From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun Jun 08 2003 - 11:17:39 MDT
Spudboy100@aol.com wrote:
>
> A few weeks ago, Flandern was attacked and defended his record (on the
> usenet physics group) between himself and another physicist. The crank
> thing by Baez concerns me because along with using it to dismiss kooks,
> it serves to dismiss anyone out of step with majoritarian views. It does
> good, but it also does harm. It seems to be what Sagan was bothered by,
> concerning attacks in Velikowsky (who in my opinion really was a kook!)
> and a desire for conformity. Similarly, Mr. Yudkowsky's goal for an
> SI-AI singularity would face scorn from many if not most more
> conservative researchers; who seem to be the majority of them. They
> would insist on a doctorate in computer science, and a list of
> published, peer-reviewed papers published by accredited, recognized
> journals. Fair or not, that's how people seem to be, academics included.
Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>
> So without more investigation I can't easily say whether Flandern
> is "educated" or "brilliant".
He is neither. It really is not that hard to tell the difference.
If you look over the archived debate, it is clear that Flandern is
misrepresenting modern physics, that people have tried to explain this to
him, and that they have failed because Flandern doesn't understand the
math. Moreover it is clear that the existing theory makes predictions
which differ from Flandern's and that the experimental evidence confirms
the existing theory.
Being a crank has nothing to do with whether you have a doctorate. You
can have a doctorate in an unrelated field and still be a crank. What
defines a crank is ignorance of the basics of an experimentally
established field about which they choose to advance theories. Flandern
is a crank and an easily recognizable one.
(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.)
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. Yes,
there are people who assign "crankhood" by checking credentials, and these
people are harmful to science because science is not about credentials.
But if you actually *read the arguments* passing back and forth, it is
rarely if ever difficult to tell who the crank is.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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