Franklin said that genius without education is like silver in the mine; it is unfortunate that Langan didn’t even have the opportunity to tarnish.

ME-OWW!

Actually, the CTMU argues against Cartesian dualism if I’m not mistaken.

This was an objection that I foresaw. If you read through his theory he expressly talks about other forms of dualism. Yet with a passing understanding of Cartesian dualism, reading through the CTMU, one can recognize that he adheres to those principles as well; it is implicit to the metaphysical claims he makes. I am trying to limit my comment responses, and Langan is free to submit a full response that I will post as an article.

Wow, thanks alot for this! Ive been scouring the web for information about Langan, somehow his whole persona intrigues me. He kind of reminds me of Bobby Fischer, although Fischers genius was shown in his chess, whereas Langans genius seems to be limited to the art of looking up fancy looking synonyms in the dictionary. I think it really is a tragic case, and it makes me sad for him. I fear that Langans delusion of grandour will stay with him until the end. Food for thought: If the CTMU was an attempt to prove that the CIA and FBI was after him, or some other delusion, he might have gotten some help with his condition.

Thank you for this post. I enjoyed reading it. I tried to read the CTMU with an open mind, and so did not take the fact that it is an argument in favour of intelligent design as a reason to assume that it was wrong before having read it. If I did that, then there would have been no point in reading it at all, right?

There are a number of points that I think need to be made in response to your criticism of the CTMU.

First, you should forestall casting judgement on Mr. Langan’s intentions. The inferences that you’ve made aren’t necessarily supported by the evidence that you’ve adduced to support them. Quite simply, you and I don’t really know what his intentions are. Maybe all of what you say about his intentions are true. There is a case to be made, however, that Mr. Langan is not a “media whore”. The only media exposure which I am aware of him having had has been instigated by journalists and writers who have sought him out for their own purposes (e.g. Malcolm Gladwell). And, as far as I am aware, the only exceptions to this trend are instances where he has been actively promoting the CTMU (as opposed to himself). In these cases, the intentions seemed to me to be eudamonic and not self-serving.

Second, there are a number of points to be made in response to your criticism of the language used.
The fact that he uses neologisms does not count against the CTMU. The current state of language is not adequate for all communicative purposes. Every word was initially coined by someone. Some neologisms were balked at in the past, but have since proven themselves to be quite useful. For this reason, we should not rubbish any attempts to coin new words per se.
Relatedly, just because people find it difficult to understand these new words does not necessarily count against the theory. Nor does the fact that the theory is difficult to understand necessarily count against it. (For what is putatively a proof of the existence of god I’ll happily pore over 56 pages of text. That’s actually minor compared to most other philosophical works.)
Furthermore, we should be mindful of the fact that it might not necessarily be possible to communicate the CTMU in the terms of the layman. That said, I read somewhere that he’s in the process of “decompressing” the theory. That will hopefully resolve some of your concerns.
Your criticism of the CTMUs neologisms might be an argument about the “marketability” of the theory. That obviously presupposes that the theory is something that should be marketed to people. And I can think of many reasons why it shouldn’t be. Maybe it’s best if people go looking for the theory. Also, as I mentioned in the first point above, I don’t think there has been, as of yet, any sincere attempt to do that. So it’s really not a functional inadequacy of the theory to say that most people can’t understand it. Most people can’t understand quantum mechanics, but that doesn’t count against quantum mechanics.
Also, if you analyse the new words that he does coin, I think you’ll find that they actually form central parts of his theory, and prove to be very useful in communicating the theory. The neologism “syndiffeonisis” (I’m not sure I’ve spelt that correctly), for example, is central to his theory.

Third, the CTMU does not assume the existence of God; it proves it. The points that you’ve cited to support this claim have been taken out of context. I couldn’t possibly reproduce the proof here. The best thing to do is to sit down for a day or two and go through the theory very closely. If there are bits you don’t understand then you should read up a bit more about those particular areas. If you send me an email I can refer you to the relevant philosophers, scientists or cosmologists that will help you get a fuller understanding of the subject-matter.

Fourth, John C is correct to say that the CTMU does not presuppose Cartesian Dualism as a theoretical framework. Would you be able to cite the parts of the theory that you think are guilty of this?

The rest of the stuff would probably be better responded to by Mr. Langan himself. I do think, however, that you’ve perhaps asserted things about the theory in a rather offhand manner that doesn’t serve your side of the argument. Perhaps if you provided citations for each of your references you’d avoid this in future.

Really enjoyed this post. Looking forward to the next one.

There’s one more thing that should be said in response to the first (rather cryptic) comment by Seriph which reads as follows:

“Franklin said that genius without education is like silver in the mine; it is unfortunate that Langan didn’t even have the opportunity to tarnish.”

(I think) this comment embodies a perplexing sentiment that has been expressed repeatedly by journalists and authors who have come into contact with Chris Langan. Langan is an immensely successful and seemingly fulfilled person. It really gets to me that people still haven’t fathomed the value of his contribution to the lot of humankind.

Langan would have been stifled by the mainstream education system. It seems to me that the path he travelled, albeit difficult, was probably essential to his having produced the kind of work that he has. So, indeed, like the effect of taking silver outside of the mine, exposing Langan to mainstream education would have only tarnished his genius.

I would just like to chime in on the language issue.

To claim that there are ideas too complex or “outside” the limitations of current language is nonsense.

Yes, language is limited in expressing emotional or psychological experience. Things like music can cover this better. But when it comes to intellectual, objective claims about reality, I have never come across a single idea that, if coherent, could not be explained simply and clearly by the language we currently have.

Claiming otherwise reminds me a lot of postmodernists who like to paint their theories with absurdly elaborate jargon. In the past I doubted my own intellect and thought perhaps this was necessary, and that once I became familiar with the ideas, I would understand the terms. But then once I really learned what postmodern ideas have to say, and double and triple checked that I was understanding the arguments correctly, I found out that the fancy language is not necessary at all. In fact, I think obscure or difficult language gets put into use precisely when people are more impressed with the “intelligence” of their own argument than pretty much the rest of the entire world. And when their argument is brought down into simple, clear terms, it is interesting how it can expose how unimpressive it actually is.

The idea that being too obscure or difficult to understand is a *sign* of intelligence is absurd. One of the primary markers of intelligence is an ability to communicate, clearly and accessibly, to almost anyone.

Hey Robin,
I see where you’re coming from, but I think there may be a problem in your approach. If you are looking to conventional language as a means to determining whether there are things that language cannot communicate, then that is circular reasoning. You’re obviously not going to find proof of things that language (in its conventional form) is not able to communicate in language itself.

I agree with you that there are theorists that use language for the reasons you say, but that does not rule out neologisms per se. There are, and have been, many useful neologisms. For example, without the term “evolution” how would one have conveyed the meaning of that term. Yet that term was of course once coined by someone.

I should also say, that if you go and read the 56 pages of the CTMU you’ll see that this blog has misrepresented what it means by its use of the term “language”. Again, though, it’s not going to be useful to reiterate here what it actually means.

Anyway, thanks for your response.

The CTMU was just a big waste of my time after reading it. I’m an athiest but not by choice. I would LOVE there to be a God that allows us to be living indefinitely and we have this beautiful existence forever. I started out wanting to believe in God or a higher power very much so as a child but never “got it” because I always wanted to understand it which was impossible to understand non-sense. Seeing Santa Clause was a fake at 4 years of age and finding out the same with Jesus etc. as a teen was a huge let down. I just found circular definitions and cloudy explanations that didn’t sit well with my reasoning. I just could not understand how it connected to reality or in other words, the notion of God or Gods or a designed existence never connected to human observations from a logical and observable perspective, only from emotional, wishful thinking similar to Santa Clause. Chris Langan is unfortunately no better than a type of Rain Man from a practical perspective benefiting human kind. His brain is extremely powerful in terms of calculations but is stuck in its own “teleric feedback” loop, unable to look outward and relate to humanity. He is ultimately a distraction for the quest of understanding our Universe. I’m very discouraged by IQ as a measure of practical intelligence.

Hi Brian - on the point about circular reasoning, this is true enough; but I’m not coming from a theoretical basis, but an experience basis. I have never encountered an idea that required confusing language to capture it; and I am therefore very skeptical that Langan is now the one example where confusing language is required.

It is worth noting that even where the writing itself is confusing - people today do not take easily to Aquinas or Hegel, for example - it is a product of the lingo of the time period and the intended audience, not the ideas themselves. Both Aquinas and Hegel can be described in pedestrian terms. This also does of course beg the question of audience; if Langan’s sole motivation is to put this theory into the world, and if he scorns the halls of official academia and does not feel the need for their approval, why not write in a way where anyone with an internet connection can understand it and, furthermore, be happy to go through 56 pages? I think a criticism Tom is making here about language is that, even if you think his terms make sense and are coherent, the fact that most people, merely a few pages in, can’t imagine wading through the whole thing means Langan has written something that for most people is pretty unreadable. Why would he do this? Why not increase your chances of reaching your goal by being comprehensible to most people?

And yes, sometimes terms need to be invented, but these terms themselves should be easily and quickly defined. Evolution, for example, can be easily defined as a gradual process of change driven by natural selection. “Natural selection,” which is a very literal and straightforward phrase, can further be defined as the survival of some genetic traits over others when confronted with a physical hardship.

Hey Robin,

Thanks for your reply. I see what you mean about the way that “evolution” can be described by using terms such as “natural selection”, but doesn’t that lead to a regressive reliance on other terms that were once new themselves (and therefore unfamiliar (“confusing”) at their point of creation)?

Accepting for the moment the idea that we’re talking on “an experience basis”, I was quite suprised to read above that you think that Chris Langan is the only person to rely on “confusing language”. I’m sure you don’t really mean that. I’m also sure that the fact that the language seems confusing to you does not mean that it does not make sense, as you seem to be implying. There are plenty of things that people don’t understand, but that doesn’t count against those things, it counts against the mental discipline/focus/work ethic of those individuals. Like I said, I have put in the effort to understand the CTMU and now do. It requires more than skimming through it. It probably also requires some serious introspection on the subject of one’s own “conceptual prejudices”. I suggest that you spend the time to understand it. It really is worth it.

Hi Brian — “I see what you mean about the way that “evolution” can be described by using terms such as “natural selection”, but doesn’t that lead to a regressive reliance on other terms that were once new themselves (and therefore unfamiliar (“confusing”) at their point of creation)? ”

This is highly speculative and not really relevant to my point. If you want to take it back to the beginning of language I would say words were more arbitrary than they were confusing. (Let’s call these hard objects ‘rocks’! Ok, who knows why ‘rocks,’ but everyone knows what we mean by that.) What I was saying is that new terms are really just shorthand for concepts that the language can already handle.

Langan is definitely not the only person to use or rely on confusing language - hence my example of Hegel up there, whose language was so confusing there is a term for it, “Hegelese” - I was only arguing that he doesn’t *need* to use confusing language; just as someone can explain Hegel without Hegelese.

And that is precisely because yes, the content of ideas is not determined by the quality with which they are described. But I am not going to enter into a debate about the CMTU itself. It has just been suggested that the CMTU cannot be explained more simply or clearly, and that I say is poppycock. Even quantum physics, something not easily grasped, can be explained quite clearly, with all sorts of metaphors and examples to make it easily graspable for the average person. While intelligence rates do differ amongst humans, your emphasis on how individuals who see nothing but meaningless semantics and/or unsupported assumptions in the CMTU (which is, I’m sorry to say, most people) simply aren’t trying hard enough, or something to that extent, speaks to a weakness, not a strength, of the CMTU — as it suggests that something involving elitism is going on here. If the only response a minority can have to a large majority is “well, you’re just not smart enough/trying hard enough,” this speaks very poorly to the quality of the argument being defended.

If the CMTU makes sense to you, and you want it to make more sense to other people, you should write up a shortened, clearer version of it, with a glossary clearing defining each term. If its ideas are coherent and logical, this should be possible. As I said before, I have never encountered an idea or argument that could not be cleaned up with clear language — and based on what I have read and learned of the CMTU, I have no reason to think that this differs (especially since I consider the type of writing Langan uses to be a sign against, rather than for, heightened intelligence.)

