Interview:
Part 1: chris langan (part 1) - YouTube
Part 2: Chris Langan Part 2 - YouTube
Part 3: Chris Langan part3 - YouTube
This guy was featured in Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” as a really intelligent man who unfortunately grew up with abuse and was held back from academia. He has his own “Theory of Everything” known as the CTMU, which says that the existence of God can be proven with mathematics and logic.
Is this guy a crackpot or crank? Or is he onto something?
Maybe you could give us a summary so we don’t have to watch 3 youtube videos.
Well that would be introducing my own bias. I think the interviews are short and interesting to watch.
My own summary, though
He grew up poor, always got into fights, had an abusive stepfather, stopped going to class because he wanted teachers to ship him off to college early, wasn’t invited to graduate because “his head was too big,” went to Reed college and dropped out because he didn’t get financial statements in on time, then went into a life of hard labor.
He broke a record on some IQ test (and supposedly got a 1600 on his SAT, but there’s no proof of this) but worked as a bouncer at a bar. He dislikes academia and sees it as a cold bureaucracy. He claims his CTMU proves God’s existence, and he supports eugenics, thinks the high IQ society is the alternative to academia, and sees mankind as brutal to each other because everyone else is of low intelligence. He doesn’t think he’ll ever find someone else out there smarter than he is.
Short read b4 my eyes glaze over with the babble.
CTMU = Pseudo-intellectual gibberish/logical sleight of hand, therefore god exists. Since he’s the smartest person ever, QED.
Do an SDMB search on the ‘Ontological Argument*’ – basically the same crap with a different name. A decaying horse way beyond flogging for most old-timers here, but it’ll give you the answer you seek.
Even if you don’t like it.
*The common flaw to all ontological arguments is that they assume that if “X is defined as existing” it is the same as “x exists.” In short, if you can think of it, it exists.
Regardless of his (actual or supposed) IQ, he should get some serious therapy to deal with that. Because overblown belief in your own superiority, paranoia about “academia” not accepting him etc. are a quite likely outcome of a situation like this. So he needs to clean his own problems before presenting evidence.
This claim alone invalidates everything else he has to say on a scientific basis. It means he doesn’T understand either what “proof” “God” or “existence” commonly mean (or has redefined them to his own purposes). The God usually referred to, the Christian God, can’T be proven through scientific means. It’s like proofing that the colour yellow smells nice* or that the concept of love makes a gloing sound.
Yes, Cecil just discussed Thomas of Aquinas proof of a first creator, but he pointed out that this first cause if actually existing is completly unlike the Christian or most commonly thought-of Gods. And physics hasn’t settled whether a first cause is necessary, anyway - some processes are self-organizing, or without cause (Thomas didn’t know that back then).
*To avoid the nitpickers: yes, synaestesia exists, and yes, psychological experiments show that humans associate colours with taste probably based on previous experiences. But objectivly, aside from the human reaction, colours don’t have smell or taste.
This makes him a person with bad morals, and bad understanding of biology and history.
Quite likely that he won’t find anybody smarter than him as long as he follows to believe in such delusions.
How can this be? It should be trivially easy to obtain confirmation from the College Board.
If you were really super-smart, shouldn’t you be able to use your amazing brain to figure out how to live amongst the primitive sub-humans around you? Like, if the primitive sub-humans have a superstition that you have to write down particular marks on particular pieces of paper in a particular way at a particular time before you can pleasantly lounge around in their classrooms, why can’t you just go along with the stupid ritual?
Yes, there are people with extraordinary talents in certain areas that are absolutely hopeless at mundane tasks like tying their shoes or wiping their ass or not punching people who annoy them. I wouldn’t call these people super-smart. Intelligence means the ability to solve problems. It doesn’t matter how much math you can do, if your inability to understand the planet you live on constantly causes you to make mistakes that lead to personal suffering then you’re not smart.
Mensa is a social club, not an educational institution, and the other societies are no different, AFAIK.
Classic Dilbert cartoon: A Cartoon Genius (with a high, bald cranium) approaches Dilbert in the workplace:
CG: You seem like a bright fellow. Would you like to join Mensa?
Dilbert: Isn’t that the society for people with high IQs?
CG: Correct. I’m president of the local chapter.
Dilbert: If we’re so smart, why are we working here?
CG: Intelligence has much less practical value than you’d think.
Well, yes and no. Being super smart does not necessarily entail an intuitive understanding of human nature, and does not preclude irrational behavior. Some of the smartest people are assholes.
Obviously you might not have an intuitive understanding of the primitive hu-mons around you. But you don’t need intuition, you can observe, form hypotheses, test them, and form conclusions. So if you constantly make the exact same social mistakes over and over again, it proves both that you don’t have an intuitive understanding of hu-mons, and that you’re not smart enough to figure them out using your superior brain.
Yes, my argument boils down to, “If you’re so smart why aren’t you rich?” If you don’t care about material goods or social position then fine. But don’t complain then about how the primitive screwheads that don’t understand alloys and compositions and things with molecular structures didn’t let you into their club.
That’s actually the single funniest Dilbert cartoon I can recall. 
Even smart people don’t instinctively apply the scientific method. It’s a learned behavior.
You think Chris Langan has never heard of the scientific method?
Gladwell makes it pretty clear that he wasn’t “held back” from jack, that it was his own mindset that did for him - he refused to play by any rules and just retreated when he didn’t get his way. Now, that mindset was circumstantial, but I wouldn’t equate it to him being “held back”.
That’s kind of the point of what Gladwell says about him. Intelligence by itself is not enough for success. He contrasts the life of Langan with that of Robert Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer was smart, of course, but he also had fantastic social skills. Langan dropped out of college because he didn’t file some simple paperwork in time. Oppenheimer got away scot-free with the attempted murder of his thesis advisor, just from the gift of gab.
Personally, I agree. I think a lot of Chris’s misery was his own doing. He seems to have a huge sense of self-entitlement and likes to intimidate people. Probably why he became a bouncer… you don’t have to prove yourself to anyone or play by anyone’s rules. You just beat people up.
That Oppenheimer story is pretty messed up though.
Actually, the Christian god is quite easily shown to be physically and logically impossible. Philosophically, the general question of “god” is open, and “prove” here doesn’t mean mathematically. But by scientific standards, the Christian god cannot exist.
I tried to read his introduction to his theory, but quickly got bogged down in his jargon. Can anyone summarize how CTMU works? I agree that it seems to boil down to the ontological argument, but I’m curious about the steps he takes to get there.
A quick Google search says that the poisoning was probably along the lines of an exlax brownie. Can you give me a better cite?