# Chris Langan, the Smartest Man in America = Crackpot? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 14, 2011, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chris-langan-the-smartest-man-in-america-crackpot/606168 "2011-12-14T14:59:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2011, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chris-langan-the-smartest-man-in-america-crackpot/606168/81 "2011-12-17T18:44:52Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > But the amount of information inside any given spacetime volume (with a lightlike boundary) is strictly bounded by a value proportional to the area of the boundary. So even if a human mind saturated that bound (it does not, for then it would be a black hole), it could only hold a tiny fraction of the information inside the universe within itself. Besides, even a hologram, if cut apart, looses information – it will still show the whole image, but at a lower spatial resolution, and eventually degrade completely. I don’t much want to be his apologist instead of his translator, but his claim seems to be that (a) it’s not “cut apart”, but entirely coherent; and (b) as you say, the postulated God must be a superbeing rather than a human mind: _“Unfortunately, above the object level, the validity of s-cognition - the internal processing of sentient subsystems s - depends on the specific cognitive functionability of a given s,”_ he says. _“This prevents a given s, indeed anything other than S, from enclosing a complete nomology”_. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2011, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chris-langan-the-smartest-man-in-america-crackpot/606168/82 "2011-12-17T18:55:12Z")
A superbeing that, given current knowledge, would have to be as large as the universe itself, since the universe’s size appears to be roughly of the order of its Schwarzschild radius – but anyway, I don’t want to engage you in Langan’s stead to defend his claims, it’s just that this part stuck out to me. From the little I read of his theory, it seems to be a lot of unrefined ideas behind opaque phraseology – but maybe I’m just not smart enough to see through it. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2011, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chris-langan-the-smartest-man-in-america-crackpot/606168/83 "2011-12-17T18:58:21Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > A superbeing that, given current knowledge, would have to be as large as the universe itself That is, as I read it, Langan’s exact claim: it’s what the capitalized “S” – as opposed to any lower-case “s” – represents. ---
**Author:** ![TATG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/50afbb/32.png) [@TATG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TATG)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2011, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chris-langan-the-smartest-man-in-america-crackpot/606168/84 "2011-12-17T19:23:37Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > That is, as I read it, Langan’s exact claim: it’s what the capitalized “S” – as opposed to any lower-case “s” – represents. And hence why he talked about universal sets at the beginning, right? I couldn’t make it very far, but my best reading of about the first 1/3 or so was that; he tries to motivate the need for a unviersal set; then he tries to cash out having a univesal set without paradox. I guess that set ends up being God. Aside: New Foundations ontological argument. The axioms of Quine’s New Foundations are true. The axioms of NF entails that there is a universal set. And that all men call God. ---
**Author:** ![iamnotbatman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/858c86/32.png) [@iamnotbatman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamnotbatman)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2011, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chris-langan-the-smartest-man-in-america-crackpot/606168/85 "2011-12-17T19:28:13Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > From the little I read of his theory, it seems to be a lot of unrefined ideas behind opaque phraseology – but maybe I’m just not smart enough to see through it. That was my own take before seeing his responses in the link mentioned earlier in this thread, where he is pretty clearly unmasked as a troll of some kind. But that aside, the more I read of his theory, the more it looks like a purposeful attempt to obfuscate. Waldo’s quotes of him (_…“This prevents a given s, indeed anything other than S, from enclosing a complete nomology”_) are a perfect example of this. It’s like a precocious 15-year old learning something about Godel’s incompleteness theorem and holographic dualities, and using a lot of big words in suggestive ways to try to sound smart, and yet not really saying anything at all. ---
**Author:** ![FixMyIgnorance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7feea3/32.png) [@FixMyIgnorance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FixMyIgnorance)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2011, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chris-langan-the-smartest-man-in-america-crackpot/606168/86 "2011-12-19T20:43:27Z")
It seems like he’s just combining jargon, no? Or is he just explaining himself poorly? Or is it actually nonsense? I am heavily leaning towards nonsense but am willing to be corrected. ---
**Author:** ![FixMyIgnorance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7feea3/32.png) [@FixMyIgnorance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FixMyIgnorance)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2012, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chris-langan-the-smartest-man-in-america-crackpot/606168/87 "2012-01-30T20:59:27Z")
I decided to take another peek back at the site and the Langan stuff is all closed off now. A few people further exposed themselves as trolls. It’s odd though. Would someone really go through all the trouble of trolling the world like this? He’s been supporting his theory for years. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2012, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chris-langan-the-smartest-man-in-america-crackpot/606168/88 "2012-01-30T21:56:26Z")
