Crank Criteria

From: -randy (cryofan@mylinuxisp.com)
Date: Sun Jun 08 2003 - 12:20:16 MDT

  • Next message: Chris Hibbert: "Science News: Skipping Meals may have CR-like benefits"

    On Sun, 08 Jun 2003 13:17:39 -0400, you wrote:

    >(Though, oddly enough, it is possible to have AI cranks, such as Mentifex,
    >despite the lack of any experimentally established AI theories for them to
    >disagree with. It would appear that a crank in a chaotic field is still a
    >crank.)

    Just for the sake of argument, how would one tell that *you* are, or
    are not, an "AI crank"? You would seem to fill the bill: you write at
    length on AI, but have no university degrees, and you are an advocate
    of decidedly non-mainstream ideas, such as the singularity,
    extropianism, cryonics, etc.

    >It really is not hard to tell who has the ball. Where Flandern is
    >concerned, the existing theory of general relativity has the ball, and
    >Flandern is a crank. Where, say, nanotech is concerned, Drexler has the
    >ball, and until Smalley figures out how to address the existing literature
    >and argue quantitatively, Smalley is simply embarassing himself.

    You stop just short of calling Smalley a crank, but leave that
    implication out there for the reader. I think Drexler is great, but I
    remind you that Smalley won the Nobel Prize for his nanotech
    work.....kinda hard to imply that he is a crank. Wrong, maybe, but a
    crank?

    -Randy



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