Why is linguistics such a magnet for dilettantes and crackpots?

Interesting article. The sort of bad linguistics it covers though seems pretty different from the sort of bad amateur linguistics I'm used to seeing. I don't have time right now to try to do any sort of full explication, but it involves mistakes like: 1. Identifying the language with the written language, or thinking of the written language as primary 2. Confusing statements about language with statements about the actual world the language is meant to describe (see also: "linguification") 3. Various prescriptivist crap

People just seem to have a really hard time thinking about language, and in particular keeping separate things separate while doing so, and if I may speculate, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that people largely think in language. (And, assuming you're literate, often in written language.) Everyone knows that the word "tiger" is not in fact a tiger, but you take more complex examples and people can't process it all and the indirection just collapses, is what it seems like roughly. That's my speculation, anyway...

Choice quote. We're going to see a lot more of this in the years ahead as more people get their hands on machine learning tools.

[...] The fantasists and dilettantes trawl through source after source in the hope of pulling aboard what seem to be relations and other connections. But in fact, the more documents they sift through, the more likely they are to find chance similarities and connections and draw spurious conclusions. [...]

Not sure about how well it answers the question, but it's definitely light and entertaining to read :)

Why is Physics such a magnet for dilettantes and crackpots?

Because because arguing linguistics is a step below arguing semantics?