Hey Robin,

Actually the point I made is neither speculative nor irrelevant to your point. I just don’t think you’ve fully understood it. This conclusion is suggested by the fact that you’ve invoked the very same regression that I mentioned above once again: you say “the new words are just shorthand for concepts that the language can already handle.” But where did those “simpler” words in the pre-existing language come from. I think, if you think about it, you’ll come to the conclusion that sometimes language that seems confusing needs to be created to communicate new ideas. For this reason we shouldn’t prima facie denigrate the CTMU because it relies on neologisms that might seem confusing.

You say that it is “poppycock” to say that the CTMU cannot be explained in simpler language. I don’t think anyone has disagreed with that in an absolute sense (Langan is currently “decompressing” it). What I disagree with is the idea that because it seems confusing to some people implies that it’s wrong. That’s what has been implied here. And I’m sure, if you consider it, you’ll agree that that’s not true. Calculus, for example, seems confusing to many people, but you presumably don’t think that Calculus is wrong. And this is true of many other things that do make sense but which people find confusing. Comprehension is a function of effort. And effort is usually the missing ingredient where comprehension is lacking. People don’t like to admit this because it’s much easier to be egoic and decry the written-quality/coherence of the subject matter than to go and improve on one’s own intellectual capabilities. I should also say that it’s viciously circular to use what peoples’ current standards of comprehension are as the standard for progress. I.e. if the only standards that we use to determine the merit of work are the standard layman’s/ general populus’ comprehension, then we can never hope to progress beyond that level of comprehension. All work would have to be pitched at that level. Shakespeares’ genius would never have flourished as people would have said his work contains too many neologisms (he virtually created a new language for Hamlet).

Anyway, the point of me responding is not to prove you wrong (I actually don’t like to get into discussions online); I mean this response as an entreaty to you, Robin. Don’t believe what I say, but don’t not believe it. Keep your mind open. Rather than talking “about” the CTMU (in the superficial way that we have been doing on this blog), you should go and read it and try to understand it (as it seems to me that you perhaps haven’t done this yet). Chris Langan is writing a book about it now which will constitute a decompression and elaboration of it, but until then I think it would be a good investment of your time to give it a go. Because neologisms that seem confusing should not be ruled per se (as I’ve shown above), I suggest you use a dictionary (or search up the meanings of the words online) and have a look at some of the decompressed accounts of it that are dotted around the “interweb” (a neologism). Bye!

Well Brian, I am glad he is “decompressing” it, and we shall see what comes out on the other side.

But here we are again: “I just don’t think you’ve fully understood it.” No, I really did. And everything you said in that paragraph. I just *disagree* with the speculation - and it is precisely that, because you certainly weren’t there at the “creation” of language or ‘simple words’, nor to my knowledge are you a linguist.

Shakespeare is actually quite a bad example. (As is Calculus; as is anything because all of these were successfully communicated to the majority of intelligent and educated people.) He wrote for the masses and were easily understood by him. I actually have a poster of many of the terms he coined in my bathroom. Again, just like ‘evolution’ or any other term, they are easily understandable, either on their own (ex: not hard to figure out what he meant by the term ‘eyesore’) or with minimum explanation (ex: “it’s Greek to me.”)

But I’m not suggesting that his theory is wrong because of the language he uses. I am suggesting it is certainly *not* implied that it is *right* because the language is confusing, which is an idea you have flirted with here, directly and indirectly - that CMTU is just so profound, so high above us, that it can’t be captured by clear language. I disagree with this. Learning does take effort for sure, but if most people who put in this effort come out with nothing on the other end - which you need to be aware is the situation here - you have a problem. To simply resort to “you haven’t tried hard enough,” is a cop out, and not an argument. It also cannot be disproved, which is convenient for advocates of CMTU.

Therefore I’d appreciate it if you didn’t resort to implying that because I do not agree with your arguments, I do not understand them. If you are an advocate of CMTU, this is exactly the kind of behavior which drives people away from taking it seriously, as you would like me to do. You have otherwise been polite, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t going anywhere.

Stellar. Thanks, Tom, for taking the time and expending the energy.

Robin, put your petty ego aside, quit being deliberately obtuse, and take Brian’s commentary at face value.

Many scientific articles are compressed and come across as jibberish to the uneducated. The authors tends to use terms that convey a lot of information in the least space. And *gasp* sometimes, new terms are created. Dense and sometimes even verbose language is needed to convey complex ideas to those who have the capacity to understand them.

You state:

“To simply resort to “you haven’t tried hard enough,” is a cop out, and not an argument. It also cannot be disproved, which is convenient for advocates of CMTU. ”

Ridiculous statement. Indeed, it’s apparent you haven’t read the CMTU. You could disprove the “you haven’t tried hard enough” argument by doing so (and elaborating such in some fashion). The fact that you haven’t naturally conveys the idea that you are being lazy, considering your participation here, or that you don’t understand it. It also brands you a hypocrite.

Glad to see you’ve completed the criticism of CTMU, Looking forward to reading Mr. Langan’s response in a minute.

CATFACE wrote: “He kind of reminds me of Bobby Fischer, although Fischers genius was shown in his chess, whereas Langans genius seems to be limited to the art of looking up fancy looking synonyms in the dictionary.”

I’m not sure if you were being genuinely compassionate or humorous but BRAVO for this. Is there a synonym for peeing your pants in laughter?

I’m bored, so let’s play a game. You have two options: ask or criticize. The former means asking a single question about the CTMU, and you can be sure I’ll answer it. The latter means giving a single criticism of the CTMU, and I’ll try to knock it out of the air rationally. I find this simpler than answering all of Tom’s critique at once. Shoot.

It’s quite satisfying to see people reject Langan’s work because of its theological ramifications, lets the serious ideas in it go completely ignored, if only people appreciated the applications…less competition.

Does anyone have any questions? I am hungering for a rational debate over the CTMU, as I am a supporter of the theory.

I have to say I’m disappointed that no one has asked any questions, when Mr. Beasley and some of the above clearly don’t agree with Mr. Chris Langan’s views. But let’s skip the ad hominems and get to the point. In Mr. Beasley’s “Motive” section, he makes four points about the CTMU. I proceed to refute these points below.

(1) By Mr. Langan’s definition of God, which in fact is not Abrahamic, God is indeed eternal as God is the highest level of cognition (cognition is stratified in the CTMU). Cognition is fundamentally information processing, and reality cannot verily be accused of not processing information. For this reason, reality has properties akin to a mind, and by dint of this it is termed “God” in the CTMU.

(2) Here “grace” and “virtue” are synonymous. They are simply (globally) teleologically valid states. This begs the question of whence the proposed global teleology arises. Mr. Langan explains that global teleology arises from the fact of a medium possessing all the properties of everything over which it distributes.

(3) This is also true by Mr. Langan’s definitions. If we do something that is not teleologically valid, or that is ultimately detrimental to teleology, we may get cut off from God. It is easy to see why. By God’s will our soul, or connection to global consciousness, may be terminated. After all, whatever reality wills tends to happen and the existence of such a will is explained in my response to (2).

(4) Early religious leaders were people who notice some of the things explained in the most basic levels of the CTMU, and through their tinted lenses of crude, ancient ethics. It is easy to see how such beliefs could have produced works like the Bible and the Quran. Nevertheless, their metaphorical (and metaphysical) teachings were largely correct. Moreover, God can be said to have “inspired” the Bible inasmuch as He, basically being reality itself, caused the Bible to come into existence.

Now that these four points have been covered, many of Mr. Beasley’s other questions have been answered. The concept of sin arises from going against global teleology. Moreover, Mr. Langan does *not* use irreducible and specified complexity in his CTMU, he merely mentions that they are common tools of the ID movement, a point on which Mr. Beasley no doubt agrees. Langan instead concludes the existence of the aforementioned God. I have already explained why this is the case in my response to (1).

The CTMU is a monistic theory, and I would like to hear (or see) the reason Mr. Beasley feels it is not. Mr. Langan dismisses Cartesian dualism by noting that, were it the case, reality could be divided into two entirely separate things (let’s call them A and B). Then an absolute difference relation would exist between A and B, implying a common medium for A and B on which the absolute difference relation is defined. This shows that A and B must both be manifestations of a more general common syntax.

In our Modern English, the prefix “anti-” means “opposed to”. Any interpretation *opposed to* all theological interpretations is false, as some theological interpretations are true. I think this is what Mr. Langan meant. Also, reincarnation plays a role in the CTMU only because all information is necessarily conserved* (as reality is necessarily closed). Therefore, information, including memories, must be injected somewhere else in reality, perhaps resulting in “partial reincarnation”.

Mr. Langan has a say on why reality exists as well. In fact, I will quote exactly what he said in the CTMU Questions and Answers to which he links on his website http://www.ctmu.org.

“The universe can be described as a cybernetic system in which freedom and constraint are counterbalanced. The constraints function as structure; thus, the laws of physics are constraints which define the structure of spacetime, whereas freedom is that which is bound or logically quantified by the constraints in question. Now, since there is no real time scale external to reality, there is no extrinsic point in time at which the moment of creation can be located, and this invalidates phrases like “before reality existed” and “when reality created itself”. So rather than asking “when” the universe came to be, or what existed “before” the universe was born, we must instead ask “what would remain if the structural constraints defining the real universe were regressively suspended?” First, time would gradually disappear, eliminating the “when” question entirely. And once time disappears completely, what remains is the answer to the “what” question: a realm of boundless potential characterized by a total lack of real constraint. In other words, the real universe timelessly emerges from a background of logically unquantified potential to which the concepts of space and time simply do not apply. ”

Mr. Langan considers natural selection to be almost tautological. He merely objects to theories of evolution involving “randomness”, on the basis that “randomness” means either acausality or an unknown cause, neither of which are satisfactory explanations for mutations. Asking for applications of the CTMU is like asking for applications of formal logic. Though there may not be any immediate mechanical inventions stemming from it, it is still extraordinarily important.

Mr. Langan does not himself consider intelligence quotients very important. IQ, as most modern tests measure it, as not general enough. However, one would be more hard-pressed to say the same for g. As explained above, telology is self-actualization, and it is our responsibility to maximize various levels of utility up to teleology. As reality is a self-contained information processor, this self-actualization is in fact self-processing, or self-explanation. All this being the case, it is our responsibility to explain reality, and one can probably see from this point the importance of g. This also shows whence the “anti-dysgenics” view Mr. Langan has expressed arises.

*This is not to be confused with Mr. Dembski’s “law of conservation of information”, which is an altogether different matter.

So, does anyone have any question now?

What is funny, is that the last post actually talked about the CTMU and not about some personal or vague criticisms such as he is a nazi, or his words don’t make sense, his making it all to difficult to disguise how flawed his theory is, how he is such a megalomaniac . And now, when someone talks about rational arguments about the theory no one replies. When people don’t know the answer, they will simply go into defense mode and say he is wrong because I don’t like him.

To the last Anonymous. Regarding Chris Langan’s objections to mutations being “random”, they aren’t considered by biologists to be INTRINSICALLY random like the randomness in quantum mechanics, they have actual physical causes, the randomness is with respect to fitness. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence to contradict the view that mutations are random with respect to fitness. Also, isn’t the CTMU Global Operator Designer (GOD) supposed to act… globally? Such as selecting laws of physics rather than tinkering with mutations?

So they’re not truly random at all, which is what Mr. Langan has claimed. Also, inasmuch as the mutations are a result of the existence of the Global Operator-Designer, the Global Operator-Designer has caused the mutations.

The CTMU, like most new theories has both great ideas and subjective ideas.

Also the word “Intelligent Design” is typically applied to religious groups
who seek to refute evolutionary theories.

It’s obvious from Mr. Langan’s discourse, that evolution is not negotiable.
And therefore, his “Intelligent Design” is categorically different.

It would be hard to argue that mutations are not random.
They are the result of a confluence of factors, such as
interstellar events, volanic events, solar events or
genetic aberrations.

Therefore the mutations could not be individually caused, but
rather, are just enabled by the preexisting rules for interaction.

THe Global Operator-Designer may have created the initial conditions
for mutation to occur, but it is doubtful the creator, if there was one,
could or would want/need to interfere in the continuing process.

I doubt that anyone can prove that the universe ‘made up itself’ for no apparent
reason, complete with fundamental forces, rules for interaction, and a seemingly
endless array of task-performing compounds, stellar entities, magnetic arrangements,
energy sources and a periodic table of elements.

But, that is not ‘intelligent design’, in the sense of a teacher telling children in a class
room that God designed the world in 300 BC and fossils were placed there to test our faith.

