Comment by arduanika
2 days ago
Tim Nguyen has put an extraordinary effort into finding the truth in this entire long exchange, and it's been mostly thankless.
His appearance on Decoding the Gurus was a highlight of the show's early seasons.
https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/special-epis...
Perhaps you would agree with Weinstein and Hossenfelder that physics today is broken. But that does not in itself prove that the people peddling alternatives aren't even worse.
> But that does not in itself prove that the people peddling alternatives aren't even worse.
I understand this line of thinking but I don't feel that it's particularly relevant. It seems to be born out of a point of view that physics theories are a binary. We either fully support them with everything we have or we completely denigrate them to the point of demonizing anyone who shows any interest in them.
Surely this can't be the best approach to discovering new physics?
Which is how I view these people. The result of a natural frustration that physics discoveries do not seem to be happening at the rate that they should. I'm not sure they have _the_ answer but I understand _why_ they're acting as they do.
Why this outcome bothers anyone is completely beyond me and now makes me genuinely wonder if there is simply too much gatekeeping within the field.
You're arguing with an oversimplified model of the complaint about Weinstein. It's not that Weinstein has a theory that's orthogonal to mainstream physics, but rather the means with which he pursues the inquiry. He doesn't write real papers, when he released the GU paper he copyrighted it and claimed it as a "work of entertainment", in effect demanding that the rest of the field not cite and address it. That's not how papers work.
The problem, as I understand it, is that Weinstein simply isn't "doing science". He's "doing big thinkies" and then complaining when the world doesn't snap to attention. That problem has not much at all to do with his specific ideas.
That's essentially my conclusion. Weinstein is playing an ego game using science as the stage set.
He's set himself up a win-win situation by creating a crux. If GU is rejected, that supports his narrative. If GU is embraced, he’s vindicated as a suppressed genius. In either case, he wins in his own story.
Eric wants to be celebrated by science, but the only way to achieve that (rigorous math, predictions, peer review) would force him to abandon the very posture that sustains his popularity.
I agree with your point, but it's worth noting that scientific papers are normally and by default copyrighted works. (In some cases the author may assign the copyright to a publisher.)
Eric's draft contains an unusual statement that says "this work [...] may not be built upon without express permission of the author". To the extent that this refers to derivative works which substantially reuse the text of the paper, this is normal copyright law. To the extent that this refers to the use of scientific ideas or discoveries, this is not enforceable under US copyright law. Copyright cannot prevent anyone from citing or responding to a work. See, e.g., https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf.
(I am an academic, not a lawyer.)
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I used to be in charge of technical measures for controlling crackpot submissions at arXiv because we were trying to get a very ornery physicist from not getting us in trouble sending nastygrams to HBCUs and such. The endorsement system was my work.
Two things we noticed were: (1) there weren’t really that many crackpot submissions but they were concentrated in certain areas that really would have been overrun with them. Crackpots don’t ever seem to find out that there is a big mystery in how cuprate semiconductors superconduct or what determines how proteins fold or even that there is such a thing as condensed-matter physics (e.g. most of it!) (2) Crackpots almost always work alone, contrasted to real physicists who work with other physicists which was the basis for the endorsement system. We’d ask a crackpot “who else is working on this?” And always get the answer “no one.”
From having done that work but also having an interest in the phenomenon, being too well read of a person to make it in academia, and personally meeting more than my share of lunatics, that it is really a psychiatric phenomenon really a subtype of paranoia
https://www.verywellhealth.com/paranoia-5113652
particularly involving grandiosity but sometimes litigiousness. It boggles my mind that Weinstein threatened a lawsuit over criticism of his ideas, something I’ve never heard of a real scientist doing —- I mean, scientific truth is outside the jurisdiction of the courts. I met
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Westley_Newman
and did not get to put his motor on my bench but I did set up some equipment on my bench that showed that the equipment he was demoing his motor on could give inaccurate readings and he had this crazy story of sueing the patent office and using his right-wing connections with churches and the Reagan administration to bully NIST into testing his motor.
> [crackpots] were concentrated in certain areas that really would have been overrun with them
Let me guess: theoretical particle physics, relativity, gravity, and magnetism?
