November 15, 2004

Pet Theories

Posted by Kieran

One of the advantages of not being a philosopher — and, in particular, not being a metaphysician — is that you don’t get emails like this:

Dear Mrs Paul,

may I offer you a final (as I think) ontological argument and ask your disproof on it? I’d be very thankful to you for answer.

Sincerely yours,

etc.

I imagine Brad DeLong gets similar stuff on why gold is the One True Measure of Value, and Jaques Distler has a folder of proofs that String Theory was Anticipated by the Ancients. When you’re a Sociologist like me, and your field has no credibility, people just assume you’re stupid and don’t bother sending you their Final and Completely True Theory of X in the first place. On the other hand, it does invite people to assume the answer to any problem you are studying is simply obvious common sense.

Posted on November 15, 2004 03:09 PM UTC
Comments

I would’ve thought that the issue was more that cranks are less likely to have heard of sociology, or to have even a loose understanding of what its major propositions and disputes are. I wouldn’t guess that political theory and con law have more “credibility” in any general way than sociology does; but god knows I get my share of crank mail (usually, and charmingly, still snail mail) purporting to prove the unconstitutionality of everything from UN membership to judicial review itself, or offering the decisive, fatal disproof of the coherence of Aristotle/ secularism/ democracy/ modernity/ religion.

About a year ago I got an impressively thick envelope— c. $3 in postage— that was all-the-way-gone tinfoil hat stuff about CIA mind control; but that’s not really the same as these earnest short proofs/ disproofs.

Posted by Jacob T. Levy · November 15, 2004 03:37 PM

I thought there was a whole tribe of people who believe that a complete explanation of the social domain can be given by modelling the interactions of rational utility maximizers. Don’t those people write you cranky letters?

Oh … hang on … they all got tenure… in another subject … in Chicago …

[Chicago ref not meant as a dig at Jacob]

Posted by Chris Bertram · November 15, 2004 04:00 PM

Does this mean you never received the paper I sent you proving affirmative action is the cause of AIDS?

Posted by fyreflye · November 15, 2004 04:04 PM

What I’d like to know is how Laurie answered the poor benighted ontologist.

Posted by David · November 15, 2004 04:08 PM

There was a paper arguing that Everyone Else Is Wrong About The Ontological Argument (But So Is The Ontological Argument) in Mind just recently, although I took the precaution of not reading it. (For one thing it wasn’t in green ink. Where are your standards, Mind?)

Anyway, your URL lost a tilda somewhere: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~lapaul/ works.

Posted by des von bladet · November 15, 2004 04:13 PM

It does seem that people dealing with philosophy are rather open to getting crank mail (my favourite experience thus far is from a welder in the midwest who alone understands the meaning of J.L. Austin’s theory of language). Unlike, say, bloggers …

Posted by Josh · November 15, 2004 04:17 PM

My understanding is that it is the religion professors who have it really bad where cranks are concerned.

I recently met a women who is a specialist in Ancient Near Eastern languages at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Ever since the Mel Gibson movie, people have been constantly sending her video and audio tapes of themselves speaking in tongues, certain that the gibberish they are speaking is in fact Aramaic, and hoping to have her tell them what message the Lord was articulating through them.

Posted by pjs · November 15, 2004 04:30 PM

I have a theory of dinosaurs that is mine and belongs to me.

Posted by Anne Elk · November 15, 2004 04:34 PM

On the other hand, it does invite people to assume the answer to any problem you are studying is simply obvious common sense.

Well, isn’t that true?

(I kid ‘cause I love.)

Posted by Ted Barlow · November 15, 2004 04:48 PM

Ah yes. One of the problems with being a logician is the disturbing frequency with which I get e-mail of the form:

“I’m having a fight with my husband/wife about … (long story about $, infidelity, etc. eliminated). Don’t you think my position is more “logical.” Will you please tell him/her so!”

Posted by Timothy Bays · November 15, 2004 04:52 PM

timothy, now I’m picturing the Vulcan Marriage Guidance Bureau…

Posted by derek · November 15, 2004 05:16 PM

I remember talking to my mother’s cousin (a political science prof. who I guess was once a sociologist) when I was taking Soc 1. He told me, “Sociology is a fraud. You go to political science conferences, they talk about political science. You go to history conferences, they talk about history. But you go to sociology conferences, and they don’t talk about sociology, because they KNOW it’s a fraud.”

Posted by me2i81 · November 15, 2004 05:21 PM

I make a practice of confrontong people who think that the Democrats should, for some reason, be ashamed of George Soros. The paleos are, for obvious reasons, careful not to talk about bloodsucking parasites, etc., though “shadowy” and “cosmopolitan” do appear.

