Christopher Langan: "Smartest Man in America"? Not So Much!

[Evo]

He's supposedly the "Smartest man in America". I tuned in late to this show and kept asking who this guy was, he's the stupidist contestant they've ever had. I just found out it was Christopher Langen, the Intelligent Design proponent.

To give you an idea of how dim witted he is, his last question was "In Abbott and Costello's "Who's on first", what is the name of the second baseman? The answers were Who, What, and I don't know. Even if you had never heard of Abbott and Costello, the common nematode would have said "well, the title is "Who's on first, so we know who is not on second". Apparently he is not as smart as a nematode. He had to ask the "mob" for help and the answer "I don't know" was eliminated. That now leaves him with TWO choices Who and What. We know the name of the skit is "who's on first", so we know "who" is on first, that only leaves "what" as the answer. This slow witted ( and believe me he sounds very slow witted) person, unable to see that the answer has already been given to him, then uses another "ask the mob", where 20 out of 23 people said the answer was "what". So he decided to go with the majority.

This guy was absolutely pathetic on all the answers, which were unusually easy. If you have a chance to see a rerun of this, do it.

 

[Kurdt]

What I find amazing about the guy is his documentary on youtube. In it he comes across as very far from being the smartest guy and exceptionally arrogant with it. His ideas are poorly thought out and he constantly tries to confuse with the use of lengthy strings of long words. Yet in the comments there are people that are still defending the fact he's the smartest guy just because they've been told he is. Just goes to show you how willing people are to follow.

I tried reading his CTMU thing but its just undecipherable and gave up after the 1st page.

 

[Danger]

I suspect that the same people who think that he's intelligent are the same ones who think that Seinfeld is funny...

 

[Evo]

What I find amazing about the guy is his documentary on youtube. In it he comes across as very far from being the smartest guy and exceptionally arrogant with it. His ideas are poorly thought out and he constantly tries to confuse with the use of lengthy strings of long words. Yet in the comments there are people that are still defending the fact he's the smartest guy just because they've been told he is. Just goes to show you how willing people are to follow.

And he was probably well rehearsed for that. Unrehearsed he comes across as a slug.

I tried reading his CTMU thing but its just undecipherable and gave up after the 1st page.

I've read parts of it and it's a joke.

 

[OmCheeto]

He's supposedly the "Smartest man in America". I tuned in late to this show and kept asking who this guy was, he's the stupidist contestant they've ever had. I just found out it was Christopher Langen, the Intelligent Design proponent.

To give you an idea of how dim witted he is, his last question was "In Abbott and Costello's "Who's on first", what is the name of the second baseman? The answers were Who, What, and I don't know. Even if you had never heard of Abbott and Costello, the common nematode would have said "well, the title is "Who's on first, so we know who is not on second". Apparently he is not as smart as a nematode. He had to ask the "mob" for help and the answer "I don't know" was eliminated. That now leaves him with TWO choices Who and What. We know the name of the skit is "who's on first", so we know "who" is on first, that only leaves "what" as the answer. This slow witted ( and believe me he sounds very slow witted) person, unable to see that the answer has already been given to him, then uses another "ask the mob", where 20 out of 23 people said the answer was "what". So he decided to go with the majority.

This guy was absolutely pathetic on all the answers, which were unusually easy. If you have a chance to see a rerun of this, do it.

I never knew he was an intelligent design advocate.
His society does not seem to be very active:

http://www.iscid.org/
ISCID is pleased to announce the latest issue of PCID, Volume 4.2 November 2005

Perhaps they've run out of peculiar organisms to point at.

I do like the intelligent design people. They take all the tedium out of finding the most bizarre things in nature. It usually takes me at least 5 minutes to figure out how nature would put together something so complex. I used to have an IQ of around 161, though I've sat in the bar about as long as Mr. Langan has and I think it's about 73 by now. (hic!)

What was the name of the show btw?

 

[Evo]

You spelled his name wrong...

Langan

Thanks, I'd never paid attention to the spelling.

I never knew he was an intelligent design advocate.

Yes, he's paid by the Discovery Institute.

What was the name of the show btw?

