Come to think of it, compartmentalization effects (like with religion) might allow one to be brilliant for a while until the disjoint beliefs finally interact. Were the physicists who became cranks eventually ever particularly good at dealing with the flaws in reasoning of crankery while they were still respectable?
Similarly, it’s possible that as they became more prominent, they needed less and less to justify any given statement to the people with which they interacted, having gained more and more authority, and thus just lost socially enforced habits of thought...
Actually, the simplest explanation I can think of is that it takes the span of time from youth to middle age just to build up the reputation necessary for your eventual fall into crankery to be considered newsworthy… Are physicists really more likely to develop cranky beliefs over a set period of time as the general population?
Similarly, it’s possible that as they became more prominent, they needed less and less to justify any given statement to the people with which they interacted, having gained more and more authority, and thus just lost socially enforced habits of thought...
Then why don’t they retract when they run into criticism, as they inevitably do?
Are physicists really more likely to develop cranky beliefs over a set period of time as the general population?
Gosh, I hope not. The general population is pretty pathetic. I’m not interested so much in whether old eminent scientists or old eminent physicists in particular are worse than the general public, but the reasons why any eminent old physicists who adopts a crank view has fallen prey to that crank view. What, exactly, went wrong in their heads that had previously always gone right?
Then why don’t they retract when they run into criticism, as they inevitably do?
Well, why would they? After all, the last time they said that revolutionary theory X was correct and everybody thought they were wrong, it turned out they were right! That’s why they were prominent!
Strictly speaking, incredible levels of sanity are not necessary to find the truth, they only make it easier to do so. There are sufficiently large populations of physicists who aren’t ludicrously awesomely good that some of them are bound to turn out to be right every so often, even if they got to the right reasons for the wrong reasons. Maybe.
What, exactly, went wrong in their heads that had previously always gone right?
Well, why would it be any different for them than for the rest of us? The reason great scientists are great, I assume, has to do with the greatness of their discoveries. But why would only incredibly sane people make great discoveries? Can not just a little cleverness and a sufficiently large amount of luck (a sufficiently large pool of peers) do the same thing?
But they also had to correctly pick out the one which was the revolution—every such scientist faces tons of ideas and hypotheses to consider. Is your hypothesis here a kind of regression to the mean: all scientists are equally vulnerable to holding crankery?
Essentially, yes. They just happened to have had a string of sixes when they threw the dice, culminating in prominence. If you suppose that the crank-susceptible scientists significantly outnumber the crank-immune, you get predictions which resemble our observations that many prominent scientists are susceptible to crank.
Where by crank-susceptible I mean, approximately, susceptible to infection by crank...
Come to think of it, compartmentalization effects (like with religion) might allow one to be brilliant for a while until the disjoint beliefs finally interact. Were the physicists who became cranks eventually ever particularly good at dealing with the flaws in reasoning of crankery while they were still respectable?
Similarly, it’s possible that as they became more prominent, they needed less and less to justify any given statement to the people with which they interacted, having gained more and more authority, and thus just lost socially enforced habits of thought...
Actually, the simplest explanation I can think of is that it takes the span of time from youth to middle age just to build up the reputation necessary for your eventual fall into crankery to be considered newsworthy… Are physicists really more likely to develop cranky beliefs over a set period of time as the general population?
Then why don’t they retract when they run into criticism, as they inevitably do?
Gosh, I hope not. The general population is pretty pathetic. I’m not interested so much in whether old eminent scientists or old eminent physicists in particular are worse than the general public, but the reasons why any eminent old physicists who adopts a crank view has fallen prey to that crank view. What, exactly, went wrong in their heads that had previously always gone right?
Well, why would they? After all, the last time they said that revolutionary theory X was correct and everybody thought they were wrong, it turned out they were right! That’s why they were prominent!
Strictly speaking, incredible levels of sanity are not necessary to find the truth, they only make it easier to do so. There are sufficiently large populations of physicists who aren’t ludicrously awesomely good that some of them are bound to turn out to be right every so often, even if they got to the right reasons for the wrong reasons. Maybe.
Well, why would it be any different for them than for the rest of us? The reason great scientists are great, I assume, has to do with the greatness of their discoveries. But why would only incredibly sane people make great discoveries? Can not just a little cleverness and a sufficiently large amount of luck (a sufficiently large pool of peers) do the same thing?
But they also had to correctly pick out the one which was the revolution—every such scientist faces tons of ideas and hypotheses to consider. Is your hypothesis here a kind of regression to the mean: all scientists are equally vulnerable to holding crankery?
Essentially, yes. They just happened to have had a string of sixes when they threw the dice, culminating in prominence. If you suppose that the crank-susceptible scientists significantly outnumber the crank-immune, you get predictions which resemble our observations that many prominent scientists are susceptible to crank.
Where by crank-susceptible I mean, approximately, susceptible to infection by crank...