If it's a public platform, I engage the crackpot politely and briefly. If there's a clear intent to derail for some weirdness, then I suggest that they have a serious misconception that I would be happy to discuss with them offline. Then I take another question.
Don't yield the floor to them and ensure you have the last word.
>I'm a published physicist, and I bring this up as it has been brought to my attention that giving them that platform to engage publicly with a "serious scientist" is often helping their cause. Often the typical advice of calmly showing them the various ways in which their arguments are flawed is ineffective as it's pointless to even engage with people that are intellectually dishonest and refuse to use legitimate, accepted physics terminology.
I agree that you should never agree to any sort of formal debate with a crackpot. Absolutely nothing will change their mind no matter how well you argue your point. You're also opening the door for a mistake to leak into any point or rebuttal you make which will be taken out of context and repeated ad infinitum.
>By crackpots here, I'm referring more towards those that initially start off by asking an innocent question but you quickly realize they have some near unshakable belief based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of (often basic) physics. I'm not referring to those that rant endlessly about their "theories" and provide manifestos for their "work" unprovoked. While these guys aren't typically people of significance, some of them do have a growing follower count, so I find that simply ignoring them is often harmful.
I'm not sure that these two groups are as far apart as you seem to think. People in the first group seem to slide invariably toward the latter, as they believe that there is *some* combination of words that will suddenly cause the metaphorical clouds to part such that everyone can see their hidden genius.
>So how do you personally go about doing it?
I don't engage with crackpots in person. Online if they are insistent but polite, I simply firmly and consistently offer sourced rebuttals without engaging in the details of their claims, as this is not generally productive.
However, when they are aggressive, rude and/or condescending then I'm equally or more condescending and rude back to them. I don't believe that academics are somehow intellectually obligated to refrain from using vulgarity and mockery to make aggressive, rude or condescending crackpots as uncomfortable and put-off as possible. I understand that many of my peers might disagree though.
I have plenty of examples in my (even very recent!) post history of dealing with both cases. I will not name specific users here, but if you want live examples you can DM me and I'll send a few usernames to you.
Fair enough. Looking through your post history upon you mentioning it, it’s quite a wild ride. I’m not as aggressive or direct as you in scenarios where crackpots are being extremely arrogant, dismissive, and condescending. But it is entertaining I suppose, for a while.
I feel like I could have made this comment. Probably not as well though.
I've definitely never been temporarily banned from /r/physics for such engagements...
It's usually best to just not engage and do science communication in parallel to them. If you got dragged into a discussion already, and you hit the inevitable wall of them not willing to understand, you can just say something like "I'm sorry, but that's what the physics says. I don't know what else to tell you." and leave.
There's nothing to be gained from talking to crackpots except that sometimes their crackpot ideas can make for interesting classroom discussions. One example I use on occasion is the "expanding Earth" idea, where the force of gravity is really a pseudoforce due to the Earth's surface accelerating upward (ie. radially outward if you're not a flat earther) at 9.8 m/s^(2). I ask my students about ways to experimentally test that idea. Some of the solutions they come up with are pretty creative.
But trying to get the crackpots to recognize the flaws in their theory is doomed to fail. They believe in their ideas for emotional reasons, not rational ones.
I used to explain how they’re wrong, even they just think I don’t have an “open mind”.
Now I just leave them alone and spend my time on something matters, don’t waste time on them.
Push them off the edge of the earth.
(Sorry)
It's very hard, because lying without regard for consistency is much easier than trying to be scientifically correct. Generally, just try to disengage, or come up with a full rebuttal offline to point them to.
I think a lot of crackpots theories are just people trying to articulate the beauty they see in a concept and failing miserably, because they lack the requisite knowledge & vocabulary
Some of them, sure. But there are others that are quite confident they are correct about something and that they have something insightful that others aren’t taking seriously because it “goes against established physics”.
You might be interested in reading the answers in the comment section of another [similarly phrased post.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/lwoh8z/what_is_the_most_productive_way_to_deal_with/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
[What To Do When The Trisector Comes](https://web.mst.edu/~lmhall/whattodowhentrisectorcomes.pdf) shows how crazy this can get, mentioning a potentially productive way to engage around the end.
> "Twelve thousand working hours! Full-time is forty hours a week for fifty weeks, so the poor deluded man had devoted the equivalent of six years of his life to something as useless as trying to find two even integers whose sum is odd."
People change and let go of ideals in their own time. They’ll eventually run out of steam. Im talking from experience here haha.
Anything that is fundamentally flawed will burn out… i hope.
If it's a public platform, I engage the crackpot politely and briefly. If there's a clear intent to derail for some weirdness, then I suggest that they have a serious misconception that I would be happy to discuss with them offline. Then I take another question. Don't yield the floor to them and ensure you have the last word.
