Constant comments on Some Heuristics for Evaluating the Soundness of the Academic Mainstream in Unfamiliar Fields - Less Wrong

73 Post author: Vladimir_M 15 February 2011 09:17AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 18 February 2011 01:02:05AM 0 points [-]

I can see that he attacks relativity, devotes a disproportionate amount of space to attacks, and relatively little to an explanation, though comparing it to his article on quantum mechanics it's not that small - his article on QM is the equivalent of a Wikipedia stub. But it's not obvious to me that the liberalism of some of its supporters is the actual reason for the problems he has with it.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 18 February 2011 01:21:29AM 0 points [-]

But it's not obvious to me that the liberalism of some of its supporters is the actual reason for the problems he has with it.

It is in general difficult to tell what the "actual" motivations are for an individual's beliefs. Often they are complicated. Regarding math and physics there's a general pattern that Andrew doesn't like things that are counterintuitive. I suspect that the dislike of special and general relativity comes in part from that.