Intelligence is just potential. The most intelligent person on earth could still act like an idiot, and mis-reason himself into fallacious reasoning. Genius doesn’t eliminate any of the foibles that make us human. To expand on what \*\*Stranger \*\*mentioned, that he’s good at convincing people he’s a genius without saying anything novel or revelatory, it’s not that hard. Acting crazy is good way to convince people you are very intelligent. It is commonly believed that geniuses are eccentric, or just plain nuts. If you can demonstrate you are not a blithering idiot, act nutty, and achieve some modicum of success, people will accept that you are a genius. Besides which, even if he is a genius, even if he has an IQ that can reasonably considered at 200, that doesn’t give him superhuman powers. He’s just a little better at some things than the average person. The world’s strongest man can’t bench press a bulldozer, or stop a bullet. He’s just a little stronger than you are. ---
**Author:** ![DianaG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7ab992/32.png) [@DianaG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DianaG)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2012, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chris-langan-the-smartest-man-in-america-crackpot/606168/89 "2012-01-30T22:04:30Z")
> [@FixMyIgnorance](#): > > stopped going to class because he wanted teachers to ship him off to college early Erm… I’m not wickid smaht or anything, but even at 14, I understood that’s, well, not how it works. ---
**Author:** ![FixMyIgnorance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7feea3/32.png) [@FixMyIgnorance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FixMyIgnorance)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2012, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chris-langan-the-smartest-man-in-america-crackpot/606168/90 "2012-03-02T19:47:47Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > To expand on what \*\*Stranger \*\*mentioned, that he’s good at convincing people he’s a genius without saying anything novel or revelatory, it’s not that hard. Acting crazy is good way to convince people you are very intelligent. It is commonly believed that geniuses are eccentric, or just plain nuts. If you can demonstrate you are not a blithering idiot, act nutty, and achieve some modicum of success, people will accept that you are a genius. i think this is spot on speak with big words, flaunt test scores, have a tough background, get into the media… and it’s not hard to make a compelling profile out of that ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2012, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chris-langan-the-smartest-man-in-america-crackpot/606168/91 "2012-03-03T03:48:33Z")
I think that he may very well be extremely bright. Not quite as bright as his claimed I.Q. score (which doesn’t even make sense), but 160 or above I.Q. is quite possible. So what? The world is full of extremely bright people who, for whatever reason, have never gotten a chance to show how brilliant they are. No matter how smart you are, you have to work with other smart people to discover if what you’ve been saying makes sense. Even brilliant people make mistakes. Even brilliant people don’t understand the full consequences of what they’re saying. The problem here is the myth of the completely solitary genius. It’s much harder to work on significant intellectual problems by oneself than is generally supposed. The point that he decided that he doesn’t have to work with anyone else on any of his theories and doesn’t have to listen to anyone else’s explanations of why they might not be quite true is the point that he gave up any chance of doing any really important intellectual work. ---
**Author:** ![jack44556677](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b19c9b/32.png) [@jack44556677](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jack44556677)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2019, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chris-langan-the-smartest-man-in-america-crackpot/606168/92 "2019-07-16T17:40:33Z")
I watched the stupid and time-wasting “promotional” video, but it didn’t have any “meat” in it. Likely this is because there is no meat at all, but I am nevertheless a bit intrigued. I don’t think we can entirely discard him as a fool until we get a look at his “works” (specifically the “CTMU”) He says a lot of things that echo Walter Russel, another much more “mainstream” and successful example of a “langan-esque” figure. As Russel ended up on some ranch somewhere selling shit to stupid hippies with his swinging 60’s “yoko-ono” replacement wife, it is easy to come to the conclusion that he too was a blithering idiot. Interesting nonetheless, and we need alchemy in the worst way so there is cause to hope against reason that one or more of the things these autodidacts were on about would come to pass. Not the eugenics by IQ test bit, good lord that meathead had NO knowledge of history! Though I can easily chalk that up to lack of adequate education. The student tends to only be able to go as far or learn as much as the teacher is capable of. He clearly had very poor teachers and role models, and that is unfortunately a legacy we VERY MUCH are still living with today. And oh god how the credulous braindead meat-puppets are praising elon musk (and other corporate/fascist slavers with staggeringly low intellect) at this very moment… We are clearly doomed. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2019, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chris-langan-the-smartest-man-in-america-crackpot/606168/93 "2019-07-16T18:13:24Z")
I’m sorry, but you may not find a lot of discussion regarding a crackpot in a thread that is 7 1/4 years old. (Or, you may; we’re a weird lot.) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2019, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chris-langan-the-smartest-man-in-america-crackpot/606168/94 "2019-07-16T18:34:58Z")
