Desrtopa comments on Some Heuristics for Evaluating the Soundness of the Academic Mainstream in Unfamiliar Fields - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (272)
1) It is plausible that an element of affirmative action could have crept into the awarding of the Fields Medal. It is not unreasonable to suspect that it has. Any number of biases might creep in to the awarding of a prize, however major it is. For example, it could well be that a disproportionate number of Norwegians or Swedes have won the Nobel relative to their accomplishments, because of location.
2) That the mathematics of relativity (either special or general) "allows no exceptions" is trivial but as far as I can see true, because it is true of any mathematical system that exceptions to the system are, pretty much by definition, not included inside the system. Anything inside the system itself is not an exception to it. So, trivial. But not false. What we really need to to do is to see why the point is brought up.
Looking further into the matter of "exceptions", to see why he brought up the true but trivial point with respect to relativity, in the main article I found this:
He appears to be saying that relativity breaks down at the Big Bang. He doesn't appear to provide any ground for making this claim, but it seems likely. Wikipedia says something similar in its article on black holes:
The big bang is a singularity, and in that respect is similar to black holes, so if general relativity breaks down completely in a black hole then I would imagine it would also be likely to break down completely at the Big Bang.
3) That people have often speciously used Einstein's relativity as a metaphor to promote all sorts of relativism is well known. People have similarly speciously used QM to promote all sorts of nonsense. So that particular point is hardly controversial, I think.
I have never relied on Conservapedia and don't intend to start whereas I use Wikipedia several times a day, but these particular attacks on the Conservapedia seem weak.
I'm not particularly inclined towards a charitable interpretation of arguments written by Andrew Schafly. In my own short time frequenting the site, I found him rendering judgments on others' work based on the premise that
"No facts conflict with conservative ideology
therefore, anything which conflicts with conservative ideology is not a fact."
If you try to interpret his views in the most reasonable light you can, you probably haven't understood him. He's a living embodiment of Poe's Law