A different term is needed to address these questions which tug at the very cloth of reality
itself. And, given our limited intelligence, even Mr. Langan’s, compared with what reality
apparently is, we can assume that we will not solve any of these questions easily because we
have no concept of the level of thinking that created them.

But, science has the habit of trying to know something. Of course, to satisfactorily ‘know’
something, you must kill it.

As much as a fear the ramifications of these theories and investigations, I think it is
inevitable they will be found, and our lives will be changed forever.

But, the concept of a ‘personal’ God who can interfere with physics and consciousness at will, simulaneously, everywhere at once, has no scientific basis. No measurements can record
these aberrations, if they were said to occur. People are naturally apophenic and when
something extraordinary happens, they attribute it to the Global Designer Operator.

By the same token, it is not difficult to imagine that there are multiple planes of reality, containing various outcomes existing simultaneously. Or an infinite number of planes
containing everything that ever could have happened or happened under an infinite number
of initial conditions.

Given all this activity, we then understand that a Global Designer Operator/Reality is much, much more akin to a computer program than a person. And that reality IS the Global Designer Operator. Reality is ‘God’, since we inhabit it, and would not exist otherwise.

I have thought of it often, and I believe that reality is actually a computer program, and what’s more, it may have been built by us. A continuing cycle of peaking and restarting.
The internet is an early example of the Global Designer Operator. It tracks objects, their ages, their importance, their relationships and their content. It could very well be that we are slowly building God.

If reality were a computer program, it would be no trouble to insert lines of code here and there, drop a piano on someone there, deliberately blow a fuse in apartment 4B, move a bullet a few millimeters.

But, it is ridiculous to assume, at this point, given what is known, that we were not created by something else.

I would be interested to hear rebuttals regarding the formation of reality by non-intelligent means.

As Mr. Langan has pointed out, uncertainty as you describe it is to be read “self-configurative freedom”. I.e., regardless of it, the GOD is still responsible for evolution. Moreover, it should be understood that the “continuing process” of evolution is merely a part of the creator.

As for reality designing itself, this follows from the state of unbound telesis (UBT) that Mr. Langan has also described.

You also speak of there being “multiple planes of reality”. It should be noted that the existence of a difference relation between these planes implies the existence of an underlying syntax, i.e., a greater reality that syndiffeonically encompasses the planes.

There are several problems with your computation-theoretic model of reality, but I will only address the one, which is debatably the most important flaw. One needs a machine that provides a computational syntax in order to process the data of a computational model. If self-processing is concerned, one quickly arrives at the CTMU, which is protocomputational.

I think Langan sees telic recursion as being responsible for biological mutations, being the generative side of evolution while natural selection is regarded as a filter. But since in the CTMU literally everything real is a result of telic recursion I don’t see why mutations are anything special in that regard. Regardless, there’s still no evidence that mutations are anything but random with respect to fitness.

Whatever the case it’s to good to hear from Langan again. It’s disappointing that most critics of the CTMU have so little to say about what the CTMU is actually saying and would rather abuse Langan than engage with him on his actual ideas.

The point was never that mutations are *special*, it was merely that mutations are a result of telic recursion. I’m glad you see this now. Moreover, Mr. Langan never commented on the correlation between mutations and fitness, which is largely an empirical matter.

As for why natural evolution mirrors cosmic evolution, all systems are necessarily telic recursive or are embedded in a larger system that has the aforementioned property as reality is protocomputational in nature.

And I hope you don’t think I’m Mr. Langan, as I am not!

I really wish Carl Sagan was still here with us.

[...] Still not convinced he is a kook? well here is a nice dissection of Mr Langan’s CTMU nonsense. [...]

This was an interesting read, thank you. However, I think this Langan fellow is a bit of a prat.

Oh, and the Anonymous fellow who’s been consistently replying is quite probably Langan under a mask.

As Tom can testify, given his access to my IP address, I am likely not Langan. Nor am I associated with him in any way. In fact, I have only encountered him briefly in forum discussions. I should thus not be taken as a perfect representative for Langan’s ideas, but merely as one who has studied them extensively and who therefore probably understands them slightly better than the Average Joe.

Yeah, as others have pointed out, if you can’t start your “critique” without psychologizing, you’re off to a bad start.

This is interesting chit. How do I receive emails when there’s a new blog post?

1Love

To Anonymous who isn’t Chris Langon. If you’re not Chris Langon, you’re channeling Chris Langon. I believe people are natural grammar extractors, and you are talking in the Chris Langon Grammar. Not saying this is a good or bad thing, just pointing it out. Either that or I’m hallucinating which is also likely.

Hey, fuckers. I agree with Robin. Stop bullying her. It’s funny that Robin’s comments are clear and concise and actually make sense while the others grasp desperately at delusions of knowledge. 1Love

“To Anonymous who isn’t Chris Langon. If you’re not Chris Langon, you’re channeling Chris Langon. I believe people are natural grammar extractors, and you are talking in the Chris Langon Grammar. Not saying this is a good or bad thing, just pointing it out. Either that or I’m hallucinating which is also likely.”

I’m not sure I agree. You’ll have to state of what this “Chris [Langan] Grammar” consists.

Greetings all,

I also concur with much of Robins position on language. That entire concept of the capacities of language for explanation is an interesting side track in and of its own. There are few examples where language can fail to explain concept. An example, of which there are many, is the Theory of Relativity. The concept of Relativity can be easily explained in simple english, but to truly understand relativity is to know the predictive capabilities of the theory and its relationship to quantitative evidence. For this one has to switch to the more precise language of mathematics. I mention this only to help clarify my point of view below. I do not see how any mathematical argument could be made from Mr. Langan’s work.

As mentioned above, the misleading language, wether intentional or not, may be a communications war crime, but it does not invalidate the arguments that were made with it. The CTMU is a pain in the ass to read, but it can be read and understood.
The problem with the theory is that it fails to invoke a single instance where a scientific experiment, or even a reasonable thought experiment based on experience, could be used to evaluate the claims and posit a prediction based on those claims.
Correct me if I am wrong, or if I have missed something, but this appears to be the greatest problem with the theory. CTMU appears wholly untestable.

I’m still not sure I understand why the language of the CTMU is felt by many to be difficult. Chris uses the occasional neologism, but he tends to make it clear what those mean and they are all defined within his 2002 paper. There may be some prerequisites to understanding certain parts of that paper, but these this applies even more to many important (e.g.) scientific theories.

As for testability, the CTMU is explicitly a metaphysical theory. Moreover, it is completely rationally-derived and therefore tautological. Thus, one should much rather attempt to invalidate it by pointing out any flaws that are present in the reasoning that led to it, than by trying to test it empirically.

By the way, I notice that you’ve referred to Relativity. While the general idea of Relativity can be explained more or less simply, the details of the theory are exceptionally mathematically involved. I find that the same applies to the CTMU. If one wants a simple and general introduction to the CTMU, one should read some of Langan’s essays, if one wants a slightly more detailed introduction, one should read Langan’s paper, and if one wants an extremely detailed work on the CTMU, one will have to await Langan’s future work. However, potential mathematical formalizations of the CTMU make themselves known even in the 2002 paper. Think of the principle of syndiffeonesis, the principle of attributive duality, and the introduction to the SCSPL.

First, I wanted to comment on the critique of the CTMU by Mr. Tom Beasley and Mr. Chris Langan’s “formal response,” including my initial reaction to the critique. I want to preface this by saying that I have not yet read the CTMU(it’s just one of those things I haven’t gotten around to, in part, because I wanted to read some other philosophical works first), but I am familiar, and have been for some time, of some of the basic premises of the CTMU and the interesting character of Mr. Langan himself.

Now, when I first stumbled upon the article, I thought “Well it’ll be interesting hearing a recent critique of the CTMU theory,” since I haven’t really seen much news or even discussion on the matter in some time. I start reading, and I see all of these accusations that Mr. Langan is nothing more than a mere bible-thumper, arguing for a monotheistic designer God of said Bible, along with the superstitious notions associated with it, with a large vocabulary(or at least a dictionary and/or thesaurus) and a penchant for complex neologisms. If true, then that would be upsetting, and I’d be inclined to agree with the criticisms of the CTMU. Though I have not read it, as I have mentioned, I am familiar with some of the arguments espoused by Mr. Langan, and it was my understanding that he did not advocate a Christian, or Bible-centric view, of reality at all, nor did he argue for dualism—I was certain I had read he specifically argues for monism. Reading through the comments did serve to clarify that point, and given that, I am in agreement that the original critique was flawed.

But my response for Mr Langan’s own article bodes little better for him; I was dismayed at how egotistical, self-serving, and vicious he came across. Now, I understand that Mr. Beasley made a number of attacks on Mr. Langan’s character, implying that he’s really just a religious crackpot like, I fear, many of the Intelligent Design proponents are. So I do believe Langan was well within his rights to defend himself and add criticism of his own in turn, but I feel that the level to which he elevated it, made his own attacks come across as very petty and even more ad hominem than Beasley’s own article was to begin with.

The larger point is that even if Langan feels justified for responding in kind(an “eye for an eye” so to speak), it’s not really serving to give an impression of himself to his intended audience. I’m going to have to argue that Langan should be speaking less to the author of the original article and more to the internet audience reading it. Even if he’s directly replying to Beasley, the real purpose of having this published in the first place as opposed to private correspondence is to convince and persuade the readers of the original article and the replies to your side of the argument. Although Langan can make the case that Beasely’s argument was filled with ad hominem attacks, is a gross misunderstanding of his CTMU theory, and empty of any real substance, Langan should have been the better man and demonstrated to us, the readers, precisely what the misunderstandings are and to correct them so that we have a fair and justified view of his argument. So I do have to feel even somewhat slighted by Langan’s approach not to be civil and to present substantive arguments for his position for us.

I will also say that people accuse you, Anonymous, of being Langan precisely because you sound very much like him when he deigns to logically address his readers. Whether or not you are actually him, I cannot say with any certainty. You continue to say that Beasley could confirm that you do not have the same IP address as Langan, but Beasley has not done so, at least from what I’ve observed. You’re obviously an intelligent person, so I know that you know that even if you do not, in fact, have the same IP address, that doesn’t necessarily preclude you from being Langan himself.

I actually happened upon another internet article on Langan’s CTMU theory which followed the same formula: an ad hominem attack on Langan, Langan attacks in kind without addressing the deeper points, but with one exception. He seemed to touch upon at least a few of the actual arguments, and made an attempt to correct misunderstandings, in some of the subsequent comments. Even if I feel he could still do more, at least he did attempt to explain himself, so I’ll give him credit for that.

By the way, as a side note, Anonymous; I noticed in that other article in the comments, that you claim to be a Canadian high-school student. If that is true, I am very impressed, and you are a highly intelligent person and I wish you well in life with whatever career you wish to pursue. As a matter of curiosity, if I may ask, what is it you wish to do?

But to make my final comments, while I have not read the CTMU yet, at least from what I have gathered about his theory, I have a similar conception of the universe and “god,” if you wish to call it that, though put much less formally and mathematically. I am aware that Langan, in responding to a question, mentioned that Alan Watts is essentially arguing what Langan is putting forth in his CTMU, and I know that I strongly agree with Watts, so by extension, I think I can agree with at least most of the arguments that Langan makes.
While I do consider myself to be quite intelligent, which I think I can say with some justification, I am not especially gifted in mathematics. At best, I’m above average compared to the general populace, though that’s not saying much. The point is I’m not exceptional in mathematics which means I don’t really cut it when attempting to comprehend particularly abstruse, high-level mathematical content, and hence I also lack the requisite knowledge of set theory to really be able to effectively evaluate Langan’s formally logical assertions in the CTMU.

I will say this though; I find the idea of reincarnation, at least as traditionally understood, to be suspect. Matter and energy are neither created, nor destroyed, and I think I can agree that this would extend to information as well. What I would understand as your “self,” as a differentiated conscious being is essentially extinguished at death. That’s not to say that “you” don’t live on in a loose sense, but I think only in a different way than “you” experience life at the current moment. By that I take a monistic/pantheistic view of the self. As H.P. Owen said about pantheists, I “…believe that there is only one Being, and that all other forms of reality are either modes (or appearances) of it or identical with it.” I don’t think that this has any disagreement with Langan’s conception of reality, but if some feel there is, that’s more likely a possible imprecision in the way I worded it. I just hope I don’t need to explicate the point any more than I have, because I think that it is in accordance with Anonymous’ and Langan’s view and thus needs no further elaboration.