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I think calling oneself an "inventor", while not a proof, is at least a smell. Nobody actually working on anything calls themselves that, and there are plenty of people working on things.
It's a label that sounds like something from some amateurish elementary school book of "historical inventors" or some cheesy popularization of science from the 1950s that propagates the view that there are these mythical creatures called "inventors" who appear once in a generation to bring fire to humanity.
But... they're the ones doing the demonizing... of pretty much everyone who disagrees with them?
"DISC" is literally just shorthand for "people who disagree with me are conspiring."
The real root of brokenness in physics is not bad ideas or a lack of good ideas but it is that experiments are nowhere near being able to answer the big questions. Ok, we will probably get some insight into the neutrino mass from KATRIN but we are in the dark when it comes to dark matter, proton decay (predicted by all GUTs including string theory), etc.
In the absence of real data there is all sorts of groupthink and nepotism [1] but it is really beside the point. People are fighting for a prize which isn’t there. As an insider-outsider myself I have had a huge amount of contact with (invariably male) paranoid delusional people who think they’ve discovered something great in physics or math [2], it’s really a mental illness.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9755046/ is the master scandal of academia
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Westley_Newman stole away a really good lab tech from the EE department at my undergrad school
From your ref [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9755046/
> we show that faculty are up to 25 times more likely to have a parent with a Ph.D.
That seems high, but I can't contextualize it based only on these results. What would the figures be for doctors, blacksmiths, farmers, computer programmers, etc.? I guess you're likely to find disproportionate numbers of children who followed in their parents' footsteps in any profession. It's likely not something special to academia.
In any case, there are plenty of other factors that contribute beyond nepotism: early guidance and encouragement, support and understanding of career choices, parental expectations or pressures, genetics, and so on.
> Moreover, this rate nearly doubles at prestigious universities and is stable across the past 50 years.
Ok, this is a bit more suggestive, but it's also plausible to me that the factors I mentioned above are amplified for children of parents working at prestigious universities.
> Our results suggest that the professoriate is, and has remained, accessible disproportionately to the socioeconomically privileged, which is likely to deeply shape their scholarship and their reproduction.
This seemed a bit of a non sequitur to me. The results show that children of academic parents go into academia more than others, not that "socioeconomic privilege" predisposes to going into academia. For example, are the children of billionaires (or millionaires) more likely to go into academia than the children of humble academics at non-prestigious universities? I doubt it.
(I only read the abstract so please let me know if these points are addressed in the article)
> but was rejected by the US Patent and Trademark Office on grounds of being a perpetual motion machine
The implication that being a “perpetual motion machine” is a specific reason for patent denial is kinda funny.
The patent office specifically calls out perpetual motion machines on their general "how to apply" page, presumably because they've gotten so many applications:
> A working model may be requested in applications for alleged perpetual motion devices.
https://www.uspto.gov/patents/basics/apply
Dutch alchemist Cornelis Drebbel got a patent in 1598 for the design of a perpetual motion machine. It was a clock that was powered by daily changes in barometric pressure. In the early 1900s, he was largely scrubbed from the history books because everyone knows that perpetual motion is impossible.
The clock worked, of course. There are still paintings of it — based on those, rolex made a functional replica.
But if you've never heard about Drebbel, perpetual motion is the reason. That wasn't his only invention, of course. He also invented:
* The first cybernetic system (a thermostat; a self-governing oven for incubating eggs)
* The first air conditioning system
* The first functional submarine
* Magic lanterns, telescopes (including the one used by Galileo), microscopes, camera obscuras, and pump drainage systems (credited for draining cambridge and oxford)
He was also a beautiful artist — he made engravings of topless women teaching men science and math (the seven liberal arts). Actually, maybe that's why he was erased? IDK. But he was definitely a free thinker and 100% legit. Look him up.
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There's always a grain of truth or some shared understanding to every grift. You can see it play out in how people sell you alternative diets or alternative therapies. "Processed foods are bad. Here, eat this thing that's been boiled until it is relieved of all nutrition." "Preservatives are bad, here eat this vegetable that's been heavily salted."
Beware of people who seem to be on the same page with you, especially when they're selling you their own idea.
>especially when they're selling you their own idea.
That is the heart of every con, isn't it? Tell people what they want to hear.