Yeah, I’m on the OBNYC mailing list and the emails were as annoying as korin43 says. It doesn’t really help matters that the day before this bet email was sent out, he sent out another email purporting to answer the question “Why is there something instead of nothing?” using Goedel’s incompleteness theorems. In his defense he acknowledged that the argument was probably flawed and thanked people for critiquing it, but it still came across as really crankish.
Also, nobody called him a genius. People said that if someone accepted the “bet” he’d be a genius who got a million dollar loan interest-free, but nobody called him a genius.
Seconding this. I hope I’m not overstepping bounds if I ask that anyone who knows him personally checks in on him.