1 versus 100, I as flipping channels and saw some dimwit called "the smartest man in America", so I had to watch, I thought it was some kind of joke.

 

[OmCheeto]

Yes, he's paid by the Discovery Institute.

Never heard of it.

http://www.discovery.org/
...In its prior edition of Science and Creationism (2nd ed., 1999),[11] the NAS made the blatantly false assertion that “many pathways [are known that] might have been followed to produce the first cells." Yet scientists have never created life in the lab, much less have they discovered any plausible pathways through which cells might have originated under conditions mimicking natural conditions on the early earth.

Should we tell them about the following?

http://physorg.com/news120405972.html
US scientists have taken a major step toward creating the first ever artificial life form by synthetically reproducing the DNA of a bacteria, according to a study published Thursday.

 

[Vosh]

He's supposedly the "Smartest man in America". I tuned in late to this show and kept asking who this guy was, he's the stupidist contestant they've ever had. I just found out it was Christopher Langen, the Intelligent Design proponent.

To give you an idea of how dim witted he is, his last question was "In Abbott and Costello's "Who's on first", what is the name of the second baseman? The answers were Who, What, and I don't know. Even if you had never heard of Abbott and Costello, the common nematode would have said "well, the title is "Who's on first, so we know who is not on second". Apparently he is not as smart as a nematode. He had to ask the "mob" for help and the answer "I don't know" was eliminated. That now leaves him with TWO choices Who and What. We know the name of the skit is "who's on first", so we know "who" is on first, that only leaves "what" as the answer. This slow witted ( and believe me he sounds very slow witted) person, unable to see that the answer has already been given to him, then uses another "ask the mob", where 20 out of 23 people said the answer was "what". So he decided to go with the majority.

This guy was absolutely pathetic on all the answers, which were unusually easy. If you have a chance to see a rerun of this, do it.

If you know nothing of Abbot and Costello (and what intelligent person knows anything of Abbot and Costello?) why would you assume there is only one "who"? In what way, exactly, is the ctmu "a joke"? Many thanks.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

He ended up winning $250,000 didn't he? That seems pretty good :)

 

[Vosh]

What I find amazing about the guy is his documentary on youtube. In it he comes across as very far from being the smartest guy and exceptionally arrogant with it. His ideas are poorly thought out and he constantly tries to confuse with the use of lengthy strings of long words. Yet in the comments there are people that are still defending the fact he's the smartest guy just because they've been told he is. Just goes to show you how willing people are to follow.

I tried reading his CTMU thing but its just undecipherable and gave up after the 1st page.

I have to say I didn't get that from the YT videos at all. I'm not even sure where any of that comes from. He seemed eminently reasonable and even tempered, to me. He seemed to me to be the very definition of unpretentious. He talked like a regular guy. I don't know where you're getting, "lengthy strings of long words". Sorry. I found the ctmu to be indecipherable because my IQ only hovers above average, and I suspect his audience consists of more sophisticated minds. I also find Isaac Newtons, "Principia" to be impenetrable (yes, I know he did much of that on purpose).

 

[Kurdt]

I think the whole crux of the matter is why did he make his CTMU deliberately elusive. I don't think one immediately has a grasp of obscure words once your IQ goes over a certain level. I found it immensely irritating having to look up a word for nearly every sentence. It doesn't take a genius to express ones ideas in an accessible and comprehensive manner.

The fact that CTMU has failed to be published in any peer reviewed journal speaks for itself.

 

[Oerg]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Langan

In conjunction with his ideas, Langan has claimed that "you can prove the existence of God, the soul and an afterlife, using mathematics.

but faced with finance and transportation problems, and believing that he "could literally teach [his professors] more than they could teach [him]", dropped out

I almost fell out of my chair.

 

[dst]

I had a look through his 56 page bible which may as well have been written in Sentinelese.

Funny because just earlier I came across this delightful piece: http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

I think he broke all 6 in the first sentence.