“But my response for Mr Langan’s own article bodes little better for him; I was dismayed at how egotistical, self-serving, and vicious he came across. Now, I understand that Mr. Beasley made a number of attacks on Mr. Langan’s character, implying that he’s really just a religious crackpot like, I fear, many of the Intelligent Design proponents are. So I do believe Langan was well within his rights to defend himself and add criticism of his own in turn, but I feel that the level to which he elevated it, made his own attacks come across as very petty and even more ad hominem than Beasley’s own article was to begin with.

The larger point is that even if Langan feels justified for responding in kind(an “eye for an eye” so to speak), it’s not really serving to give an impression of himself to his intended audience. I’m going to have to argue that Langan should be speaking less to the author of the original article and more to the internet audience reading it. Even if he’s directly replying to Beasley, the real purpose of having this published in the first place as opposed to private correspondence is to convince and persuade the readers of the original article and the replies to your side of the argument. Although Langan can make the case that Beasely’s argument was filled with ad hominem attacks, is a gross misunderstanding of his CTMU theory, and empty of any real substance, Langan should have been the better man and demonstrated to us, the readers, precisely what the misunderstandings are and to correct them so that we have a fair and justified view of his argument. So I do have to feel even somewhat slighted by Langan’s approach not to be civil and to present substantive arguments for his position for us.”

I disagree. I believe that Langan’s defence was completely justified. I believe this for a number of reasons.

1. It doesn’t seem to me that Langan’s defence was intended to be public. Note that it was not posted in the comments and that Tom explicitly stated he had “posted [it] in the interest of fairness.” Note that this also implies that it was not necessarily Langan’s aim to have it published.

2. Langan was motivated to make his defence forceful because he sees Tom as engaging in frankly unethical behaviour. Taken in conjunction with 1, it seems to me that Langan intended to inform Tom of this. I don’t think he was overly concerned with what anonymous users would think. It’s also possible that Langan saw Tom as being beyond quick salvation and gave up on him as a lost cause.

Of course, one would have to check with Langan to see what is really the case.

“I will also say that people accuse you, Anonymous, of being Langan precisely because you sound very much like him when he deigns to logically address his readers. Whether or not you are actually him, I cannot say with any certainty. You continue to say that Beasley could confirm that you do not have the same IP address as Langan, but Beasley has not done so, at least from what I’ve observed. You’re obviously an intelligent person, so I know that you know that even if you do not, in fact, have the same IP address, that doesn’t necessarily preclude you from being Langan himself.”

I will state that I am the same poster Anonymous from the Scientopia discussion. I understand that neither this nor my IP are absolute proof that I am not Langan; after all, I may be lying and using a proxy. I understand that the accusations that I am Langan have arisen because my style of writing is rather similar to his and because I support the CTMU. However, Langan is not the only person in the world who has a greater-than-average command of the English language and not the only person in the world who supports the CMTU. (Of course, these criteria are not mutually exclusive.) Moreover, it makes one wonder why Langan, who has commented under his own name on both this and the Scientopia discussion, would suddenly use a pseudonym, admit to using the same pseudonym in both discussions, and admit to making mistakes in at least one discussion, as I have done.

“I actually happened upon another internet article on Langan’s CTMU theory which followed the same formula: an ad hominem attack on Langan, Langan attacks in kind without addressing the deeper points, but with one exception. He seemed to touch upon at least a few of the actual arguments, and made an attempt to correct misunderstandings, in some of the subsequent comments. Even if I feel he could still do more, at least he did attempt to explain himself, so I’ll give him credit for that.”

Keep in mind that Langan’s replies were originally intended for Mark Carroll and not for anonymous commenters. As the commenters became more numerous, Langan replied to them on occasion, but he made it clear that it was not his intent to correct all their errors, and this he did not do. However, he corrected all the large errors of Mark’s thesis. It almost looks like the discussion will turn into a legal battle now, which is unfortunate. :/

“By the way, as a side note, Anonymous; I noticed in that other article in the comments, that you claim to be a Canadian high-school student. If that is true, I am very impressed, and you are a highly intelligent person and I wish you well in life with whatever career you wish to pursue. As a matter of curiosity, if I may ask, what is it you wish to do?”

Thank you. I wish to become a professor of mathematics. I understand that academia has many, many flaws, but I believe that it is still worth making change come to it from within, and this is what I plan on doing. As a professor of mathematics, aside from doing something that I would enjoy, I would be in a position of more than the average amount of respect at my university, given that the academics seen as most intellectual tend to be those working in the “purest” subjects. This would make it all the easier for me to get away with uncommon views apropos academia.

“But to make my final comments, while I have not read the CTMU yet, at least from what I have gathered about his theory, I have a similar conception of the universe and “god,” if you wish to call it that, though put much less formally and mathematically. I am aware that Langan, in responding to a question, mentioned that Alan Watts is essentially arguing what Langan is putting forth in his CTMU, and I know that I strongly agree with Watts, so by extension, I think I can agree with at least most of the arguments that Langan makes.
While I do consider myself to be quite intelligent, which I think I can say with some justification, I am not especially gifted in mathematics. At best, I’m above average compared to the general populace, though that’s not saying much. The point is I’m not exceptional in mathematics which means I don’t really cut it when attempting to comprehend particularly abstruse, high-level mathematical content, and hence I also lack the requisite knowledge of set theory to really be able to effectively evaluate Langan’s formally logical assertions in the CTMU.”

When it comes to mathematics, it is usually possible to become an opsimath, so don’t worry about your current mathematical background. I recommend that you read Langan’s 2002 paper if you choose to read about the CTMU. It can be found at http://www.megafoundation.org/CTMU/Articles/Langan_CTMU_092902.pdf. However, if you’d like a less mathematics-heavy approach to the same, Langan’s essays should suffice. These can all be found on http://www.ctmu.org, if one is willing to check out the links on the page.

“I will say this though; I find the idea of reincarnation, at least as traditionally understood, to be suspect. Matter and energy are neither created, nor destroyed, and I think I can agree that this would extend to information as well. What I would understand as your “self,” as a differentiated conscious being is essentially extinguished at death. That’s not to say that “you” don’t live on in a loose sense, but I think only in a different way than “you” experience life at the current moment. By that I take a monistic/pantheistic view of the self. As H.P. Owen said about pantheists, I “…believe that there is only one Being, and that all other forms of reality are either modes (or appearances) of it or identical with it.” I don’t think that this has any disagreement with Langan’s conception of reality, but if some feel there is, that’s more likely a possible imprecision in the way I worded it. I just hope I don’t need to explicate the point any more than I have, because I think that it is in accordance with Anonymous’ and Langan’s view and thus needs no further elaboration.”

Indeed, your position fits within the CTMU. The essay at http://www.megafoundation.org/CTMU/Articles/Time.html actually contains a discussion of the self that matches your opinion. This is to say that Langan is in accordance with you with respect to the idea that our experience of the self would not necessarily be retained after death.

It has been nice and refreshing to communicate with you.

1. Anonymous does indeed have a different IP than Langan. This is merely necessary and not sufficient to show strong evidence they are different people. Proxy is a very easy concept. But they do indeed have separate IPs and I am inclined to believe Anonymous is not Langan.

2. Langan complained in my original post bringing him up that his response did not have enough exposure. I then promised him that I would allow him room on the same level as me to broadcast his opinions. Langan was entirely aware he would have it republished as an article and even requested the exposure.

3. As for the ad hominem quality of my writing, please do look at how Langan responds to me in my initial article about him. Additionally, the tone of my initial article is due to his over-inflated ego and statements elsewhere on the internet in which he has the same abrasive tone. Langan attempts to drive the conversations deeper and deeper into ad hominem nonsense, to later call them out on using ad hominem against his theory. If you are unconvinced by what I have written, I fully encourage anyone to sit and read the CTMU. Both Langan and I would probably agree on this. Keep in mind my criticism of his language use when reading it, and you might come to realize that this is actually a substantive criticism due to his word games and needlessly complex language.

4. Also, I am well aware of his claims that he adheres to monism and not Cartesian dualism. I find this claim unconvincing and I am furthermore unconvinced that his paper tries to imply otherwise. Simply read the paper, Langan repeatedly works on many unproven or incorrect premises and as I said before his definitions, both of God and terms in his paper, are deceptive. Again, simply read the CTMU for yourself if I have not convinced you.

Tom Beasley: “As for the ad hominem quality of my writing, please do look at how Langan responds to me in my initial article about him. Additionally, the tone of my initial article is due to his over-inflated ego and statements elsewhere on the internet in which he has the same abrasive tone. Langan attempts to drive the conversations deeper and deeper into ad hominem nonsense, to later call them out on using ad hominem against his theory.”

More ad hominem nonsense from Tom, whose original article and subsequent critique are full of it as well.

In a debate, the knowing use of counterproductive rhetorical tactics (deliberate sophistry, red herrings, straw men, ad hominem arguments, arguments from authority, lies, insults, defamation, and so on) designed to let the wrong party “steal” victory from the true winner, i.e. the rightful winner as determined with respect to content, can be likened to a rhetorical form of premeditated crime.

Given that almost everyone, at one time or another, has used specious or downright underhanded argumentation to get his or her way, one might think that trying to steal a debate isn’t really all that bad. But of course, that depends on the stakes, and the nature of that which is being argued.

If the argument is a spousal disagreement about what to wear to a dinner party, a little “creative argumentation” might be no big deal. But when the argument is about a logical theory of reality which offers the prospect, however slim it may appear, of helping mankind to understand the true nature of its reality, and it occurs in a public forum under the guise of rational analysis, it’s a bigger deal, and “crime” may be a more appropriate description for the use of underhanded debate tactics.

What of self-styled ideological watchdogs who think that a given idea, e.g. the CTMU, is so utterly wrong that it threatens to turn humanity *away* from a proper understanding of reality? Isn’t one justified in saying almost anything to stop this from happening, in the spirit of “the end justifies the means”?

The short answer is no. The only way to get to the bottom of this vast experience we call “reality” is through rational philosophical, mathematical, and scientific discussion unsullied by disruption, distraction, and reliance on dirty debate tactics. Anything else just muddies the water.

That’s why I took it amiss when Tom here, after promising to rationally critique my ideas, instead let fly with a faceful of snide ad hominem remarks masquerading as rational analysis. As explained, I discerned in this the rhetorical equivalent of premeditated crime. In fact, having previously been the target of snide ad hominem remarks from Tom, I saw not only criminality, but thoughtless recidivism.

Now, to deter crime, one does not let a criminal pretend that nobody is onto his game, so that he is lulled into the comforting belief that his theft will go unnoticed. Rather, one lets him know that he has been identified for what he is, and that his act of attempted theft will be clearly identified as such by all concerned … even if ensuring such an identification might be portrayed as “vicious”. It’s a simple preventative application of criminal psychology. Such an application is only rational on the part of any past victim of the criminal in question, especially where the audience may have trouble figuring things out for themselves.

Should I have ignored Tom’s rhetorical “criminality” and taken the opportunity to launch into a constructive CTMU lesson for the benefit of interested readers? Obviously not, without some assurance that this would not merely occasion more rhetorical criminality. Nobody is obliged to let something of value, and something he cares deeply about, be used as a target for inveterate mud slingers, especially when the resulting mud stains may deter others from developing a proper appreciation for it. Educationally speaking, providing unscrupulous people with defamatory opportunities can be worse than silence.

Tom Beasley: “If you are unconvinced by what I have written, I fully encourage anyone to sit and read the CTMU … my criticism of his language use […] is actually a substantive criticism due to his word games and needlessly complex language … I am well aware of his claims that he adheres to monism and not Cartesian dualism. I find this claim unconvincing and I am furthermore unconvinced that his paper tries to imply otherwise. Simply read the paper, Langan repeatedly works on many unproven or incorrect premises and as I said before his definitions, both of God and terms in his paper, are deceptive. Again, simply read the CTMU for yourself if I have not convinced you.”

Should anyone take Tom’s advice and read up on the theory, there are several things to bear in mind.

(1) The CTMU involves no assumptions. It relies on logic, mathematics, and the undeniable facts of cognition and perception. That’s the whole point of calling it a “supertautology”.

(2) The paper unequivocally embraces duality over (Cartesian) dualism.

(3) The language of the 2002 paper is not “needlessly complex”, but quite clear, with simple explanations, and sometimes even graphic illustrations, of key terms.

(4) My definitions of God, which vary in complexity but never in content, reflect various intuitive properties widely ascribed to God over the millennia.

