On 8/4/07, David Wilson <davidwwilson@comcast.net> wrote:
Most people seem aware of their mathematical limitations, but a minority of circle-squarers, crackpots, and isolates of varying proficiency convince themselves that they are breaking new ground when in truth they are usually either retreading the beaten path or forging a new path to La La Land. I've had run-ins with Archimedes Plutonium and the Smarandache crowd and others of this sort, and my advice is not to acknowledge them. The benefits of dispossessing these people of their cherished illusions do not justify the effort.
Marc has no doubt studied this phenomenon in more detail than I have. For what it's worth, I'd say that most people are driven to study mathematics --- or to any other intellectual endeavour --- by a mixture of three motives: to indulge their curiosity; to earn approval from others; and (maybe) to control their environment. The people encountered on math-fun will as a rule be motivated by curiosity; the crackpots by approval. It's the difference between wanting to learn maths and just wanting to be "a mathematician". It follows that, in the unlikely event that one manages to put a serious dent in their self-image, they will respond by attempting to reinforce it with an ever-intensifying barrage of self-justification. [Or just possibly worse.] Which is, of course, exactly what happens. Fred Lunnon I've had encounters with several relativity deniers. Invariably, they fail to understand what the theory is saying, instead attacking a strawman that they presume to be relativity. Initially assuming they are genuinely interested in understanding relativity, I try to help them get onto the right path, but that has never succeeded. Sometimes the denier has a good engineering intuition, but it fails to generalize to the concepts needed for relativity. These people will devote a tremendous amount of time and effort into refuting relativity, or proving their own alternate theory, than they would need to learn the correct theory in the first place. My most recent encounter, a well known inventor, is stuck on the idea that a light wave has a frequency. While not disagreeing with the existence of a Doppler shift, he believes that relativity is saying that when an observer measures the frequency, the observation alters the frequency of the light. But how could the observer alter the frequency? So relativity is nonsense. He just can't adjust his intuition to realize that there is no inherent frequency, only measured frequencies. It was particularly difficult to carry on a dialog with this guy because he would just cherry pick what parts of relativity are true and which are false. He didn't appreciate that it is a body of linked logical inferences. Fortunately today, thanks to denier Petr Beckmann, we now have Galilean Electrodynamics, a Journal and a mutual admiration society of deniers and crusaders against relativity and quantum mechanics. They are not just a bunch of random idiots, in fact, they are largely physics PhDs and professors. Now I can politely brush off these troublemakers by pointing them towards this organization. Is there a similar organization for mathematical crackpots? Gene ____________________________________________________________________________________ Choose the right car based on your needs. Check out Yahoo! Autos new Car Finder tool. http://autos.yahoo.com/carfinder/