 

[tacosareveryyum]

I think you guys watch way to much television. :)

 

[moe darklight]

is he making money out of his claims of being the smartest man in America?

if so, therein lies his genius .

anyway, he doesn't come off as a complete imbecile to me. he comes off as either a) a clever feller trying to make a quick buck, or b) delusional. I don't doubt that he may have a high IQ or whatever, just his sanity or his motives.

 

[Mk]

It doesn't take a genius to express ones ideas in an accessible and comprehensive manner.

Depending on what the ideas are, maybe it does take a genius to express them understandably to somebody.
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/meno.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method

 

[Vosh]

I think the whole crux of the matter is why did he make his CTMU deliberately elusive. I don't think one immediately has a grasp of obscure words once your IQ goes over a certain level. I found it immensely irritating having to look up a word for nearly every sentence. It doesn't take a genius to express ones ideas in an accessible and comprehensive manner.

The fact that CTMU has failed to be published in any peer reviewed journal speaks for itself.

That's interesting. I didn't read anywhere that he'd made ctmu deliberately elusive. Where did you see that?

 

[Vosh]

I had a look through his 56 page bible which may as well have been written in Sentinelese.

Funny because just earlier I came across this delightful piece: http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit



I think he broke all 6 in the first sentence.

I really didn't get a sense that he was dropping 11 dollar vocabulary words unnecessarily. There was denseness to his writing, but that's not the same thing. I didn't pick up pretentiousness or anything derivative, kitsch or contrived.

I'm wondering where all the complaints are about the tutorials that are impenetrable unless you've had at least 3 or 4 years of advanced math and physics under your belt? If you understand those tutorials, YOU DON'T NEED those tutorials!

 

[Vosh]

is he making money out of his claims of being the smartest man in America?

if so, therein lies his genius .

anyway, he doesn't come off as a complete imbecile to me. he comes off as either a) a clever feller trying to make a quick buck, or b) delusional. I don't doubt that he may have a high IQ or whatever, just his sanity or his motives.

I'm trying to remember if I ever heard him say he was the smartest man in America.

 

[Evo]

He's obviously not the smartest person, a high IQ score means you scored well on an IQ test.

Vosh, I don't know how you could not see that his work is dripping with so many pretentious words that it is comical.

 

[moe darklight]

I'm trying to remember if I ever heard him say he was the smartest man in America.

Well he appears on TV shows that present him as such, and propagates those notions. I mean, I understand the media loves to make such statements: other people like Hawking are also introduced using that sort of semi-deifying language, but when Hawking is interviewed, he doesn't spend the whole interview talking about how incredibly smart and clever he is, and how even the greatest thinkers of our past had lowers IQ's than him (like his comments on Einstein and Darwin), instead he talks about his theories and ideas (Einstein and Darwin changed the way we understand the world forever; they didn't need an IQ test to prove how smart they were. What has Mr Lanagan done so far, at his rather mature age, that has come even remotely close to the achievements of true brilliant minds?).

I'm not saying being arrogant automatically disqualifies his claims of being a genius— many great minds have also had great egos (Newton, I understand, had quite the unbearable temper with anyone who dared disagree with him). Nor am I saying that using "big words" does so. What I'm saying (what I think we're all saying) is that he hasn't yet accomplished anything nearly remarkable enough to give him such boasting rights.

When he finally decides to unveil to us lesser minds his mathematical formula that proves God exists, then he can boast all he wants and you won't hear a peep from me

 

[humanino]

From youtube "chris langan (part 1)" @ around 3'30" or so

Q: Are you a genius ?
A: (serious) [...] I'll say, probably, yes I am a genius, by most of the criteria [...] (intense look)

Much later, in "chris langan (part 2)" right in the begining

"I wasn't invited to my graduation, my head was too large to be fitted in a cap.
The cranial circumference was too great. I couldn't buy a motorcycle helmet either"

"So you have... a large head ?"

"Yes [...] six standard deviation above normal. The odds are millions to one."

"And [...] your intelligence ?"
We can't necessarilly infer a correlation, we need more cases [...].
My own opinion is yes, [...] size matters [...]

"What is the actual volume of your brain ?"

"Dunno [...] could do it by volumetric displacement using the archemedian method [...] (laughing)

This is hilarious , business genius to the people taking him seriously, comic genius to the others.