(5) There is not a single iota of intentional deception in any paper I’ve ever written about the CTMU. (The way to prove otherwise would be to offer specific examples of deceptive statements, and show that deceptive intentions are necessarily implied.)

Have a good read.

1. Fair enough, and thanks for confirming that it is likely I am not Langan.

2. In that case, the only advice I can give you is that if you ever contact Langan again, you should attempt to be more polite. I suspect that he would follow suit.

3. As I see it, you made your first post regarding the CTMU because you felt cheated out of your first impressions of Langan once you had looked into his work. However, you did not specifically criticize this work, instead insulting Langan by making him out to be “a Deepak Chopra-esque megalomaniac”. Langan responded in suit, telling you to stop lying about his work on this blog.

You then posted a criticism of the CTMU, only one section of which dealt with the content of the theory. (Note that the language of and motive for the CTMU are not its content. Also note that your introduction does not concern the content of the CMTU and that your conclusion does not offer any evidence for your claims.) In the first paragraph of that section (“Substance”), you introduced your arguments.

In the second paragraph, you suggested that the CTMU is based on Intelligent Design theory, which is completely wrong. Your argument appears to be that Intelligent Design theory was mentioned in Langan’s 2002 paper.

In the third paragraph, you stated that dualism is a premise of the CTMU, which is also completely wrong. You did not back this up with an argument.

In the fourth paragraph, you stated that Langan’s views on souls contradict the relativity of morality. (Note that morality is not necessarily subjective and that you stated that it is. There is a difference between the diversity of beliefs in multifarious cultures and the non-existence of absolute truth regarding morality. However, this is beside my current point, and if you wish to discuss it further you may begin a formal debate with me at will.) You did not back the supposed relativity of morality up with a good argument, instead appealing to the relativity of the beliefs of different cultures.

In the fifth paragraph, you stated that the CTMU “is simply a theological attempt to prove the Christian God”. As you may now imagine, this is also false. However, you once again offered no good proof, instead coupling your argument with a passage that stated the CTMU renders “any anti-theological interpretation false”, which is true, because “anti-theological” interpretations are strictly interpretations contrary to a theological view. That is to say, they contradict the theological view and cannot be used in conjunction with it (as, e.g., naturalistic interpretations can).

Anyway, you wrote the criticism as if its content was absolutely true, and that outraged Langan even more, as he saw that it wasn’t. Langan noticed that you offered no proof for many of your claims, got most of your claims wrong, and believed yourself to be correct about all this. Moreover, he felt that you were being uncivil, and responded in suit, saying that he would not waste any more time on your blog, and thus he left.

This begs the question of whether his “eye for an eye” actions were justified. I still think they were. First of all, as he stated in the Scientopia discussion, Langan is working on making the CTMU more accessible to the public. Once his work is released, the qualms people have will probably disappear. However, for the time being, it is the case that it takes much longer to respond to a critique of the CTMU by answering all of its qualms, whether they are supported or not, than it does to make a shorter reply that tries to teach the author a lesson. Moreover, it should be noted that it was you who started the ad hominems, and even if you were motivated by Langan’s past replies to others who did not approve of the CTMU, it was typically them who were the first to use vitriol. On the other hand, if you were motivated by what you saw of Langan’s work, the vitriol you employed was utterly unjustified.

4. I have read the paper, Tom. For the record, I have arguably read almost all of Langan’s writings that are accessible online, even when they have consisted of (e.g.) mathematical work more closely related to economics than to the CTMU. It is perhaps your turn to be convinced. I thus wish to engage you in a formal debate regarding the CTMU, at your convenience.

Well, I must say that I am pleasantly surprised my comment has summoned both Tom Beasley and Chris Langan. Neither have responded in the comments for quite some time, so I did not expect to hear from them personally. But because I have three replies, there’s lot here for which I should respond.

“I disagree. I believe that Langan’s defence was completely justified. I believe this for a number of reasons.
1. It doesn’t seem to me that Langan’s defence was intended to be public. Note that it was not posted in the comments and that Tom explicitly stated he had “posted [it] in the interest of fairness.” Note that this also implies that it was not necessarily Langan’s aim to have it published.”

I imagined you would disagree, but I still stand by what I said. He was completely justified in defending himself, that much is agreed upon, but we do disagree by which means Langan employed to do so. I had been under the impression it was meant to be public, so that is the context in which my response stands. If it wasn’t actually intended to be a public response, then my comments are inapplicable. But Mr Beasely disputes your interpretation and Langan didn’t touch weigh in on that one way or the other, so in my next responses I will assume that it was meant to be public. Langan is free to disclose whether he intended it to be public or not, but if that is the case, it’s interesting to see just how fundamental of a misunderstanding there has been from the beginning of this.

“2. Langan was motivated to make his defence forceful because he sees Tom as engaging in frankly unethical behaviour. Taken in conjunction with 1, it seems to me that Langan intended to inform Tom of this. I don’t think he was overly concerned with what anonymous users would think. It’s also possible that Langan saw Tom as being beyond quick salvation and gave up on him as a lost cause.
Of course, one would have to check with Langan to see what is really the case.”

You have no disagreement from me that Tom was out of line but I don’t see this as merely a “forceful” defense; it became quite offensive as well.

“I will state that I am the same poster Anonymous from the Scientopia discussion. I understand that neither this nor my IP are absolute proof that I am not Langan; after all, I may be lying and using a proxy. I understand that the accusations that I am Langan have arisen because my style of writing is rather similar to his and because I support the CTMU. However, Langan is not the only person in the world who has a greater-than-average command of the English language and not the only person in the world who supports the CMTU. (Of course, these criteria are not mutually exclusive.) Moreover, it makes one wonder why Langan, who has commented under his own name on both this and the Scientopia discussion, would suddenly use a pseudonym, admit to using the same pseudonym in both discussions, and admit to making mistakes in at least one discussion, as I have done.”

Yes, I was quite certain you are the same Anonymous, and so that is why I addressed you as such. While proxy is one such method I alluded to, there is another simpler method Langan could use as well; merely using another computer would do the trick.

But indeed, that is a completely fair and valid point, and I really cannot imagine why Langan would assume a pseudonym if he still comments under his own name. But yes, it is because of your diction, your defense of the CTMU, and that you defend him very adamantly, never voicing a disagreement with Langan. That’s an interesting question though, I think; is there any point on which you would disagree with Langan?

“Keep in mind that Langan’s replies were originally intended for Mark Carroll and not for anonymous commenters. As the commenters became more numerous, Langan replied to them on occasion, but he made it clear that it was not his intent to correct all their errors, and this he did not do. However, he corrected all the large errors of Mark’s thesis. It almost looks like the discussion will turn into a legal battle now, which is unfortunate. :/”

A legal battle? It’s really that bad now? That is unfortunate What is the case, exactly? I did not read through all of the comments on that article because there were so many of them, most were quite long, and about the finer points of set theory and how it relates to the universe. As someone who is not even very familiar with set theory, as I have mentioned, due to my own ignorance of the topic and possible mathematical hebetude, I simply cannot wade through many pages full of criticisms of Langan’s use of naïve set theory; but actually that was a fundamental misunderstanding and Langan was arguing that point in the first place; then the distinction between sets and set theory and axioms’ place; and the fine philosophical point of whether the universe actually IS a set, or can merely be described AS a set, which is then just a useful abstraction to serve our understanding of the universe but has no real bearing on the “actual” universe, which seems very much like a Kantian issue to me. I don’t think I’m in a better position to evaluate whether or not the universe truly is a set, or if the universe can only be described as one, so that is when I stopped reading. I love philosophy and like to think that is my forte, but not so much on the mathematics, unfortunately.

“Thank you. I wish to become a professor of mathematics. I understand that academia has many, many flaws, but I believe that it is still worth making change come to it from within, and this is what I plan on doing. As a professor of mathematics, aside from doing something that I would enjoy, I would be in a position of more than the average amount of respect at my university, given that the academics seen as most intellectual tend to be those working in the “purest” subjects. This would make it all the easier for me to get away with uncommon views apropos academia.”

You are welcome, and I agree that academia is not everything, but it does have some uses. Many use academia merely for a career or self-aggrandizement, which is fine to a point, but I think it is better to also use it in your efforts to be an autodidact—learning is its own reward. You’re right that mathematics, especially pure mathematics, is highly prestigious, but I think you should be more concerned about if you enjoy it. It sounds like you do, so until that stops being the case, you should pursue that. I’m just a lowly psychology student, but I enjoy trying to understand why people behave in the ways they do, and to try to help them as I can. More specifically, I’m in educational psychology, the science of learning, among other things, which is a good match for me: I enjoy it. But on that note, your comment did remind me of a comic I read: http://xkcd.com/435/

“When it comes to mathematics, it is usually possible to become an opsimath, so don’t worry about your current mathematical background. I recommend that you read Langan’s 2002 paper if you choose to read about the CTMU. It can be found at http://www.megafoundation.org/CTMU/Articles/Langan_CTMU_092902.pdf. However, if you’d like a less mathematics-heavy approach to the same, Langan’s essays should suffice. These can all be found on http://www.ctmu.org, if one is willing to check out the links on the page.”

I’m actually familiar with that already: I even have the CTMU pdf downloaded. Why haven’t I read it already, you may ask? I figured I’d read through some other philosophy texts(not that I need to, it’s just simply choosing an order to read them), perhaps on some mathematics and physics(which I actually will need as background), and the fact that I’m juggling graduate school and reading more books than I should be at once, like Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine(or at least parts of it because it is a massive tome), Aristotle’s Politics, and Peter Watson’s The German Genius.

I do appreciate the use of that word “opsimath,” one I’ve never heard before, so I enjoy learning a new word. I also chuckled a bit because of the implication that I am an older individual.

“It has been nice and refreshing to communicate with you.”
Refreshing in what sense?

Now as for Beasley:
“3. As for the ad hominem quality of my writing, please do look at how Langan responds to me in my initial article about him. Additionally, the tone of my initial article is due to his over-inflated ego and statements elsewhere on the internet in which he has the same abrasive tone. Langan attempts to drive the conversations deeper and deeper into ad hominem nonsense, to later call them out on using ad hominem against his theory. If you are unconvinced by what I have written, I fully encourage anyone to sit and read the CTMU. Both Langan and I would probably agree on this. Keep in mind my criticism of his language use when reading it, and you might come to realize that this is actually a substantive criticism due to his word games and needlessly complex language.”

What I’m saying is that neither of you are justified in this behavior. As Gandhi said, the problem with this is “An-eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye … ends in making everybody blind.” This isn’t ever really going to end, unless you two ignore each other completely, because you two will continue to feel justified to reply in kind. I can agree that the CTMU is written more complexly than it probably needed to be: I do think that the author should strive to state something as clearly and simply as possible without sacrificing truth and detail. I believe Anonymous stated, at some point, that a glossary of neologisms exists, but I don’t think it’s actually in the CTMU itself, and it would be useful to have. When Langan uses a neologism like, “syndiffeonesis” I can look it up just so that I am sure I know what the author means with a term like that. That being said, I have skimmed over parts of the CTMU, and while the abstract was dense, I don’t think there was anything I read that I could not understand. The set theory component, however, is likely to be an exception.

Finally, my response to Langan:
“Given that almost everyone, at one time or another, has used specious or downright underhanded argumentation to get his or her way, one might think that trying to steal a debate isn’t really all that bad. But of course, that depends on the stakes, and the nature of that which is being argued.”

Regardless of the stakes, I think civility is something that we should strive for, especially when the stakes are higher. Previous behavior does not necessarily justify future behavior if it can be shown to be harmful in some way.

“If the argument is a spousal disagreement about what to wear to a dinner party, a little “creative argumentation” might be no big deal. But when the argument is about a logical theory of reality which offers the prospect, however slim it may appear, of helping mankind to understand the true nature of its reality, and it occurs in a public forum under the guise of rational analysis, it’s a bigger deal, and “crime” may be a more appropriate description for the use of underhanded debate tactics.”

Even a spousal disagreement can have serious repercussions one’s life, commensurate to the severity with which the argument escalates, which is entirely why one should strive to maintain composure and just argue with the facts; not with emotions stemming from wounded pride. Depending on how it is done, and the severity with which it is produced, it can be harmful and perpetuating.

“What of self-styled ideological watchdogs who think that a given idea, e.g. the CTMU, is so utterly wrong that it threatens to turn humanity *away* from a proper understanding of reality? Isn’t one justified in saying almost anything to stop this from happening, in the spirit of “the end justifies the means”?