Anyway, in justification one paleo (at Red State)explained that George Soros’ un-American philosophy was fatally and criminally flawed, and could be traced back to the odious John Stuart Mill. He referred me to Aquinas for a superior alternative.

Posted by John Emerson · November 15, 2004 06:03 PM

…it does invite people to assume the answer to any problem you are studying is simply obvious common sense.

Professors Steven Landsburg and David Friedman have convinced me that this is, indeed, the case. You aren’t saying that they are full of crap, are you? Oh, God, my whole world is collapsing…

Posted by abb1 · November 15, 2004 06:15 PM

Oddly enough, I never get gold bugs, but there are still plenty of Social Credit theorists out there.

Posted by John Quiggin · November 15, 2004 07:40 PM

Religion professors really are fortunate in the amount of attention they get from (certain segments of) the general public. I know of one professor whose lectures are routinely staked out by a man who has taken it upon himself to be the Guardian of Truth.

The problem is that thanks to Martin Fucking Luther, everyone’s an expert when it comes to Christianity.

Posted by Adam Kotsko · November 15, 2004 07:55 PM

I would so love to be getting that mail…

Posted by Joel Turnipseed · November 15, 2004 08:00 PM

I thought sociologists were the cranks.

(Sorry, couldn’t resist…)

Posted by mathematician · November 15, 2004 08:28 PM

>On the other hand, it does invite >people to assume the answer to any >problem you are studying is simply >obvious common sense.

Isn’t common sense an oxymoron?

Posted by Tobias · November 15, 2004 08:45 PM

well one consolation is that it’s less annoying than the following sorts of questions:

“how many languages do you speak” (linguistics) “oh, so what’s the meaning of life then?” (philosophy), “so what can you tell me about this dream/nightmare I had last night” (psychology) (thinking of freud, and conflating psychiatry and psychology)

Posted by Shai · November 15, 2004 11:08 PM

As a lapsed mathematician, the reaction I would always get would be “Oh, I hated math in school. Actually, I used to like math, but then I had a teacher in nth grade that…”

Posted by Walt Pohl · November 15, 2004 11:22 PM

Add mathematicians to the list of regular recipients of crank letters: “I have trisected the angle!”

Posted by bza · November 15, 2004 11:59 PM

And those people would assume correctly.

Posted by norman normal · November 16, 2004 12:27 AM

Any connoisseur of American cuisine knows that Mrs. Paul is the pre-eminent name in fish sticks. As with Betty Crocker and Aunt Jemima, though, I always assumed that she didn’t really exist. Then again, perhaps that’s why she’s getting e-mails about ontology.

Posted by Tom T. · November 16, 2004 01:03 AM

I just got my first crank proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem in e-mail last week! And he claimed to have disproved Wiles’ proof too, because it used elliptic curves, which obviously only work in the case of right triangles, which only talks about n=2!

Posted by Kenny Easwaran · November 16, 2004 03:00 AM

I’ve gotten quite a few crank emails, (being a philosopher) but I actually enjoy them. If you want to become a student of crankery, a fun place to start is www.crank.net “All cranks, all of the time.” Check out the crank of the day.(I don’t work for them, really. I just enjoy the site)

Posted by mark steen · November 16, 2004 03:13 AM

Anyone who works in cosmology or general relativity is typically deluged with crank email. Along with ordinary letters, occasional phone calls, and once in a while a knock on your office door (as I had last week). Strategies for coping are a common lunchtime conversation. A popular one is to pair off the crackpots to talk to each other. But it doesn’t work, as crankdom is highly ideosyncratic; inevitably they both come back to you and say “Why did you tell me to talk to that guy? He’s crazy!”

Posted by Sean · November 16, 2004 06:02 AM

At least the cranks in most fields are used to being treated as cranks. The cranks cryptographers have to deal with are usually accomplished mathematicians (with the occasional physicist thrown in), who can’t understand why their brilliant cryptographic idea doesn’t work, since the math/physics behind it is unassailable.

(Then again, it’s somehow much more satisfying to dismiss established experts in other fields as cranks, than merely to brag/gripe about all the attention one gets from mere lunatics. Eat your hearts out, pedestrian old-economy scientists!)

Posted by Dan Simon · November 16, 2004 07:44 AM

I can tell you from personal experience that shai has it right: non-clinical psychologists have it the worst. Questions about Freud, or discussions about everyone’s “problems” are inevitable. Can you imagine if “Mrs Paul” had been an experimental psychologist? The same emailer might have written her asking if she can help him with his “ontological problems.”

I’ve reached the point at which I no longer even mention “psychology” when I tell people what I do. Of course, that means that people have no idea what I do, and when I try to explain it to them, either their eyes gloss over, or they wonder why the hell anyone would need to study what I study.

