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These characters still exist on Reddit and elsewhere. They typically also stick to trying to disprove SR, because it barely requires more than high school math. No one ever tries to disprove the foundations of condensed matter physics.

Doesn't condensed matter physics heavily feature harmonic analysis? It's a pity -- if math weren't so damn difficult, we could point all the "crystal resonance" crowd in a productive, fascinating direction.

I'm a mathlet who is working slowly on learning more. Can you elaborate on the connection you're drawing?

Bloch's theorem I'd assume.

>No one ever tries to disprove the foundations of condensed matter physics.

My contribution to this severely under-served department:

"It can't possibly be correct to use relativistic field theory to write effective fields for excitations of a wave medium when the whole idea of SR was that there wasn't a medium."

That's not the "whole idea" of SR. What he said in his 1905 paper was,

"The introduction of a “luminiferous ether” will prove to be /superfluous/ inasmuch as the view here to be developed will not require an “absolutely stationary space” provided with special properties, nor assign a velocity-vector to a point of the empty space in which electromagnetic processes take place."

In 1920, after developing GR, his views were considerably more nuanced, as expressed in his 1920 lecture at the Leyden University, "Ether and the Theory of Relativity":

"Recapitulating, we may say that according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense. But this ether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic of ponderable media, as consisting of parts which may be tracked through time. The idea of motion may not be applied to it."

Einstein, Albert. Sidelights on Relativity . Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition. (0.99$ on Amazon)

That lecture, by the way, is a superb example of presenting the frontier of 1920 physics - before Schrodinger, Dirac, and modern field theory - without using any mathematical notation whatsoever.

I believe (although it isn't my field) that Semiconductor physics is considered to be ultimately grounded in condensed matter physics, right? So we could look at the ridiculous idea that transistors could just keep getting tinier and tinier as a bit of a crackpot idea. Turns out these physicists managed to "yes, and..." their way into controlling, what, most of the economy?

Anecdotally, Engineers seem to want to prove relativity wrong as it places unfortunate limits on the kinds of things that could be built. No one is flash gordoning around space anytime soon.

On the other hand it also gave us marvelous energy sources such as nuclear power. However this connection is often missed amongst lay observers.

We would arguably be better off, all around, without that, if it meant no atomic bombs.

We weren't getting FTL anyway.

This is a very complex topic. however - even if we ignore the civil application of nuclear technologies for radiation therapy, nuclear energy, x-rays etc. Nuclear weaponry has been successful in preventing further destructive wars on the scale of WW2.

I don't believe anybody would have expected the western allies and the Warsaw pact countries not to go to war with each other had nuclear weapons not existed.

> Nuclear weaponry has been successful in preventing further destructive wars on the scale of WW2.

This will unfortunately remain true only until a nuclear war does break out. After such a moment, the few that survive may say "if only nuclear weapons weren't invented, we could have had another WW2 instead of this disaster".

The other arguments about nuclear physics that you make are much more convincing as an unmitigated good.

Archimedes Plutonium!

Robert MacElwaine! Alexander Abian! Tom Van Flandern!

For many years if I googled myself, on the first page of results was an archived post of Archimedes Plutonium calling me out in sci.math.

Ahhhhh, those were the days.

Now there is a name I haven't heard in a long long time...

I understand high-profile physicists particularly tend to attract these people, so dealing with them must be a challenge, and there must be a temptation to skip over anyone who looks like they fall into that group even if they're just asking questions.

I think this is why many profs have a secretary to screen this stuff out

https://timecube.2enp.com/

Ironically, that's not what Dunning-Kruger claimed, and the Dunning-Kruger research itself has been largely discredited. A better term might be the "Dunning-Kruger Effect effect" for how these accusations are slung around.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect#...

I don't think that article says what you think it says.

The D-K effect is: "The Dunning-Kruger effect is defined as the tendency of people with low ability in a specific area to give overly positive assessments of this ability." That is exactly what the parent described, and is an empirically identified behavior. The criticisms are aimed mostly at the "meta-cognitive" and bias-based explanations for the behavior.

I think my favourite bit of Dunning-Kruger is that it's failure to account for regression towards the mean and the better-than-average effect are kind of an existence proof of a "Dunning-Kruger Effect". ;-)

I like to say most citations of D-K are examples of D-K.

On sci.math there were a couple of divide-by-zero freaks who seemed between them to post about 1000 posts a day.

> GR is so weird

Someone said about Quantum Mechanics that if you understand it, you obviously don't. Because it is so weird.

Well, that was Feynman.

He would have known, for sure.

The quote is “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” by Richard Feynman, 22 seconds into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ZRLllWgHI

“Science popularizers often use real-world metaphors to bring specialized knowledge to the public. This was not the case with Feynman. When he delivered that famous quote during a conference at Cornell University in 1964, he was trying to convince his listeners not to try to understand his explanation ‘in terms of something familiar.’ Instead, he announced that he would simply describe how nature works, inviting those present to ‘relax and enjoy it.’”.

Well, if they don't invent FTL drives then who will?

"There was - possibly still is - a crossover group typically made of electrical/electronic engineers who knew just enough traditional EM theory to be dangerous, but not enough to know what they didn't know about GR and QM."

The same can be said for physicists and mathematicians who know just enough EE. As a practicing EE who specializes in RF and antennas, I've had to debunk many crackpot antenna and circuits, who developers are looking for funding. The nice thing about RF is hunks of dielectric and conductor are pretty easy to fabricate or simulate, but they don't even try to prove their ideas.