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

[Vosh]

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:





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




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.

Where were you when Newton wrote his Principia?

Einstein might seem less abstruse to you because you're trained (I presume) in physics. You took a class and someone told you how it sums up. The vocabulary Langan uses is common philosophical jargon (like, teleology). Words like that will scare you to death if you don't know that. For me, both selections are equally impenetrable.

I still don't see wherein lay the need for the hollering and the 'tude.

 

[Vosh]

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 The fact is its not peer reviewed.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.

I could say the same thing about everything I find impenetrable (which would be a lot of stuff). It would be true about Newton's Principia, since he actually stated that he made it harder than necessary to discourage mathematical "smatterers". I don't know if this is generally the habit of thesis writers... I agree, it's not peer reviewed (I guess), so we aren't yet ready to pronounce upon it. I'm not getting from him that he thinks his high IQ means everyone should stop what they're doing and peer review his essay RIGHT NOW. You assert this, but, disappointingly, like everyone else here, assertions are not followed by supporting statements, so they're not much help in setting me straight. I'm a buddhist, so I can't quite agree that hard work is what counts in "most" areas of life; but as far as I'm aware, he's worked pretty hard on his theory, and I guess you'd have to, since it purports to answer the single most difficult question in philosophy ever.

I'm not up to date on what sort of rounds his writings have made. If I were, I'd make an assertion accordingly and then follow with at least two supporting sentences.

 

[Vosh]

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

Interesting. However, are you sure it's exactly true that "no intelligent, educated people" think of Langan as anything other than a fool? I mean, would a physicist from NASA be intelligent and educated? Anyway, the other stuff is interesting. Re: IQ - my take on it is that no one has ever said it was meant as anything other than an attempt to poke at the question of intelligence with a stick to see what happens; no one has ever said it tells us everything about something. I think the Flynn effect is the result of generation after generation being socialized and trained to take tests. Anyway, who knows...

 

[Vosh]

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.

Addressing the internet in general: I should have said that it would be evident from the thing itself.

 

[Curious3141]

We've had at least one thread on CML/CTMU before. I remember posting in it.

Here it is : https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=155699

 

[Astronuc]

. . . , and he says he's answered the most difficult philosophical question ever.

So Langan claims.

Actually, the answer is 42, and Douglas Adams published it first, with the greater challenge of finding the question to that answer. Clever mice.

 

[Vosh]

So Langan claims.

Actually, the answer is 42, and Douglas Adams published it first, with the greater challenge of finding the question to that answer. Clever mice.

My favorite part of any fiction is the end of, "Restaurant at the end of the Universe", with the Golgafrinchans. You laugh at their antics, but then you watch people in real life and... it's scary. The petty egotism. The short sighted, self serving solutions to problems. The mindboggling unawareness of their own absurdity. The Golgafrinchan's are a bomb dropping analogy of mankind; not a caricature. I'm not getting you down at all, am I?

 

[ice109]

it's easy to spot pretentious writing, the writer expounds on the topic by reusing the same words uses lots of runon sentences.

 

[Evo]

This is going nowhere. I think this sums up the general concensus.

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.