 

[Evo]

If you know nothing of Abbot and Costello (and what intelligent person knows anything of Abbot and Costello?) why would you assume there is only one "who"?

Because he was given the names of the three basemen, he had to chose which of the three was on second base. Are you saying intelligent people don't watch comedy?

In what way, exactly, is the ctmu "a joke"? Many thanks.

Because it's laughable.

Here is a good commentary.

https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=1252763&postcount=96

 

[chroot]

Sounds like one suffering from Asperger's.

- Warren

 

[dst]

I really didn't get a sense that he was dropping 11 dollar vocabulary words unnecessarily. There was denseness to his writing, but that's not the same thing. I didn't pick up pretentiousness or anything derivative, kitsch or contrived.

I'm wondering where all the complaints are about the tutorials that are impenetrable unless you've had at least 3 or 4 years of advanced math and physics under your belt? If you understand those tutorials, YOU DON'T NEED those tutorials!

But we're not talking about something already established, defined and merely being extended which is the case in those tutorials. Here, it's an attempt to introduce eveyone to his new 'theory', which is a far cry from that. And you would expect it to be very clear, concise and so, not least from "the smartest man in America". Compare the first paragraphs of a translated version of Einstein's seminal paper and his:

It is known that Maxwell's electrodynamics--as usually understood at the present time--when applied to moving bodies, leads to asymmetries which do not appear to be inherent in the phenomena. Take, for example, the reciprocal electrodynamic action of a magnet and a conductor. The observable phenomenon here depends only on the relative motion of the conductor and the magnet, whereas the customary view draws a sharp distinction between the two cases in which either the one or the other of these bodies is in motion.

For if the magnet is in motion and the conductor at rest, there arises in the neighbourhood of the magnet an electric field with a certain definite energy, producing a current at the places where parts of the conductor are situated. But if the magnet is stationary and the conductor in motion, no electric field arises in the neighbourhood of the magnet. In the conductor, however, we find an electromotive force, to which in itself there is no corresponding energy, but which gives rise--assuming equality of relative motion in the two cases discussed--to electric currents of the same path and intensity as those produced by the electric forces in the former case.

As compared to his abstract (and that, it most surely is ):

Inasmuch as science is observational or perceptual in nature, the goal of providing a scientific model and mechanism for the evolution of complex systems ultimately requires a supporting theory of reality of which perception itself is the model (or theory-to-universe mapping). Where information is the abstract currency of perception, such a theory must incorporate the theory of information while extending the information concept to incorporate reflexive self-processing in order to achieve an intrinsic (self-contained) description of reality. This extension is associated with a limiting formulation of model theory identifying mental and physical reality, resulting in a reflexively self-generating, self-modeling theory of reality identical to its universe on the syntactic level.

By the nature of its derivation, this theory, the Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe or CTMU, can be regarded as a supertautological reality-theoretic extension of logic. Uniting the theory of reality with an advanced form of computational language theory, the CTMU describes reality as a Self-Configuring Self-Processing Langauge or SCSPL, a reflexive intrinsic language characterized not only by self-reference and recursive self-definition, but full self-configuration and self-execution (reflexive read-write functionality).

Arguably one person of those produced more results. Now who drops the $11 words? Now if you read that article I linked to, it attacks exactly that sort of writing - ludicrously dense, abstract, and unnecessarily so. Sure, it's a "theory of everything" but you would expect it to say precisely what he's getting at. GR can be summed up in a sentence - "space and time curve under the influence of gravity" - let's see you do that with his. Here's the difference - in his paper, Einstein uses raw, simple action words - here we have to deal with "information is the currency of perception".I wonder what this guy could come up with, paired with the Bogdanovs.

 

[chroot]

dst,

This is the kind of crap I'd delete and ban if it were posted here.

- Warren

 

[dst]

Yeah, it reminds me of that one joke about the cheapest university departments - physicists need all sorts of labs and rubbish, but mathematics only needs a pencil, paper and wastepaper basket. Philosophy (or whatever other discipline you don't like) saves even more - they don't need the wastepaper basket.

