Re: The Psychology of Responding to Crackpots

From: Stephen A. Meigs (step314_at_aol.com)
Date: 06/30/04 

Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 19:41:48 -0400

"Daryl McCullough" <daryl@atc-nycorp.com> wrote in message
news:cbqdtf01855@drn.newsguy.com...
> I have a problem. I have a very hard time ignoring crackpots like Peter
> Olcott when they post. I always feel like there is some way to reach
> them---that if you can only simplify the issues enough, that they will
> see the light and understand.
>
> But it never happens. Never. You can really tell after one or two
> posts that someone like Peter Olcott is never going to be able to
> understand anything of substance, because they have the idea that
> they *already* understand better than anyone else. They have a
> psychological barrier to understanding that can never be bridged
> by words, or formulas, or analogies.
>
> Now, if I can only work on my own obsession with responding to
> these people.
>
> --
> Daryl McCullough
> Ithaca, NY
>

I don't know whether all crankpots actually have psychological or
psychiatric issues. Conformity is more insane than otherwise. If people feel
they are screwed-up they are likely going to be conformist and have
irrational faith in religion, for example. Needless to say, many crackpots
do not tend to be conformists. To the extent insanity is not some sort of
macroscopic brain malfunction, it tends IMO to be caused by anti-abuse
defenses appearing in situations not related to abuse. Conformity, thus, is
the insane response, the response of one who feels too screwed-up to have
faith in himself to make his own decisions. On the other hand, maybe some
cranks are people who are so much exposed to the self-serving lie that
conformity is usually inappropriate for screwed-up people (a useful lie for
those who dominate by disgusting socially unacceptable addictions), that
they excessively hate ideas that could lead to confomity and as a
consequence have insufficient regard for standard opinions, scarcely even
admitting the possibility that a standard opinion could be right.

Conformity is the insane tendency. Moreover, because morality requires
understanding (goodness unlike material success has no easy measure, and so
copying the moral to be moral is an ineffective approach in comparison with
copying the successful to be successful; indeed, a moral conformist would
still has to judge the person to be copied as moral--no easy task),
conformity is usually associated with immorality and thus a lack of
understanding. But apparently there are some whom typical conformity would
dictate the despising of because they are too depraved even for typical
conformists to find otherwise than despicable. Depravity is even more
associated with stupidity than conformity is (depravity operates on the
emotions rather than the reason, and so people who can rely on reason are
less susceptible to becoming addicted to depravity, and depraved people
usually have ancestors addicted to the depravity of their other ancestors).
Thus you would expect to get a certain number of conformity-hating depraved
very stupid but sane people, as well as a certain number of less stupid
types who excessively hate conformity because they have come under the
influence of a depraved stupid person and been deluded by him.

It's hard sometimes to differentiate very easily between someone confused on
account of insanity and someone who just doesn't care about the truth enough
to see that the on the whole excessively conformist mathematicians and
logicians are not infrequently correct. Simpler just to assume they are
wrong because these scholars don't tend to have the proactivity that
depraved persons tend to cherish.

Crackpots of the non-insane variety are very irksome. Their stupidity gives
strange ideas a bad name, whereas the world needs more strangeness and less
conformity.

As for insane people, well, I think the simplest explanation for why people
go paranoid or wear their brains out in terror from paranoia is not that
people have an inexplicable tendency to be paranoid about everything, but
that there is something that they have a very explicable tendency to be
insufficiently wary of, and so as a result, they tend to be paranoid about
anything resembling this thing. Insane people in a way tend to be more wise
than typical "sane" people, because they are more likely to sense the
important truth that sodomy is a heinous chemical addiction, which makes up
for all their fears of gypsies, freemasons, CIA blackhawk helicopters,
Kennedy assassins, Da Vinci codes, dirt underneath stovetop burners, etc.
See http://members.aol.com/step314/ideas/nosodom.htm for my anti-sodomy
theory. I must be very reluctant to classify someone as in one category or
the other since they are indeed deserving of entirely different levels of
sympathy. (In particular, I make no assertions as to the person you call a
crackpot, none of whose posts I've read.) But yeah, I think most of the most
pernicious crackpots are not insane at all, and are just deluded jerks who
hardly care what the truth is.

At any rate, I would be careful about assuming the best in cranks. Some of
them might be expected to be quite evil, and so it might be warranted to be
a little less willing to feel sympathy for them.

I see something similar as regards people responding to Bush. Many people
assert that Bush in invading Iraq acted in anger, and that hateful anger is
the motivator of evil. Misplaced anger is an insane emotion more easily to
be found in good people than bad, and so in consequence rarely motivates
substantial evil. What evil people often do, however, is to pretend they are
angry when they do evil (thereby making their evil seem more justified).
This pretend anger is totally different from real anger, and so
notwithstanding real anger is only appropriate in disgusting possible-sodomy
situations, misplaced anger (notwithstanding its real harm) is not the
motivator of great evil that people pretend it to be. Personally, I don't
think Osama bin Laden is the least bit angry, just extremely depraved. And
as for Bush, if he is like me, his hatred of bin Laden is likely so strong
that there be no real occasion for him to be angry, since obviously there be
no possibility that any depravity could occasion a false sympathy for
someone like bin Laden so evil; I doubt he has much anger toward bin Laden.
Anyway, crackpots' view of logicians' and mathematicians' conformity rather
reminds me of naive people's view of Bush's anger at bin Laden. It may well
be Bush invaded Iraq simply because he thought it was the right thing to do.
But bin Laden pretends to anger, whereas I suspect crackpots usually believe
they are right (even if they often haven't cared).

Anyway, there's a good deal too much prejudice against the insane, probably
because many evil perfectly sane people nevertheless are wrongly considered
insane. Let's not increase this prejudice by (wrongly, IMO) assuming many or
most crackpots are off their rocker or have psychological issues.

Stephen A. Meigs
mathematician, moral philosopher, anti-sodomy theorist
http://members.aol.com/step314/index.htm

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