No, not at all. If your CTMU does reflect misunderstanding of reality, the way to correct it is through proper argumentation and relevant factual evidence, not through libel, because it is the facts and reasoning that are important in understanding “Truth.” This is why I criticized Beasely for not acting properly in his critique.

“The short answer is no. The only way to get to the bottom of this vast experience we call “reality” is through rational philosophical, mathematical, and scientific discussion unsullied by disruption, distraction, and reliance on dirty debate tactics. Anything else just muddies the water.”

Precisely: I am in full agreement, and that is essentially why I don’t agree with how you handled the situation either.

“Now, to deter crime, one does not let a criminal pretend that nobody is onto his game, so that he is lulled into the comforting belief that his theft will go unnoticed. Rather, one lets him know that he has been identified for what he is, and that his act of attempted theft will be clearly identified as such by all concerned … even if ensuring such an identification might be portrayed as “vicious”. It’s a simple preventative application of criminal psychology. Such an application is only rational on the part of any past victim of the criminal in question, especially where the audience may have trouble figuring things out for themselves.

Should I have ignored Tom’s rhetorical “criminality” and taken the opportunity to launch into a constructive CTMU lesson for the benefit of interested readers? Obviously not, without some assurance that this would not merely occasion more rhetorical criminality. Nobody is obliged to let something of value, and something he cares deeply about, be used as a target for inveterate mud slingers, especially when the resulting mud stains may deter others from developing a proper appreciation for it. Educationally speaking, providing unscrupulous people with defamatory opportunities can be worse than silence.”

The way you have framed the options, you can either call attention to it, or you can explicate the true arguments of the CTMU. But I have to emphatically disagree and I argue that these are not mutually exclusive options. You can call attention to Tom’s ad hominem attacks, the fact that they’re irrelevant in a proper argument/critique and have no place here, without also debasing yourself in the process. You yourself just finished saying that you should not sully yourself with “dirty debate tactics,” and I’d include logical fallacies in that category. This seems to be an either/or situation for you: either call attention to it and fight back in kind, OR you can actually address the content of the CTMU. I’ve stated multiple times you have a right to defend yourself, and that I think you could have handled the situation better where you did BOTH, but did not stoop to the same level. If you had politely conducted yourself and done what I just suggested, I think your behavior would have stood in stark contrast to Beasley’s, and it would have to be apparent that Beasely acted inappropriately. Unless you think that most of Beasley’s audience is ideological and will blindly support him in any situation. But even if that is so, consider the new site visitor who stumbles upon this and sees this. I doubt that he’ll be especially keen on reading the CTMU if he does not think much of the author’s behavior. But then again, perhaps you don’t care.

Langan seems to come off with two minds about the CTMU. On the one hand, he seems to have the attitude that if you do not possess the intelligence, vocabulary, and possible mathematical ability to fully comprehend the CTMU then that’s just too bad for you, and you have no business reading it in the first place. But at other times, Langan seems to identify more with the common man, and even if a wide gulf of intelligence may exist between him and the “average joe” on the street, he doesn’t necessarily hold it against them and is willing to help them out. On Langan’s site, there is a question from a man who somewhat self-deprecatingly says he is not particularly intelligent and does not possess anything above a high school education, and probably cannot understand Langan’s theories anyway. But instead of adopting an elitist attitude, Langan highlighted his own lack of formal education, as a means of letting the other man identify with him on some level, before explaining a few aspects of the theory. It’s just something interesting I’ve observed.

Despite my criticisms, on the whole at least, I even like Chris Langan. Whether or not he truly possesses an IQ of 190-210(of which I’m skeptical due to the fact that I think it’s well-nigh impossible to standardize and validate a test attempting to measure that extreme of a trait), he’s still obviously an intelligent guy, with some very interesting ideas, and I still think it’d be interesting to meet a man like Langan someday, although I imagine he’d decline even if there was such an opportunity, because it would be somewhat parasitic, in that I don’t have anything to offer him in return. But if I ever did have the opportunity to do so, I think it’d be a very interesting experience.

It must be awful for an atheist to realize one of the most intelligent guys in the world is a christian. somehow they have managed to convince u that “atheists r smarter than theist”, yet reality is cruel sometimes. This guy is smarter than u and that is a fact, not a belief. deal with it.
regards,
Sir Isaac Newton
(IQ: 190; Religion: Christian)

He is not a Christian. He already stated elsewhere that he doesn’t belong to any religious group because “he can’t afford to let his logical approach to theology be prejudiced by religious dogma.” He’s no more a Christian than he is a Buddhist or Muslim or Pagan. Do you see him walking around with a bible in hand, preaching God’s Word? No, you don’t. And what does his intelligence have to do with anything? There are people with 190+ IQ’s who are atheists and there are people with 190+ IQ’s who are theists.

The Bible has already been thoroughly debunked and shown to be absurd anyways.
See: http://www.bibletrash.com/

By the way, the 190 IQ for Newton is an estimate, not an actual score. There’s no proof his IQ was that high or anywhere near that high as IQ tests didn’t exist at the time. There are people with higher IQ’s (and higher IQ estimates) who are atheists and non-Christians, like Kim-Ung Yong from South Korea, who is considered the smartest person in the world with an IQ of 210. Academics like Saul Kripke, Edward Witten, and Terrance Tao are all non-Christians and they are at least as smart as Langan. Ed Witten is considered the greatest physicists alive and the greatest physicists since Einstein (and perhaps even his successor) and he is an atheist.

Kim Ung-Yong
(IQ: 210; non-Christian, and the actual smartest person in the world).

On a side note, it would be interesting to see how fast someone like Langan (or anyone with an IQ of 190+) can learn a new language if they seriously applied themselves and did nothing but study that one language all day long. Savant Daniel Tammet (whose IQ was measured at 155 or so) learned to speak Icelandic in only one week.

I feel that I should state my position with regards to continuing to comment on these debates. To put it simply, while the manners in which others respond to Langan’s work are of some interest to me, replying to everyone’s qualms, though it was my original goal, is time-consuming. I will thus condense my replies significantly.

Dark Bowser, in short, Langan has tried replying in a less aggressive manner to many others before Tom. He has not succeeded at convincing them so many times in the past, that he likely feels he should simply cut to the chase, point out that he’s caught them in the act of deceit, and leave it at that. Whatever the rest of the commenters think will likely be corrected sooner or later when he publicizes his work.

Phunbaba, psychometrics is not simple enough that one can assume, for example, that Kim Ung-Yong is absolutely smarter than Chris Langan, or that he is even usually considered to be smarter than Chris Langan. In fact, Kim’s result was recorded when (a) he was very young, and (b) IQ tests were not as accurate as they are today. It is worth noting that ratio IQ tests were still very popular for children at the time, and that these tests are inherently flawed because they cannot be used to accurately extrapolate IQ into the later years of the child’s life. You see, such tests rely on the formula IQ = 100 * mental age / chronological age, where the mental age is given by the test’s result. Thus, if a six-year-old scores as well as the average thirteen-year-old on such a test, the six-year-old would get an IQ score of about 217. This score will likely not be accurate when that child is (e.g.) twenty years of age, and while still typically corresponding to a high IQ would not necessarily correspond to one about eight standard deviations above average. Of course, there is the question of how well IQ correlates with pure intelligence as well, and I will not discuss that now.

If we are basing intelligence on the ability to come up with important, new ideas, then I don’t quite agree with your statement that, “…[Saul Kripke, Edward Witten, and Terence Tao] are at least as smart as Langan.” While Tao has performed well in mathematics competitions and written some fairly interesting and important papers, he has not done very much if any important work outside of pure mathematics. Similarly, Edward Witten has done work that is essential to superstring theory, but superstring theory necessarily has no logical basis without the CTMU, and does not suffice as a true TOE without a firm, metaphysical backing. Saul Kripke has done some philosophical work, but he has come nowhere near to creating a comprehensive, unifying philosophical framework.

As for language-learning ability, this does not necessarily have a high correlation with one’s fluid intelligence, but probably does correlate well with one’s memory span. From experience, I know that much of learning a language well comes from much memorization, and I suspect that this is easy for most people to see. However, being an extremely creative and intellectually capable individual does not necessarily give one all the powers of a hyperthymesic.

First of all, like some already pointed out the language of some of the posters above is very similar to that used by Langdan, (I am feeling a bit paranoid for saying this but: it also seems as if some of the phrasing is deliberately dumbed down, I say this since I see some unnatural inconsistencies, could just as well be poor imitators).

Anyway, I do research in Artificial Intelligence (in the evil Academia) and I can’t see how I could use this “theory”. When I read papers from computer scientists they are known for being less theoretical than papers in mathematics but compared to what I read in CTMU(?) they are extremely technical.

So, question: How is this related or rather in any way provide anything new for AI?

With all this said, I do consider Langdan to be a good rhetoric.

“First of all, like some already pointed out the language of some of the posters above is very similar to that used by Langdan,”

First of all, his name is “Langan”. Second of all, it is already possible for you to determine that it is at least unlikely that I am Langan. By the way, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a single instance in which Langan denied his identity outright.

“(I am feeling a bit paranoid for saying this but: it also seems as if some of the phrasing is deliberately dumbed down, I say this since I see some unnatural inconsistencies, could just as well be poor imitators).”

You offer no evidence.

“Anyway, I do research in Artificial Intelligence (in the evil Academia) and I can’t see how I could use this “theory”. When I read papers from computer scientists they are known for being less theoretical than papers in mathematics but compared to what I read in CTMU(?) they are extremely technical.”

I assume that you see more mathematical symbols in these paper than you have seen in the CTMU. Given that, you should keep in mind that the purpose of mathematical symbols is to condense a wealth of information. It is possible to write a mathematical paper without using mathematical symbols, but it is tedious. Thus, the relative sparsity of mathematical symbols in papers about the CTMU does not preclude the CTMU’s containing actual and useful mathematical content.

“So, question: How is this related or rather in any way provide anything new for AI?”

The CTMU sets definitive limits on computational systems, and shows that they necessarily give way to so-called “protocomputational” systems.

“With all this said, I do consider Langdan to be a good rhetoric.”

If you don’t consider him a good anything else, you probably haven’t taken close enough of a look at his work.

“Langdan” was an intentional misspell; I wanted to see the reaction, sorry about that.

Very true that it is possible to write something very mathematical without any mathematical symbols at all, but as you state, it would be extremely lengthy. If I read a paper concerning some narrow detail assuming that the reader already knows the subject very well a common article size is 30 pages.

You are again right that I have not taken a close enough look but what I read are mostly Ideas. Ideas are nice and we all have lots of them (perhaps Mr. Langans are much more sophisticated than the rest of us) but they are not of use if you are not able to write something concrete.

You are not a genius for inventing the teleporter (or the helicopter for that matter) just by thinking about a design and idea of implementation. Any kid can invent the teleporter. Ideas, even brilliant ones are abundant.

Again, I have not studied the text well enough but please give me one example of something concrete, a nice solution of an existing problem or even an idea of an solution to a future problem.

I am not being skeptical because the source is “non-standard” I am being it because my impression is that the text is not well written and does not seem to be of high quality. On the other hand, precisely this is what people are saying about Wolfram’s “New kind of science” so it does not imply that it is bad, but it does imply that you have to be much more careful…

Ok, so after actually reading the first part a bit deeper I can say that the whole “determinacy”-framework could be explained the same way using 18th century mathematics, i.e. nothing new there. Further I find basic ideas from control theory and dynamical systems modelling dominating the text.

After about ten pages of what I find to be difficult-to-understand-text that provided me with information I was somewhat familiar with but in an for me awkward framework I stopped reading and skimmed through the rest.

I am not a physicist and I do not know if there are some brilliant ideas in there and even though I would not say that I am an expert in the field, it is still my job to read papers like this all day. With this said, I hope for a comment from Langan, but I am a bit dissapointed for I had higher expectations…

On a side note, anonymous: you were not the poster I believed to possibly be the author of the paper.

“You are not a genius for inventing the teleporter (or the helicopter for that matter) just by thinking about a design and idea of implementation. Any kid can invent the teleporter. Ideas, even brilliant ones are abundant.”

It is one thing to propose a design for a teleporter and quite another to design a teleporter that would necessarily work thanks to the laws of the universe. Note that if one were able to plan a teleporter that would necessarily work, one would not actually have to build the teleporter to have created something truly incredible, and I doubt that “any kid” is capable of this. By the way, Langan’s work is more along the lines of a mathematical proof than a blueprint for a teleporter.