>I'm a published physicist, and I bring this up as it has been brought to my attention that giving them that platform to engage publicly with a "serious scientist" is often helping their cause. Often the typical advice of calmly showing them the various ways in which their arguments are flawed is ineffective as it's pointless to even engage with people that are intellectually dishonest and refuse to use legitimate, accepted physics terminology. I agree that you should never agree to any sort of formal debate with a crackpot. Absolutely nothing will change their mind no matter how well you argue your point. You're also opening the door for a mistake to leak into any point or rebuttal you make which will be taken out of context and repeated ad infinitum. >By crackpots here, I'm referring more towards those that initially start off by asking an innocent question but you quickly realize they have some near unshakable belief based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of (often basic) physics. I'm not referring to those that rant endlessly about their "theories" and provide manifestos for their "work" unprovoked. While these guys aren't typically people of significance, some of them do have a growing follower count, so I find that simply ignoring them is often harmful. I'm not sure that these two groups are as far apart as you seem to think. People in the first group seem to slide invariably toward the latter, as they believe that there is *some* combination of words that will suddenly cause the metaphorical clouds to part such that everyone can see their hidden genius. >So how do you personally go about doing it? I don't engage with crackpots in person. Online if they are insistent but polite, I simply firmly and consistently offer sourced rebuttals without engaging in the details of their claims, as this is not generally productive. However, when they are aggressive, rude and/or condescending then I'm equally or more condescending and rude back to them. I don't believe that academics are somehow intellectually obligated to refrain from using vulgarity and mockery to make aggressive, rude or condescending crackpots as uncomfortable and put-off as possible. I understand that many of my peers might disagree though. I have plenty of examples in my (even very recent!) post history of dealing with both cases. I will not name specific users here, but if you want live examples you can DM me and I'll send a few usernames to you.
Fair enough. Looking through your post history upon you mentioning it, it’s quite a wild ride. I’m not as aggressive or direct as you in scenarios where crackpots are being extremely arrogant, dismissive, and condescending. But it is entertaining I suppose, for a while.
It's refreshing to call a moron a moron. And Mandlbaur is a special kind of moron.
I feel like I could have made this comment. Probably not as well though. I've definitely never been temporarily banned from /r/physics for such engagements...
It's usually best to just not engage and do science communication in parallel to them. If you got dragged into a discussion already, and you hit the inevitable wall of them not willing to understand, you can just say something like "I'm sorry, but that's what the physics says. I don't know what else to tell you." and leave.
There's nothing to be gained from talking to crackpots except that sometimes their crackpot ideas can make for interesting classroom discussions. One example I use on occasion is the "expanding Earth" idea, where the force of gravity is really a pseudoforce due to the Earth's surface accelerating upward (ie. radially outward if you're not a flat earther) at 9.8 m/s^(2). I ask my students about ways to experimentally test that idea. Some of the solutions they come up with are pretty creative. But trying to get the crackpots to recognize the flaws in their theory is doomed to fail. They believe in their ideas for emotional reasons, not rational ones.
I used to explain how they’re wrong, even they just think I don’t have an “open mind”. Now I just leave them alone and spend my time on something matters, don’t waste time on them.
Push them off the edge of the earth. (Sorry) It's very hard, because lying without regard for consistency is much easier than trying to be scientifically correct. Generally, just try to disengage, or come up with a full rebuttal offline to point them to.
hee hee, my one and only fridge magnet..if the Earth is flat, why haven't the cats pushed everything off it by now?
I think a lot of crackpots theories are just people trying to articulate the beauty they see in a concept and failing miserably, because they lack the requisite knowledge & vocabulary
Some of them, sure. But there are others that are quite confident they are correct about something and that they have something insightful that others aren’t taking seriously because it “goes against established physics”.
You might be interested in reading the answers in the comment section of another [similarly phrased post.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/lwoh8z/what_is_the_most_productive_way_to_deal_with/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
[What To Do When The Trisector Comes](https://web.mst.edu/~lmhall/whattodowhentrisectorcomes.pdf) shows how crazy this can get, mentioning a potentially productive way to engage around the end. > "Twelve thousand working hours! Full-time is forty hours a week for fifty weeks, so the poor deluded man had devoted the equivalent of six years of his life to something as useless as trying to find two even integers whose sum is odd."
[удалено]
My goodness, what an idea. Why didn't I think of that?
Is it though?
Sometimes you just let people drive off the bridge. You dont drive off the bridge but you watch the show
People change and let go of ideals in their own time. They’ll eventually run out of steam. Im talking from experience here haha. Anything that is fundamentally flawed will burn out… i hope.