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PREVIEW Bonus 2: On the Theory of Heaven Breasts
62 Plays11 days ago
Sarah and Helen take a look at some research papers from viXra, the scientific publishing site for cranks and pseudoscientists, and end up learning about the sensual curves which underlie reality itself.
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Check out our Patreon at https://patreon.com/OdiumSymposium and our website at https://www.odiumsymposium.com.
Episode art by @canis_kunst on Instagram.
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Transcript
Members-Only Episode Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
This is our first members-only episode. You'll hear that we keep calling it our first bonus episode. That would actually be our deep dive into Sean Hannity's Christmas comedy Jingle Smells.
Vixra and Pseudoscience
00:00:11
Speaker
Here, we talk about Vixra, a website for distributing scientific papers authored by the obsessive pseudoscientist known as Cranks.
Philosophical Musings on Reality
00:00:20
Speaker
I hope you'll enjoy seeing through the Matrix with us.
00:00:24
Speaker
There's really nothing real. There is no
Humor and Absurdity in Politics
00:00:27
Speaker
real. And that's what's called the postmodern mentality. I couldn't receive the word racist remark. The adventure of life justifies its suffering. i don't want to see him having political succubus with goblins. Do it live. Is Trump going to have babies with a goblin? Do it live! And turn against us like Darth Vader.
00:00:44
Speaker
Do it live! listen, you. I'll suck you in your goddamn face. You'll stay
Podcasts and Patreon
00:00:49
Speaker
plastered. I was going to have a guest speaker, but the person I had invited in died.
00:00:57
Speaker
some level of masochism.
00:01:00
Speaker
Here we are. It's our first bonus episode. You probably know if you're listening to this that
Accessing Content Creatively
00:01:06
Speaker
we're Helen and Sarah. We have podcasts about production of bigotry. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We have a Patreon. Whatever. You've heard all that before. Or you don't really know us. You somehow pirated this episode. Or...
Buying Scotch and Personal Preferences
00:01:19
Speaker
you're friends with someone who subscribes to this podcast and they're showing it to you for some reason and then my condolences but well so this being our first bonus episode i guess i'm pushing the boundaries a little bit i don't know we're both drinking scotch helen had scotch i bought some scotch to match her i'm not sure i've ever actually bought hard alcohol before what kind of scotch did you get i don't know it was the second cheapest kind Because I was like, all right, if I just get the cheapest kind, it's just going to be like the worst swill possible. But if I spend like a few extra dollars, surely I will be marking myself as a discriminating consumer. no I think cheap scotch is a difficult game.
Episode Themes and Format Experimentation
00:01:58
Speaker
ah
00:01:59
Speaker
If I had realized you were going out in search of scotch, I could have given you some advice for... I could have info dumped about scotch for a bit and given you a little more ah framework for deciding. But it's okay. It's okay. Yeah, so...
00:02:12
Speaker
You like often our episodes will like ask the other one to do a little bit of prep like oh like it was three in practice read this or watch this you know Like there's the episode where you were like can you just acquire like a four-foot sword for me, please? And was like will my four-foot mop do and you were like yeah, that's fine And so I think this is my favorite assignment, which is do you have alcohol make sure to bring alcohol So I don't know
Subscriber Appreciation
00:02:34
Speaker
why we're drinking. not really related to the theme just wanted to try fiddling with the vibe a little bit And if this doesn't work for our listeners, if the episode doesn't turn out good, whatever, we just won't that again. But we'll see. Yeah, I mean, I think it's cool that we have enough subscribers that like it doesn't feel totally ridiculous to do this, right? Like, sure, there's only 12 subscribers, but that's 12 subscribers.
Arxiv and Research Access Challenges
00:02:56
Speaker
That's really cool. Thank you all so much for Yeah, we really appreciate it. And I've tried to put together some entertaining content for you guys.
00:03:03
Speaker
So all you content lovers out there, this is your moment. Yeah, that that free stuff, that's all slop. Here's the real content. Okay, Helen, let's open with a question. What is the archive? A-R-X-I-V. What is that?
00:03:17
Speaker
It is a project that collects preprints, so sort of papers that are ready for publication or that are, you know, otherwise being submitted publication.
00:03:28
Speaker
Most contemporary math papers are on there, but also like physics and some adjacent scientific things. It doesn't seem to be as big of a thing in other fields. Yeah, which is a huge pain in the ass for us, because for this podcast, we want to read a bunch of sociology papers, that sort of thing.
00:03:43
Speaker
In our discipline, what we're used to is that papers go up for free and you're just viewing like the non-peer-reviewed and revised versions maybe, but like you have a lot of access to research materials. In most disciplines, it's not that
Vetting Process: Arxiv vs. Vixra
00:03:58
Speaker
way. It's this barbaric thing where publishers control access to papers and you have to be part of an institution which pays the publishers a billion dollars in order to read any of their relevant papers. Yeah, and it is a little bit of a trade-off. Like there definitely is something to be said about the fact that you you are reading the non-peer-reviewed version. I've definitely had it where I found a paper that claims to prove something on the archive and then, oh, I looked into it and know it turns out that either like the paper didn't get published because it's wrong or in the published version, they actually completely changed this theorem, right? So it occupies this weird thing where they do a little bit of vetting.