“Again, I have not studied the text well enough but please give me one example of something concrete, a nice solution of an existing problem or even an idea of an solution to a future problem.”

http://www.megafoundation.org/CTMU/Articles/Supernova.html. This is a link to an article Langan wrote that points out the applications of the CTMU to solving various paradoxes of modern physics.

“Ok, so after actually reading the first part a bit deeper I can say that the whole ‘determinacy’-framework could be explained the same way using 18th century mathematics, i.e. nothing new there. Further I find basic ideas from control theory and dynamical systems modelling dominating the text.”

First of all, you haven’t given any explicit examples. Second of all, you are claiming that because an idea can be described in terms of old ideas, the idea is itself not new. Your statement is like saying that because tensors can be represented as matrices, General Relativity was not a new development

“On a side note, anonymous: you were not the poster I believed to possibly be the author of the paper.”

Were you perhaps talking about the poster “Chris Langan”? I wonder what parts of his phrasing seemed “deliberately dumbed down” to you.
.

By the way, the IP of the poster “Chris Langan” has been traced to the area where Langan actually lives. On this [http://anamericanatheist.org/2011/02/07/2011/] page, Tom Beasley wrote, “I can only assert that the IP address posting under his name is from the area in which Chris Langan actually lives.”

I must say after some deeper reading that I am a bit embarrassed now. I assume that the document is some sophisticated joke from Langans side.

Nice trolling from both of you!

Anonymous wrote: “psychometrics is not simple enough that one can assume, for example, that Kim Ung-Yong is absolutely smarter than Chris Langan, or that he is even usually considered to be smarter than Chris Langan. In fact, Kim’s result was recorded when (a) he was very young”

The 210 IQ is actually what his ADULT IQ is estimated to be. “Testers have only been able to estimate the IQ of Kim Ung-Yong, who was born in Seoul, Korea, on March 7, 1963. His IQ has been placed at exceeding 200. He was fluent in Japanese, Korean, German, and English by his fourth birthday. At four years, eight months he solved complicated calculus problems on Japanese TV. He is considered to be the most brilliant person alive.” - quote taken from the book The Best, Worst, & Most Unusual: Noteworthy Achievements, Events, Feats & Blunders of Every Conceivable Kind by Bruce Felton & Mark Fowler

An IQ test alone can’t necessarily determine who is smarter but Kim Ung-Yong was speaking at 3 or 4 months and reading by the age of 1. Chris Langan didn’t start speaking until 6 or 7 months and he wasn’t reading until the age of 2 or 3. In addition to speaking and reading far earlier than Langan, Kim Ung-Yong was also reading in 4 languages when he was 2 or 3 years old. Langan was just barely starting to read by then. Obviously Kim Ung-Yong was way more precocious so a 210 adult IQ estimate for him is perfectly reasonable. He is actually one of the most precocious prodigies in recorded history. He was far more precocious than Langan and even more precocious than William Sidis, who was also more precocious than Langan.

Other former child prodigies still alive today, such as Gregory R. Smith and Michael Kearney, also started speaking at the age of 3 or 4 months and were reading by the age of 1. The thing is the vast majority of people have never taken an IQ test so we don’t know just how many people would score as high or higher than Langan. Many people alive today are unaware of just how high their IQ’s are, just as Langan was before he took a test. If everyone on the entire planet took an IQ test, there would probably be at least a dozen people with higher IQ’s than Langan.

“If we are basing intelligence on the ability to come up with important, new ideas, then I don’t quite agree with your statement that, “…[Saul Kripke, Edward Witten, and Terence Tao] are at least as smart as Langan.”

Intelligence isn’t just the ability to come up with important, new ideas. Even if it was, there would still be people as smart or smarter than Langan. Intelligence encompasses many things and no matter what definition of intelligence you want to use, there are still going to be people smarter. Whether or not Langan’s ideas are as important or more imporant than the ideas of other geniuses is debatable.

Saul Kripke has done “some” philosophical work? He has contributed to the areas of mathematical logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics, epistemology, set theory and his complete collected works comprise over 10,000+ pages. Most of his work is unpublished so we have no idea just how important his ideas are. He’s considered one of the greatest philosophers and logicians alive and one of the greatest of the past 200 years. He revolutionized philosophy when he was still in his early 30′s. From what I have read of him, he did seem more precocious than Langan as a child, both mathematically and philosophically. He was already reading the works of Descartes while still in elementary school and he mastered college level mathematics at around the same time. He wrote a paper on modal logic at the age of 17 and it was so good that it was published in The Journal of Symbolic Logic. Professors at Harvard got a hold of it and actually invited him to come teach classes there…at the age of 17. Like Langan, he didn’t learn much in college because he was already so advanced by the time he entered but he stuck around anyways so he could get his degree. He was also teaching courses in advanced logic at MIT while still an undergraduate. I’d say he’s at least as smart as Langan and possibly slightly smarter.

It doesn’t matter if he hasn’t come up with a “unifying philosophical framework”, he already contributed a lot to many areas of philosophy including the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, mathematical logic, epistemology, set theory, etc.

Same thing goes for Ed Witten. He has over 300 publications comprising thousands and thousands of pages. Many of his collegues have compared him to Einstein and one of them said, “a genius like Witten only comes along once in a hundred years.” Some are calling him the greatest physicist ever, even greater than Einstein. Some of his papers are so complicated that even Nobel Prize Winning Physicists don’t understand them.

Go try reading some of them:
http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/au:+Witten_Edward/0/1/0/all/0/1
They are far, far more technical and complicated than the CTMU.

I’m sure Chris Langan is a genius and probably ONE of the smartest people in the world but let’s not get carried away here, there are people smarter than him. There’s always someone smarter, and Saul Kripke and Ed Witten are probably two of those people. Gregory R. Smith and Michael Kearney are also probably two of those people.

As for Terence Tao, I don’t know that much about him so I can’t really comment but he did teach himself to read before the age of 2 so he was also far more precocious than Langan. He doesn’t need to do any work outside of mathematics. That has nothing to do with his intelligence. He is one of the top mathematicians in the world so it’s ridiculous to try to diminish his status with comments like “he has not done very much if any important work outside of pure mathematics.” He has around 200 published papers and he has won over a dozen math awards including a Field’s Medal so there’s no doubting his genius.

Maybe Chris Langan is a great genius and will be recognized as such in the future, but maybe not. We won’t know how he compares to other geniuses for a long time. But as things are right now, Kirpke, Witten, and Tao would all have to qualify as being greater geniuses than Langan. And so would many other people alive today.

“Saul Kripke has done some philosophical work, but he has come nowhere near to creating a comprehensive, unifying philosophical framework.”

And Chris Langan has come nowhere near to contributing as much to many of the areas that Saul Kripke has. Like I said, 10,000+ pages in the areas of logic, epistemology, set theory, philosophy of language, mind, and math, and much more. He made important contributions to modal logic while still a teenager and he revolutionized the philosophy of language while still in his early 30′s. A 56-page paper by Langan just doesn’t cut it to qualify him as one of the greatest thinkers or geniuses of the past 200 years, let alone one of the greatest geniuses ever. Unless he has many other pages of unpublished writings and contributions, I don’t see how anyone can compare him to the likes of Witten, Kripke, or any number of other geniuses throughout history.

“As for language-learning ability, this does not necessarily have a high correlation with one’s fluid intelligence, but probably does correlate well with one’s memory span.”

Yeah but Chris Langan already stated in an interview years ago that he could “memorize pages of material with ease” when he was in school. Also, in another interview he stated that he can still remember things from all the way back to when he was still a baby…which is strange when you think about it because in that video interview he said he couldn’t remember what he had written on that piece of paper that he lost just a few minutes before.

Reading about histories smartest child prodigies, it seems like most of them did pick up languages really fast. If he can “memorize pages of material with ease” and remember back to when he was a baby then he obviously has a very powerful memory and should have no problem mastering a language in a short amount of time.

“I must say after some deeper reading that I am a bit embarrassed now. I assume that the document is some sophisticated joke from Langans side.

Nice trolling from both of you!”

Way to turn this argument to ad hominems, Dr. L. By the way, I’ve noticed that your username no longer links to a website. Can you explain why this is?

Phunbaba, I was about halfway through a longer response when my browser crashed. This has rather demotivated me, so I will try to boil my response down to its essentials. My attempt follows.

1. The research of modern mathematicians and scientists is extremely specialized. Graduate school tends to prepare one to become extremely proficient in one particular topic, and this is the pattern among many top physicists and pure mathematicians of our day in particular. However, giftedness tends to manifest itself as a capability to use a top-down approach; that is, as a capability to see the big picture and *then* expand upon the depths of its details. It is entirely possible to write a paper on the expression of the Schwarzschild metric in superstring theory, and such a paper would likely utilize many important mathematical details, but it is again one thing to grasp the details and quite another to grasp the direction in which the theory as a whole is moving. Sadly, I must say that it appears rather a challenge for these professionals to examine their theories rigorously on a deep, logical basis before simply attempting to empirically test them if it’s even possible to do so.

2. I question what you mean by “smartest” in this discussion. You repeatedly make comments which imply that doing basic tasks at a young age makes one exceptionally intelligent even in adulthood. The facts are that (a) many of the successes attributed to prodigies at an early age are very difficult to verify, (b) the speed of one’s learning hardly correlates with the general intelligence factor, g, and (c) if one is financially disadvantaged, one is more or less on one’s own for most of one’s education, which was never the case for most top academics of today.

3. You also seem to believe that quantity of work automatically overrides quality of work. You can give me thousands of papers by Kripke discussing the relations between languages and truth predicates, or you can give me one paper by Langan proving the existence of God, and I will consistently pick the one by Langan, not because I am irrationally biased towards his work, but because such work inherently has enormously important consequences for the state of our philosophy and our affairs in the world.

4. There is a difference between attempting to memorize something and not attempting to memorize something. I find it entirely believable that Langan could memorize much information when he tried, but could forget an important idea when he was not actively memorizing it as he worked. After all, as I alluded to earlier, hyperthymesia does not make one a genius nor is it a characteristic of geniuses.

Well the reason there is no website is because I did not enter it.

The way I see it there are two possibilities:
Either you are joking with me and I don’t understand it,
or you are not joking and you don’t understand it.

“Well the reason there is no website is because I did not enter it.”

Fair enough.

“The way I see it there are two possibilities:
Either you are joking with me and I don’t understand it,
or you are not joking and you don’t understand it.”

Saying that my arguments aren’t worth your time doesn’t cut it unless you end up with something to show for yourself.

1) “However, giftedness tends to manifest itself as a capability to use a top-down approach; that is, as a capability to see the big picture and *then* expand upon the depths of its details.” - Giftedness also manifests itself as the ability to master and contribute to multiple areas. Saul Kripke has not only contributed to many areas of philosophy but he has also contributed to mathematics as well. Ed Witten has also contributed a lot to both physics and mathematics. He’s the only physicist ever to win a Fields Medal. He’s primarily a physicist but his mathematical abilities are matched by very few, so in a way he’s like the Isaac Newton of our generation. This would qualify both Wittten and Kripke as more more gifted and well rounded geniuses than Langan. I’m sure they get the big picture far better than most people can.

2) “You repeatedly make comments which imply that doing basic tasks at a young age makes one exceptionally intelligent even in adulthood” - Most of these people are exceptionally intelligent, even in adulthood. Even the ones like William Sidis, who don’t amount to much, are exceptinally intelligent in adulthood. You can’t say that Terence Tao, Kim Ung-Yong or Saul Kripke are not exceptionally intelligent people. They are some of the smartest people in the world, even now. Someone could say that that Langan hasn’t been that intelligent in adulthood for working as a bar bouncer for so many years, endangering his life for so long for so little. Bar bouncing is one of the more dangerous jobs you could have. I’m not going to bash all of his job choices because he did once work as a firefighter which is a very honorable job, but it just doesn’t seem smart to risk your life and brain power for so little in return. He could have gotten paid a lot more money doing warehouse work which is much easier and far less dangerous than bar bouncing.

To point(s) (a)1: Many of these claims have been verified by the people around them. Gregory R. Smith was speaking at 3 months. Both his parents testify to this and so do many other people around him at the time. You think all these people are lying? Michael Kearney was reading before the age of 1 - far, far earlier than Langan, and this has also been verified by his parents and the people around him. They have pictures and videos of him reading at 1 year old, so these things are actually not hard to verify. The same things are true of many other prodigies. Reading at the age of 3 is not unusual for a prodigy but reading before the age of 2 is highly unusual.

