Crackpot Bingo

[Strange]

Perhaps because we are living through a post-apocalyptic movie, the forum seems to be attracting a larger that usual number of people with their own wacky ideas about how the world works.

So I put this together, partly based on my own observations but also a few pinched from the Crackpot Index (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html).

[Dagl1]

Haha Amazing!

[Ghideon]

33 minutes ago, Strange said:

So I put this together

Darn. Now I'm trying to add squares instead of getting some work done...

"I've written to numerous universities and scientists and got no replies"

"I just need someone to add the math for this idea"

"trying to circumvent a basic physical law by adding more complicated details"

"We will share credit once I get published"

 

[Strange]

12 minutes ago, Ghideon said:

Darn. Now I'm trying to add squares instead of getting some work done...

"I've written to numerous universities and scientists and got no replies"

"I just need someone to add the math for this idea"

"trying to circumvent a basic physical law by adding more complicated details"

"We will share credit once I get published"

Good ones. I think only one of those is on the Crackpot Index!

(I have done approximately zero work so far today; but have just committed to have some stuff done by the end of the day ... that I don't know how to do!)

[Phi for All]

We used to have a card generator, quite some time back: 

 

[Ghideon]

1 "Can you dumb down these advanced papers until they confirm my invalid understanding of physics?"

2 "Quotation marks around central concepts such as "force" "time" "length"  "

3 "Defending an invalid idea by replying to both red and green mod-notes"

4 "Opening Post in mainstream sections contains at least one "!" but no "?"  "

5 "Referring to century-old science as if zero progress have been made ever since"

I think we now have enough so @Strange can make a 5x5 grid

 

2 hours ago, Strange said:

I have done approximately zero work so far today

I have now redefined "work" to include answering in this tread.

(Crap, I just scored 1 point for entry no 2 on my own list above...)

[Strange]

20 minutes ago, Ghideon said:

I think we now have enough so @Strange can make a 5x5 grid

Thanks. I didn't know I needed to do that!

[swansont]

2 hours ago, Phi for All said:

We used to have a card generator, quite some time back: 

 

Sounded familiar

[taeto]

I recognize some of these from recent posts .

How large is an actual bingo card? I suspect you soon have to get busy about weeding out entries to make room for new ones going in.

[Strange]

22 minutes ago, swansont said:

Sounded familiar

Love the fact that one of the (longest) responses is from someone who clearly scores pretty high on the crackpot index.

[John Cuthber]

... but the magnets are rotating, so...

[taeto]

How about a "speculations posting" bingo? The first square could be "Will this new discovery kill us during our lifetime?"

Don't know how I came up with that particular example exactly 😆

[Phi for All]

3 hours ago, taeto said:

How about a "speculations posting" bingo?

I think this takes unfair aim at the subsection. We designed Speculations so anyone willing to work rigorously towards a non-mainstream explanation of a particular phenomenon could discuss their reasoning and present supportive evidence. There's nothing preventing anyone from presenting a compelling enough argument to persuade the membership into a productive discussion, maybe even get the thread moved into a mainstream section.

Such rigor is the antithesis of being a crackpot though. By the normal definition, a crackpot simply has strange, crazy-sounding ideas, but in science, a crackpot is defined as someone who's too lax in their methodology. More lazy than crazy.

[taeto]

3 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

I think this takes unfair aim at the subsection. We designed Speculations so anyone willing to work rigorously towards a non-mainstream explanation of a particular phenomenon could discuss their reasoning and present supportive evidence. There's nothing preventing anyone from presenting a compelling enough argument to persuade the membership into a productive discussion, maybe even get the thread moved into a mainstream section.

Such rigor is the antithesis of being a crackpot though. By the normal definition, a crackpot simply has strange, crazy-sounding ideas, but in science, a crackpot is defined as someone who's too lax in their methodology. More lazy than crazy.

Thank you for a very nice answer!

I did not really want to target those who post in the speculations section particularly. Just found it convenient to use that same word. Come to think of it, crackpots in a broad sense seem to include those who see scientific progress as a bad thing. Like in mathematics, cranks will see it as a bad thing that Cantor discovered that there are infinite sets of different cardinalities, and that Gödel and Turing discovered true statements that are not provable and computable. And of course in physics that Einstein described theories that are similarly hard to understand based on everyday intuition, like black holes. In other sciences, Watson and Crick were severely criticized as well. 

Maybe a crackpot is the one who attempts to "disprove by argument" established science because it is new and seems scary, if you are uneducated.

And a "speculator" is one who simply worries about scientific observations, just on the basis that they are new and seem scary, if you are uneducated.

Clearly not everyone who submits to the speculations section belongs in the latter category, just as not everyone who submits in a science section without understanding everything belongs in the crackpot category.    

[Ghideon]

"Ignoring moderator warnings; starting new threads about same fringe/non mainstream ideas until banned"

"Registering at least two sock puppet accounts to be able to post debunked claims after a ban"

 

 

[Sensei]

9 minutes ago, Ghideon said:

"Ignoring moderator warnings; starting new threads about same fringe/non mainstream ideas until banned"

"Registering at least two sock puppet accounts to be able to post debunked claims after a ban"

"Registration of many sock puppet accounts to be able to upvote the main account posts to pretend somebody is agreeing with them"

[Strange]

"Vortex"

On 4/28/2020 at 3:07 PM, Sensei said:

"Registration of many sock puppet accounts to be able to upvote the main account posts to pretend somebody is agreeing with them"

That happens surprisingly rarely. Most sock puppets seem to be created to get round a ban. 

[Strange]

This pretty much works if you replace "social science" with "physics" 

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/social-science

[Ghideon]

"Using pseudoscientific concepts to get unscientific results about a fringe topics"

It could sound like: "Psychic powers positively probed the anti gravity field, hence sub quark structures absolutely exists." 

 

[joigus]

Very interesting topic. Patterns are important. I'd like to contribute two:

1) "My theory could still be valid if..."

2) Ignoring the points (often selectively so) you and others have made over and over, and focusing on sarcasm, minute details of an example, etc.

On 4/24/2020 at 3:40 PM, Ghideon said:

"Opening Post in mainstream sections contains at least one "!" but no "?"  "

Loved this one.

[Ghideon]

"During development of a theory a scientist seems to have made a mistake. Therefore the complete theory (including corrections), all supporting evidence, all later progress and any verifications and/or supporting observations must be wrong." 

For a well established theory the mistake may be very minor for crackpot to claim the theory to be crap. 
Bonus point if the scientist was Darwin or Einstein.