There's some physics forums I lurk and occasionally post in, and every time the discussion goes beyond physics, holy shit are their opinions dumb as fuck. Just getting someone to understand a simple point that anyone could understand with like 2 sentences just feels like wading through mud with them because every time anything seems to challenge one of their preconceived opinions at all (or if they just don't understand it because they're out of touch) they get annoyed, and then they fixate on irrelevant parts of your point until you have to explain that part of your point again and again and again, and then everyone forgets what it was even about. Especially the boomers in there.

Then there's the ones "helping" people, who will basically act like they are doing a MASSIVE courtesy to you by explaining things, so they'll put people through the shredder for misunderstanding something or for phrasing the question in a way that isn't absolutely perfectly 100% crystal clear as if their compiler is giving an error or something.

And it's not just people in forums, like almost all the professors I know are also just complete morons about anything even slightly unrelated to their specialty.

Why are science nerds like that, I fucking hate it. Like holy shit grow up >:(

  • jack [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Physics is a big math problem, but humans aren't. Many physicists, however, believe that because they are dealing with fundamental particles and laws of reality that they are therefore equipped to answer any question on any subject. I've seen physicists publish papers on historical linguistics that are just absolute crap but get a bunch of attention because they have an outrageous claim by a respected academic. One was a claim that they had discovered roots of the original human language (a controversial idea in itself) through a list of cognates across all language families. But it turns out all the words they picked, like sneeze, were just onomatopoeias. The word for sneeze is similar in so many unrelated languages because it's just the sound of a sneeze!

    • 4bicycles [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      This isn't exactly a problem exclusive to physicists or even STEM in general, really.

      There's a german word for this phenomenon - Fachidioten. Translated it'd be Subject-Idiots, closest mediation would probably be "idiot intellectuals".

      It describes the phenomenon of someone being very, very good at (a subset of) their particular field, but utterly dogshit at anything else. Of course, the idiot intellectual still has the solution to all of lifes problems.

      See: Jordan Peterson, Ben Carson

        • 4bicycles [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Okay pet peeve posting but no don't actually.

          Assuming we're all in agreement that idiot intellectual is a fitting neologism for this particular phenomenon, the only difference between german and english here is some mediation and whether you put a a space between words.

          It's not like this language comes up with brilliant terms constantly, it's just putting two existing words together but without a space.

          If I asked anyone to define the term idiot intellectual with no prior knowledgfe, high chance most of them would arrive at some definition similar to the one I put forth. It's just a descriptive term. The only thing that makes it special in german is that we omit the space and thus create a "new" word.

          If anything, praise german culture for coming up and spreading the concept that is described allthough don't actually do that either because the word is both used appropiately to describe types such as Jordan Peterson and "those fucking ivory tower libs tryna tell eating meat is bad for the enviroment, forgetting that a single block of tofu requires the entire brazilian rainforest is burned down!!!1!!1!!"

          • jack [he/him, comrade/them]
            ·
            4 years ago

            Man I know, I'm the one posting about linguistics! Agglutinative languages are just fun because they have big funny words that would be a phrase or sentence in another language

            • 4bicycles [he/him]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Listen, I don't care about your "linguinistics" you fucking wop and neither do I care about your "agricultural" language unless we're talking Fendt tractors, aye?

            • 420clownpeen [they/them,any]
              ·
              4 years ago

              A lot of German words sound angrier in an English-speaking context also. What sounds like a more vicious insult, spitting out "idiot intellectual" or spitting out "Fachidioten"? You can really lean into the (I had to look this term up) the fricative "ch" with the latter.

    • Pezevenk [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      I’ve seen physicists publish papers on historical linguistics that are just absolute crap

      Holy shit yes physicists and mathematicians completely overstepping their boundaries for baby brained cumbersome takes on various irrelevant subjects where a different approach is necessary is a big thing.

      The word for sneeze is similar in so many unrelated languages because it’s just the sound of a sneeze!

      Lol this is so dumb. "Gee I wonder why so many languages have similar words for moo, there must be something big here".

    • Chutt_Buggins [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      One was a claim that they had discovered roots of the original human language (a controversial idea in itself) through a list of cognates across all language families.

      Laughs in proto-Micronesian

    • Lerios [hy/hym]
      ·
      4 years ago

      exactly this

      we're lucky enough to not have many people like that in my department (maybe because we're younger or maybe becuase the professors pass shit like this around all the time lol) but when you do get one? completely insufferable.