Well, something vaguely decipherable:

The fact that LO has a foliated structure consisting of spacelike sheets, with temporal rules confined to the operators embedded in the sheets, suggests that its inter-operator (state-wise, ectosyntactic) level of structure be regarded as essentially spatial in character. Thus, where space denotes the external relationships among operators and time denotes their internal self-relationships, one might also think of LS and LO as corresponding approximately to time and space. (The correspondence is “approximate” because LS and LO are mutually inclusive, reflecting the logical coupling of space and time; LO topologically contains (LO,LS)-structured operators, while the operators descriptively contain LO.) Where space and time respectively correspond to information and a combination of generalized cognition and telic recursion, one may therefore conclude that the conspansive evolution of spacetime is an alternation of teleo-cognitive and informational phases cross-refined by telic recursion involving extended, trans-Markovian telonic relationships.

 

[Kurdt]

That's interesting. I didn't read anywhere that he'd made ctmu deliberately elusive. Where did you see that?

I think its obvious from the way its written. It could be much easier. The fact is its not peer reviewed. The thing I have against the guy is that he thinks that high IQ gives his ideas more precedence over anyone elses. The fact is that it doesn't. What counts in most areas of life is hard work, yet he rejects the work saying he's above it and understands it all any way. I'm sorry but no matter what your IQ, you can't just understand things without studying them or thinking about them. If he did understand the concepts as he says, he would have many peer reviewed articles published.

 

[PhysicistDave]

Charlatan, fool, or prankster?

Let me see if I can clarify why no intelligent, educated people can think of Chris Langan as anything except a fool, a charlatan, or, possibly, a prankster with a somewhat eccentric sense of humor.

The problem is not his polysyllabic jargon per se. The various sciences and mathematics all have a lot of jargon. But the jargon serves a legitimate purpose there: it is easier for a topologist to refer to “homologous cycles” than repeat each time the hundreds (or thousands) of words encapsulated in that phrase of jargon. Most importantly, other practitioners in the field know what the jargon is shorthand for, and newcomers to the field can find out what the jargon means from standard textbooks. If someone in the field finds it necessary to introduce new jargon, he has an obligation to explain to everyone what it means, and he should not introduce new jargon unless it is really needed.

That’s Langan’s problem: his CTMU masterpiece consists largely of undefined jargon, not known to real experts and not explained by Langan himself.

That is the sure sign of a crackpot.

The other problem is that those of us who have some real expertise in some of the fields about which he pontificates find his musings to be nonsense.

I have a Ph.D. from Stanford in elementary particle theory: I know a great deal about quantum mechanics. I also am co-patentholder on several patents that apply information theory to various problems in computer and communication systems.

Quantum physics and information theory are two of the subjects Langan appeals to in his CTMU work. Part of the point is to make it sound as if you would recognize the profundity of his writing if only you understood all of the technical background as he does. Well, in those two fields, I do understand the technical background, and his use of those subjects is a sham: it only seems impressive to people who are as ignorant of those subjects as Langan is.

Personally, my guess is that it is all a big joke, like Mencken’s bathtub hoax: Langan is running an experiment to see how many gullible fools there really are in the country (answer: hundreds of millions – just watch the election!).

The only interesting question is whether there is any truth to Langan’s claims of extra-high scores on real IQ tests. If he really has scored that high, it is one more sign of the very real limits to the usefulness of IQ. I recommend James Flynn’s recent book, “What Is Intelligence?” to anyone interested in the meaning and limits of IQ tests (they are not completely meaningless, but their value is somewhat limited).

Dave Miller

 

[Vosh]

He's obviously not the smartest person, a high IQ score means you scored well on an IQ test.

Vosh, I don't know how you could not see that his work is dripping with so many pretentious words that it is comical.

Hello. I think he did score well on an IQ. I'm sorry, I don't get pretentiousness from him. But some people can't understand why I think Jar Jar Binks is fatuous. Different strokes...