Chris Langan was a child prodigy but he would not be exceptional among child prodigies. People like Gregory R Smith, Michael Kearney, Marnen Laibow Koser, Merill Kenneth Wolfe, Thomas Young, William Sidis, John Barratier, William Rowan Hamilton, Saul Kripke, and many, many others were all more precocious than Langan as children and smarter as adults.

(a)2: If you are going to make the claim that the accomplishments of child prodigies are unverified then someone could turn around and also make the claim that Langan’s 190+ IQ claim is unverifiable because when he first took the mega test (under the psuedonym Eric Hart) he actually got 42 out of 48 right which is equal to a 174 IQ - a score found in about 1 in 500,000 - 1 in 1,000,000. There are thousands of people alive today who would score higher than that. Many people have scored higher on their first attempt. The politician John Sununu got more questions right on his first try.

3) The work by Kirpke and Witten is quality work. It’s both QUANTITY & QUALITY. That’s why they are considered some of the greatest in their field. If you think the work of Kripke or Witten isn’t quality work, then I don’t know what to tell you. There’s a reason they are at the top of their field and respected so much by others in their field and it ain’t just because of the quantity of their work. And you are also assuming that Langan’s CTMU proves the existence of god. You don’t know that for sure. At this point in time, Langan’s work doesn’t even come close to being as important as Kripke’s or Witten’s. The entire physics/philosophical community would agree with that, so your claim of Langan’s work being more important just doesn’t have any weight.

Chris Langan’s work may be quality, but it doesn’t seem to be both quality AND quantity like Witten’s, Kripke’s, and some others. That’s the difference between them. If we go by that then Witten and Kripke would have to qualify as being greater geniuses than Langan since they have both quantity and quality.

Here are some comments about Saul Kripke’s work from some of the world’s leading philosophers.

“A new collection of articles by Saul Kripke is a major event. The older papers are classics, and the newer papers are fascinating. There is an enormous amount of substantial, creative, and insightful philosophy throughout.” -David Chalmers, Australian National University and New York University

“The philosophical world has been waiting for a long time for this volume from one of its greatest thinkers. Several of these classic papers revolutionized a number of fields in philosophy, in some cases even without having been previously published. They are available here for the first time in authoritative versions prepared for publication, alongside other justly famous essays. Simply a ‘must-have’ of analytic philosophy.” -Paul Boghossian, New York University

“Everything Saul Kripke has written is first-rate. Most of it is brilliant. Some of it has been field-changing. Naming and Necessity has a good chance of finding a place in the permanent canon of the history of philosophy. So anything else that Kripke publishes will very likely draw long-term interest. Any serious student of philosophy of language, philosophy of logic, philosophy of mind, or epistemology should read and reread Kripke’s work, including these papers.” -Paul Boghossian, University of California, Los Angeles

“Saul Kripke’s work has significantly changed the way we look at fundamental philosophical problems today. Naming and Necessity helped to shatter a centuries-old consensus on the nature of the fundamental semantical concepts of connotation and reference, as well as challenging received ideas about necessity and contingency. This collection of articles is more than welcome; it is something every philosopher will want to own.” -Hilary Putnam, Harvard University

“A great deal of this work is new-that is, not the classic canonical Saul Kripke everyone already knows about. True, some of it had been circulating in samizdat form. But more often it was just the ideas that were circulating, and whether for broken telephone
reasons, or because the ideas have been evolving, they are oftentimes different (and more challenging) than previously reported. Throughout one finds the trademark Kripkean combination of shining insights with an open-mindedness about what is ultimately to be made of them.” -Stephen Yablo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“I have learned more from Saul Kripke than from any other philosopher of our time.” -David Kaplan, University of California, Los Angeles

Similar things have been said of Ed Witten. Now can you find similar things said of Langan and his work?

If Langan’s papers don’t prove the existence of God then he is seriously screwed because that will mean he has neither quality nor quantity.

“…but because such work inherently has enormously important consequences for the state of our philosophy and our affairs in the world.” - Langan’s CTMU doesn’t seem to be changing the state of anything in this world. The world was no different before the CTMU and it probably won’t be any different after.

4) Why would someone not attempt to memorize something so important that he had written on a piece of paper just minutes or seconds before? People have a much easier time remembering what is important to them. If it was so important then it shouldn’t have been too hard to remember. A really good memory doesn’t make one a genius but most geniuses do have extraordinary memories, much better than
average. Read about Euler, Laplace, von Neumann, Pascal, Gauss, Ampere, Poincare, Thomas Young, ect. All some of the greatest geniuses ever, and all with near-photographic memories. If Langan can “memorize pages with ease” like he claimed, he wouldn’t need to work hard at remembering something, especially if it was so important.

“Giftedness also manifests itself as the ability to master and contribute to multiple areas. Saul Kripke has not only contributed to many areas of philosophy but he has also contributed to mathematics as well. Ed Witten has also contributed a lot to both physics and mathematics. He’s the only physicist ever to win a Fields Medal. He’s primarily a physicist but his mathematical abilities are matched by very few, so in a way he’s like the Isaac Newton of our generation. This would qualify both Wittten and Kripke as more more gifted and well rounded geniuses than Langan. I’m sure they get the big picture far better than most people can.”

Yet neither of them have built a logical framework that facilitates the resolution of any logical paradox like Langan has. Apparently the big picture still escapes them and they are relegated to work on far less important and general problems. As for well-roundedness, Langan has demonstrated exceptional ability in various fields including mathematics, the hard sciences, and economics aside from philosophy. It’s hard to say that Witten and Kripke would do as well were they outside the academic loop, and given the extensive list of academic footnotes in (e.g.) Witten’s work, it is likely that they wouldn’t.

“Most of these people are exceptionally intelligent, even in adulthood. Even the ones like William Sidis, who don’t amount to much, are exceptinally intelligent in adulthood. You can’t say that Terence Tao, Kim Ung-Yong or Saul Kripke are not exceptionally intelligent people. They are some of the smartest people in the world, even now. Someone could say that that Langan hasn’t been that intelligent in adulthood for working as a bar bouncer for so many years, endangering his life for so long for so little. Bar bouncing is one of the more dangerous jobs you could have. I’m not going to bash all of his job choices because he did once work as a firefighter which is a very honorable job, but it just doesn’t seem smart to risk your life and brain power for so little in return. He could have gotten paid a lot more money doing warehouse work which is much easier and far less dangerous than bar bouncing.”

The ability to go through graduate school, read academic papers using one’s knowledge from graduate school, and write similar papers about isolated topics that lead at most to a minor innovation is not as impressive as the ability to come up with a framework for the resolution of all such problems with no formal education. Moreover, when Langan says he fell into that line of work, he means it. When one is at a significant financial disadvantage like Langan was, one takes whatever work one can just to get by. Given the choice, Langan always chose to work at safer locations, but beggars simply can’t be choosers in most such situations.

“To point(s) (a)1: Many of these claims have been verified by the people around them. Gregory R. Smith was speaking at 3 months. Both his parents testify to this and so do many other people around him at the time. You think all these people are lying? Michael Kearney was reading before the age of 1 – far, far earlier than Langan, and this has also been verified by his parents and the people around him. They have pictures and videos of him reading at 1 year old, so these things are actually not hard to verify. The same things are true of many other prodigies. Reading at the age of 3 is not unusual for a prodigy but reading before the age of 2 is highly unusual.”

And neither of these prodigies has shown himself to be capable of the intellectual work Langan tackles. Moreover, I request a source for the Kearney videos and pictures, if you have one. I also request a source for the Greg Smith verification.

“(a)2: If you are going to make the claim that the accomplishments of child prodigies are unverified then someone could turn around and also make the claim that Langan’s 190+ IQ claim is unverifiable because when he first took the mega test (under the psuedonym Eric Hart) he actually got 42 out of 48 right which is equal to a 174 IQ – a score found in about 1 in 500,000 – 1 in 1,000,000. There are thousands of people alive today who would score higher than that. Many people have scored higher on their first attempt. The politician John Sununu got more questions right on his first try.”

1. If the Mega Test was truly as difficult as it claims, repeat attempts, which were allowed by its creator, would not be ‘cheating’ whatsoever and would in fact confer no advantage on the testee. This is because consulting others would be *extremely* impractical for the obvious reason and because mass sources of data were not yet available to assist individuals. Moreover, the test was untimed and unsupervised as well as allowing of the use of books.

2. When Langan first took the Test, the norms were set so that the score he aimed for, being short on time, and received qualified him for entrance to the Mega Society. However, between his application and its receiving, the norms were changed so that it no longer would. Many people took the test again for this reason.

3. Given this information and the existence of the necessary records, Langan’s scores are completely verifiable. Moreover, there is video footage of him writing the WAIS and there are records of his SAT scores. When one looks at the correlations, one gets the claimed scores for Langan.

“3) The work by Kirpke and Witten is quality work. It’s both QUANTITY & QUALITY. That’s why they are considered some of the greatest in their field. If you think the work of Kripke or Witten isn’t quality work, then I don’t know what to tell you. There’s a reason they are at the top of their field and respected so much by others in their field and it ain’t just because of the quantity of their work. And you are also assuming that Langan’s CTMU proves the existence of god. You don’t know that for sure. At this point in time, Langan’s work doesn’t even come close to being as important as Kripke’s or Witten’s. The entire physics/philosophical community would agree with that, so your claim of Langan’s work being more important just doesn’t have any weight.”

Actually, I *am* sure of my claims regarding the CTMU. Given that those are in fact true, the CTMU beats the work of Witten and Kripke in terms of importance by far.

“Here are some comments about Saul Kripke’s work from some of the world’s leading philosophers.”

They’re hardly the “world’s leading philosophers” given that they too have come up with nothing as important as Langan’s work.

“Langan’s CTMU doesn’t seem to be changing the state of anything in this world. The world was no different before the CTMU and it probably won’t be any different after.”

Come now; everything real changes the world.

“4) Why would someone not attempt to memorize something so important that he had written on a piece of paper just minutes or seconds before? People have a much easier time remembering what is important to them. If it was so important then it shouldn’t have been too hard to remember. A really good memory doesn’t make one a genius but most geniuses do have extraordinary memories, much better than
average. Read about Euler, Laplace, von Neumann, Pascal, Gauss, Ampere, Poincare, Thomas Young, ect. All some of the greatest geniuses ever, and all with near-photographic memories. If Langan can “memorize pages with ease” like he claimed, he wouldn’t need to work hard at remembering something, especially if it was so important.”

I suspect that the only sources you’ll be able to find for your claims regarding the capacity for memory that those historical figures possessed will be anecdotal. Langan’s memory has been verified thanks to tests like the WAIS. You’re also raising many assumptions. You are assuming that Langan didn’t often come up with such work, and thus cared for it exceptionally, and that the fight that broke out was not time-consuming or extremely distracting. It is also possible that his work was extremely detailed and that he forgot far too many of these details in the brawl to make use of his new idea.

This is too funny. Someones got to be right or wrong and no one will ever conceed. Now i know I’m just some dope from nowhereville PA but does it matter. Language is what seperates us from them… whoever they are and you guys are just arguing language. I can’t speak spanish but it exhists for others to communicate effectively with one another. Does Mr. Langan language exhist? I can’t say it does for me but I can say it does for someone. The only reason I know 1+1=2 is because I was told it does by someone else. I’m only writing this to say “Is it possible?” And if it is I believe Chris has come as close as ever to really accepting the POSSIBILITIES of a God that put things in motion and is minimally invasive with His test subjects. Who cares who gets the credit for the discovery of God. Is it really outside the realm of my IQ. Don’t know that either but I am willing to learn about new and dangerous territories that none of us can even fathom. The old saying take what we KNOW and compare it to what we don’t and we all sound like toddlers arguing with their parents.

“Language is what seperates us from them… whoever they are and you guys are just arguing language.”

If you mean that we are arguing “language” because reality is a language, you are arguably correct, but I presume you are actually claiming that the whole argument is a matter of semantics, which is far from the truth.

“Does Mr. Langan language exhist? I can’t say it does for me but I can say it does for someone. The only reason I know 1+1=2 is because I was told it does by someone else.”

This sounds like logical relativism, which is self-contradictory from Jump Street.