00:04:31
Speaker
As long as you kind of have an institutional affiliation, You could just put up whatever you want on there. So it's... Yeah, in fact, you don't even technically need an institutional affiliation. What you need is for someone with an institutional affiliation to vouch for you.
00:04:45
Speaker
And then your paper can go up on
Understanding Cranks
00:04:47
Speaker
there. Well, that is too much vetting for some people. Oh, don't know? Yeah, now you know what we're doing. Now you know what we're doing.
00:04:56
Speaker
Okay, so that very light level of gatekeeping... mostly serves to keep out cranks. I'm so excited for whatever Vixra, like... We'll get to Vixra in a bit. Okay. But first, let's talk a little bit about what cranks are. So the term crank is more or less synonymous with like crackpot or kook.
00:05:21
Speaker
But when people try to write about crankness as a phenomenon, they usually use specifically the term crank. It's not like a recognized sociology term or something, but you know like people have like put out stuff about their about this topic and what their theory is, that sort of thing. It almost always uses the term crank specifically.
00:05:41
Speaker
Yeah, it does have like a specific connotation and like specific baggage to it that is a little bit different than crackpot, which, yeah. The term originally came from the early eighteen hundreds but it spread in the late 1800s, in particular in reference to baseball cranks who had strange ideas about the game.
Right-Wing Influencers and Cryptic Communication
00:06:01
Speaker
There's actually a particular bad faith right-wing influencer whose handle on Twitter is Baseball Crank, and he's just one of the worst, one of the stupidest rocks-for-brains assholes out there. i love how right-wing influencers on X, or just on social media in general,
00:06:22
Speaker
are always finding the most like esoteric like cultural history like rabbit holes to like pull their things out of, right? You've got... I mean, there's like it's this isn't esoteric. you' I'm thinking of like you know Bronze Age pervert, but like more specifically, I'm thinking of Lindy Man, who I don't know if we've ever actually talked about on an episode.
00:06:43
Speaker
You have taught me some Lindy man lore and was staggered. Yeah, I've told you a little bit because I really wanted to do an episode on one of his books, but I literally can't find a copy of it. Like, literally I can't find a copy.
00:06:55
Speaker
But I'm so curious about what's in it. And yeah, this like obsession with specific old cultural signifiers, just so funny. It's always a sign that you know you're going to find someone really out there. i think it's part of the crypto instinct in right-wingers.
00:07:14
Speaker
which I think mostly comes from the mass discrediting of their philosophy with the Nazis in the 1930s, there was a sense that they had to like go underground and in the internet age, especially that became such an important part of right-wing culture. They call it hiding your power level.
00:07:33
Speaker
And so even today when right-wingers are like in positions of power and basically immune from consequences, There's always the sense that they have to use code words, that they have to convey what they mean through hidden knowledge.
Crank Traits and Political Connections
00:07:48
Speaker
Some other right-wingers would say like, you know, milk before meat in kind of another context. Okay, so cranks are people with poorly supported beliefs who fixate on their abstruse ideas and operate in isolation from the broader relevant intellectual community. And typically, they have a sense of paranoia and victimization about how that state of things came about.
00:08:12
Speaker
One of the most influential books on cranks was written by Martin Gardner. It's called Fads and Fallacies. He describes five crank characteristics. I'm about to send you an excerpt.
00:08:25
Speaker
These are the first two. There are five ways in which the sincere pseudoscientists' paranoid tendencies are likely to be exhibited. 1. He considers himself a genius.
00:08:37
Speaker
2. He regards his colleagues, without exception, as ignorant blockheads. Everyone is out of step except himself. Frequently, he insults his opponents by accusing them of stupidity, dishonesty, or other base motives. If they ignore him, he takes this to mean his arguments are unanswerable.
00:08:54
Speaker
If they retaliate in kind, this strengthens his delusion that he is battling scoundrels. Consider the following quotation. To me, truth is precious. I should rather be right and stand alone than to run with the multitude and be wrong.
00:09:10
Speaker
The holding of the views herein set forth has already won for me the scorn and contempt and ridicule of some of my fellow men. I am looked upon as being odd, strange, peculiar, but truth is truth, and though all the world reject it and turn against me, i will cling to truth still.
00:09:26
Speaker
These sentences are from the preface of a booklet published in 1931 by Charles Sylvester de Ford of Fairfield, Washington, in which he proves the earth is flat. Sooner or later, almost every pseudoscientist expresses similar sentiments.
00:09:42
Speaker
Okay, I gotta say, the scotch is already hitting me enough and I'm struggling to read. So there's an element of narcissism to like the true hardcore crank.
00:09:54
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. To be honest, a lot of what we're going to be talking about in this episode is going to be people who are like a little milder than like this full-blown form.
00:10:07
Speaker
So if you really want to see what a full-blown, pure crank looks like, you need go no further than the current administration. Because it is the greatest collection of cranks, as far as I know,
00:10:21
Speaker
ever assembled. Obviously, RFK Jr. and J. Bhattacharya are massive cranks,