Damn, how long are those videos? ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2019, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chris-langan-the-smartest-man-in-america-crackpot/606168/95 "2019-07-16T20:37:55Z")
> [@Little Nemo](#): > > Damn, how long are those videos? That depends on the mass of objects in their vicinity, and on your frame of reference. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![jack44556677](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b19c9b/32.png) [@jack44556677](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jack44556677)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2019, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chris-langan-the-smartest-man-in-america-crackpot/606168/96 "2019-07-16T22:46:23Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > That depends on the mass of objects in their vicinity, and on your frame of reference. > > Regards, > Shodan And of course their relativistic speed in the direction of playback. ---
**Author:** ![jack44556677](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b19c9b/32.png) [@jack44556677](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jack44556677)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2019, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chris-langan-the-smartest-man-in-america-crackpot/606168/97 "2019-07-16T22:53:53Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Damn, how long are those videos? They were not actually all that long. The whole “feature” is about 30 minutes, but it is not worth watching in my opinion. I just took me 9 years to watch them because I’m REALLY slow. In case you are making the same mistakes I have, also DON’T watch the discussion with Spike Jonze as it is also worthless and a waste of time. Personally I am becoming more and more like planck and newton everyday I get older, and I won’t even listen to someone if they can’t demonstrate and provide a repeatable experiment (all else is poetry). Perhaps this guy is just a poet of sorts. His critiques of our educational system were spot on, so there might be something here after all but I couldn’t “pierce the veil” on this one. ---
**Author:** ![Kearsen1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Kearsen1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen1)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2019, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chris-langan-the-smartest-man-in-america-crackpot/606168/98 "2019-07-17T16:11:32Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > This is part of it. > > The greater part, though, is Gladwell’s point that some children are taught how to deal with authority and institutions, and some, like Langan, are not. Dealing with bureaucracy, getting what you want from authority figures, getting yourself out of trouble… playing the game, in other words, is a LEARNED skill. Gladwell comments on an upper middle class family whose kid is observed to be taught how to talk with adults - how to make themselves clear, ask questions, and pursue a goal. > > A very small but very common example: my father once told me something when I was a teenager. He said, “Son, unsuccessful people run from their creditors. Successful people run towards them.” He was so right; over 20 years later I cannot even begin to name the examples that prove him right. His point was merely that if you try to skip on debts, you’re screwed. If on the other hand you proactively call your creditors before they even send you a notice, you’ve got a good chance at working something out. Hell, it’s true of my company… if you call us and say you can’t pay your bill we’ll figure something out for you, but if you wait to be asked and pretend you lost the letter and the check’s in the mail blah blah blah, well, screw you. > > I wasn’ rich. I have no connections and never had. But my experience in life was the opposite of Langan’s, because I was taught how to deal with my screwups, problems, and setbacks. When I knew I was going to sensationally fail an exam in university, I went to the prof BEFOREHAND. I explained I was going to fail, I accepted blame, I asked for a second chance, and I came in to the meeting with a plan for how to get a retake done without inconveniencing her. And I got what I wanted, because I knew being proactive would probably work and waiting until afterwards and then bitching about life’s unfairness would not. > > It’s not that I was rich. I was nowhere near rich. I was just another kid; nobody knew who I was or who my parents were. I had simply been taught how to solve those problems. > > A neat counterexample in fiction os Duquan, from “The Wire” Dookie’s very intelligent and a nice kid, but he cannot deal with the system; when he’s promoted to high school to early he doesn’t know how to deal with that and doesn’t think to approach anyone and say he doesn’t want to go. He’s from a broken home and was never taught those skills. And his life goes belly up. He was a smart kid but lacked that skill. > > Chris Langan lacked the skill to deal with that stuff. His bitterness at academia is just that he didn’t know how to get along at college, fucked it up, and blames the college. He’ll put a lot of flowery language on it but it really is that simple; he did not understand how to deal with the bureaucracy of college and to this day doen’t get it, and so externalizes the failure onto academia in general. Is the bureaucracy of college NOT a failure of academia though? They do make the rules and they aren’t really for the benefit of anyone outside academia. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2019, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chris-langan-the-smartest-man-in-america-crackpot/606168/99 "2019-07-17T18:11:55Z")
As the center of the universe, what I find most important is that I remember reading this thread back in the day and read Outliers because of it. Good book. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chris-langan-the-smartest-man-in-america-crackpot/606168.md?page=4)