 

[Vosh]

Well he appears on TV shows that present him as such, and propagates those notions. I mean, I understand the media loves to make such statements: other people like Hawking are also introduced using that sort of semi-deifying language, but when Hawking is interviewed, he doesn't spend the whole interview talking about how incredibly smart and clever he is, and how even the greatest thinkers of our past had lowers IQ's than him (like his comments on Einstein and Darwin), instead he talks about his theories and ideas (Einstein and Darwin changed the way we understand the world forever; they didn't need an IQ test to prove how smart they were. What has Mr Lanagan done so far, at his rather mature age, that has come even remotely close to the achievements of true brilliant minds?).

Talking about how clever and smart he is? See, you make it sound smarmy when it wasn't. He scored off the charts. He was interviewed about that. He purports to have answered the single most difficult quandary of philosophy. Nothing more smarmy than that has happened. You're just going out of your way to characterize it like that. Why, I wonder.

I'm not saying being arrogant automatically disqualifies his claims of being a genius— many great minds have also had great egos (Newton, I understand, had quite the unbearable temper with anyone who dared disagree with him). Nor am I saying that using "big words" does so. What I'm saying (what I think we're all saying) is that he hasn't yet accomplished anything nearly remarkable enough to give him such boasting rights.

He scored off the charts on IQ tests, there was no place in academia for him, and he says he's answered the most difficult philosophical question ever. This is what he's been interviewed about. Nothing about him and his manner makes me feel like this is someone who is, "boasting".

When he finally decides to unveil to us lesser minds his mathematical formula that proves God exists, then he can boast all he wants and you won't hear a peep from me

Fair enough. But there have been an awful lot of peeps so far.

 

[Vosh]

From youtube "chris langan (part 1)" @ around 3'30" or so

Originally Posted by Chris

Q: Are you a genius ?
A: (serious) [...] I'll say, probably, yes I am a genius, by most of the criteria [...] (intense look)

Sorry... what's the problem with this, again?

Much later, in "chris langan (part 2)" right in the begining

"I wasn't invited to my graduation, my head was too large to be fitted in a cap.
The cranial circumference was too great. I couldn't buy a motorcycle helmet either"

"So you have... a large head ?"

"Yes [...] six standard deviation above normal. The odds are millions to one."

"And [...] your intelligence ?"
We can't necessarilly infer a correlation, we need more cases [...].
My own opinion is yes, [...] size matters [...]

"What is the actual volume of your brain ?"

"Dunno [...] could do it by volumetric displacement using the archemedian method [...] (laughing)

This is hilarious , business genius to the people taking him seriously, comic genius to the others.

Sorry, what? What is it exactly that is hilarious?

 

[Kurdt]

Why do you place so much faith in high IQ Vosh?

There was no place in academia for him because he thinks his IQ score places him above learning and knowledge. If his answer was correct it would have been published but has failed numerous peer reviews. Like I have mentioned previously, you can have the highest IQ ever but not very much knowledge. From what I've heard from him in interviews he's resisted being schooled because he feels he is above it.

 

[Vosh]

From youtube "chris langan (part 1)" @ around 3'30" or so


Much later, in "chris langan (part 2)" right in the begining


This is hilarious , business genius to the people taking him seriously, comic genius to the others.

Because he was given the names of the three basemen, he had to chose which of the three was on second base. Are you saying intelligent people don't watch comedy?

Because it's laughable.

Here is a good commentary.

https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=1252763&postcount=96

It's one guys take, and he doesn't sound like he was up to such a reading. Just sounds like he's mad he can't understand it. If it were so flimsy that such a "critique" was sufficient, I don't think we'd know Langan's name. It's cutting edge, advanced philosophy and cosmology. If I were going to critique it, I'd make some mention that I was qualified to do so; not just bark at it like it was a laughable complaint submitted to an IT helpdesk. In other words, the critique doesn't fill one with confidence any more than the essay.

I don't know what Abbot and Costello have to do with comedy.

 

[Kurdt]

If I were going to critique it, I'd make some mention that I was qualified to do so; not just bark at it like it was a laughable complaint submitted to an IT helpdesk. In other words, the critique doesn't fill one with confidence any more than the essay.

By the same token, if I were going to write an article about something I'd mention that I was qualified to do so. I expect that of the articles I read.