Posted by Chris · November 16, 2004 03:02 PM

“how many languages do you speak” (linguistics)

A corollary from my obscure little neck of the woods, linguistic anthropology: “So, you study the languages of the cavemen, right?”

Posted by Uncle Kvetch · November 16, 2004 05:29 PM

Well, you can add English Professors to the list — in an odd way. A fellow turned up at my office door this afternoon, asking if I was ‘in English’. I (reluctantly) said that I was, and he produced a two-sentence rejection letter from a local small press.

He wanted me to clarify it for him, as he found it ambiguous. Were they rejecting his work because it was too bad, or because it was too good?

I realize that this isn’t quite the same as the “I have solved Fermat’s Last Theorem” cranks, but it was quite unnerving enough for me.

Posted by jo. · November 17, 2004 03:26 AM

Well, you can add English Professors to the list — in an odd way. A fellow turned up at my office door this afternoon, asking if I was ‘in English’. I (reluctantly) said that I was, and he produced a two-sentence rejection letter from a local small press.

He wanted me to clarify it for him, as he found it ambiguous. Were they rejecting his work because it was too bad, or because it was too good?

I realize that this isn’t quite the same as the “I have solved Fermat’s Last Theorem” cranks, but it was quite unnerving enough for me.

Posted by jo. · November 17, 2004 03:40 AM

What happened to the “good old days” when we had USENET and Net Kook of the Year. And I do miss the body contact and actual police raids eminating from groups such as alt.religion.scientology. Blogs just aren’t the same contact sport.

Posted by Francis Xavier Holden · November 17, 2004 08:05 AM

Lack of credibility for academics seems to be having dire effects. A professor in Texas took eight months off to become a garbage scrounger.

“The idea seemed obvious, if risky,” he writes. “I’d try to survive as an urban scrounger, adopting a way of life that was both field research and free-form survival. As an academic criminologist, I’ve spent much of my adult life inside illicit subcultures, researching life on the margins, so the plan appealed. I resigned from my position as a university professor and my wife and I moved back to my home town of Fort Worth, Texas. (The Times 18 Nov 2004)

Posted by Tony Healy · November 18, 2004 12:35 PM

Lack of credibility for academics seems to be having dire effects. A professor in Texas took eight months off to become a garbage scrounger.

“The idea seemed obvious, if risky,” he writes. “I’d try to survive as an urban scrounger, adopting a way of life that was both field research and free-form survival. As an academic criminologist, I’ve spent much of my adult life inside illicit subcultures, researching life on the margins, so the plan appealed. I resigned from my position as a university professor and my wife and I moved back to my home town of Fort Worth, Texas. (The Times 18 Nov 2004)

Posted by Tony Healy · November 18, 2004 12:37 PM

Sorry for the double post. The first one reported as an error.

Posted by Tony Healy · November 18, 2004 12:40 PM

Chris, I feel your pain.

I once had the brilliant idea that I was going to start telling people my field was “Cognitive Science”, instead of “Psychology”.

Well, it didn’t go so well. On the first occasion I had to try this out the couple looked at me and said ‘oh, psychology’, and then I just looked like one of those insecure dorks who likes to put “science” in the name of what they do so it sounds more impressive.

Now I basically just say “I teach”. And if they want further info, we can go from there.

Incidentally, glad to have found your blog through your post. I’ll be adding it to my list. Yeah, that’s what I need, MORE blogs to waste time on :)

Posted by rufus · November 19, 2004 01:06 AM

A philosophy professor I had would tell people that he was a math professor and start talking about something obscure in mathematical logic in order to not have to deal with people telling him their philosophy of life.

I think the problem of people using your academic field to push evil on you goes all the way down. When I was going to be a math major I had people ask me to add or multiply or divide numbers, as if I were going to college to study how to do long division, or you know, anything with actual numbers.

Posted by Erik · November 22, 2004 03:50 AM

Thats just great, nice to see the smug self-satisfied laying it on those lacking critical facilities.

My own personal theory leaves room for all of us, we create our own realities.

You know its true, science is like just a series of russian dolls, we’re making it up as we go along :-)

Posted by Lyndon · November 22, 2004 11:30 AM
Followups

→ Levywatch V.
Excerpt: (More Levywatch) Jacob Levy discusses theories and crackpots in the comments at Crooked Timber....Read more at Crescat Sententia
→ Common sense.
Excerpt: Over at Crooked Timber, Kieran Healy complains that When you’re a Sociologist like me, and your field has no credibility, people just assume you’re stupid and don’t bother sending you their Final and Completely True Theory of X in the...Read more at John Quiggin
→ My Semi-Conscious Mind.
Excerpt: Following on from last week’s case, which was concerned with the ontological argument, this week’s nutter in Laurie’s Inbox gives...Read more at Kieran Healy's Weblog

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.