Cranks and Crackpots (1 Viewer)

[seanieg89]

A crank/crackpot is basically someone who makes claims of immense academic achievements (they exist in every discipline, seemingly most of all in physics and mathematics) such as the the discovery of an elementary proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.

An old form of procrastination for me was finding people who posted up their purported proofs of Fermat's Last Theorem on Youtube and pointing out the major mistakes.

My intentions here were not malicious, I just hoped that I can help them understand what is and isn't mathematically valid. I don't like the thought of such people convincing their non-mathematical friends and family that they are geniuses who have done things that so many legitimately great minds in history have tried and failed to do.

Invariably, they replace one sentence of nonsense with another and repeat the claim that their proof is "valid until proven invalid".

I have gotten a little bored of spending my time trying to decipher what is often essentially pseudomathematics, but if any of you ever have some time to kill you might find it interesting to check out yourself.

Eg:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7cgHqp_RhU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h1lVgPs2ew

 

[Carrotsticks]

On a YouTube spree atm, I can see how this is a 'good procrastinating tool'.

Surprised that these people have the stones to publicly upload a video claiming complete proof. Not only that, some of them are also desperately defending their 'proof'.

 

[seanieg89]

Mmmm delusions of grandeur.

I read a really funny story about a professor back in the day when FLT got a ton of amateur attention. He would reply to manuscripts with: "I confess that I am not qualified enough to evaluate this proof, I refer you to the expert: blah" where blah was the name of the previous crank .

 

[asianese]

Tbh I never heard of this phenomenon..obviously shit like 42/3+8*3 (problems with notation etc) were common but this is new lol.