Monday, January 15, 2018

#1949: Miles Mathis

Miles Mathis is an artist, poet and writer, and one of the more colorful pseudoscientists – and insane conspiracy theorists – of the whole wide Internet.

Pseudomath
He is probably most famous for his claim that π is actually 4, though with the caveat that it be a “kinematic situation”, which sort of misses some important points about how mathematics works and π is calculated. Mathis also thinks that standard mathematical derivatives are false, and consequently that most of math and science is wrong well, predictive success to the contrary. (“Quantitatively, this may be THE biggest error in all of math and physics, since every single physical equation with π in it must now be thrown out”.) Mathis’s ideas have not been accepted by anyone minimally affected by reason and rationality (there is a good critique here). Part of the reason is that he doesn’t quite seem to grasp how mathematical proofs work, which is a bit of a drawback if you are trying to do one. Nor does he even remotely grasp the use–mention distinction or the distinction between a thing and a representation of that thing, or between a graph and what it can be used to represent. Needless to say, the inability to draw these distinctions is not conducive to doing good mathematics. There’s a good discussion of his work here, and a very courteous refutation here. An example (Mathis’s writings contain long passages like this): “Now let us return to the geometric circle. All the equations of geometry are created by assuming that time is not a factor. You can’t really just ignore time, so what the geometry does is assume that all underlying time intervals are equal. What does that mean, specifically? Well, it must mean that all the lines are understood to have been drawn with the same velocity. We can ignore the velocity since we define it as equivalent. What does that mean? It means that the radius is a velocity itself.” This is incorrect.

Of course, this is just the doorway to the rabbit hole. Since calculus is wrong and the derivatives have been calculated wrong (he shows this primarily by trying to redefine the derivatives), and any physical experiment that relies on them wrong as well, Mathis has developed his own unified field theory, which for the most part is an esoteric model based on extravagant and untestable hypotheses and confusions, but from which he draws some notable conclusions, e.g.:

This means that if the Earth were denser, you would weigh less, not more. You weigh less on the Moon not because it is less dense, or because it has less mass, but because its foundational E/M field is stronger. And its foundational E/M field is stronger because the Moon’s radius is smaller than the Earth’s.”

Or:

This means that the dark matter math is also a type of modified Newtonian dynamics. It is modified in that it takes the definitions and turns them upside down. We could call it a FFAND: a falsified and fudged Newtonian dynamics.”

Conspiracy theories
Mathis’s writings extend beyond math and science, however. Given that he claims to have overturned more or less all of science and mathematics, it is hardly surprising that he thinks scientists are in a conspiracy to suppress the truth and block information (paywalls, for instance, is a measure to hide information).

And from there, it is a short step to adopting virtually any other conspiracy theory you could dream of as well. Mathis has claimed that the Boston Marathon bombing was faked and that the Sandy Hook mass shooting was a “scripted tragedy, and he is both a birther and a 9/11 truther; indeed, according to Mathis the Lincoln assassination was faked as well. Moreover, all the major Internet sites, including NASA’s or those devoted to mainstream physics, are infiltrated by the CIA, and John Lennon is still alive in Canada after faking his own death, whereas Stephen Hawking is not but has been replaced by an impostor. 

As with most of those who subscribe to ranges of conspiracy theories like this, his writings eventually devolves into anti-semitism. Among the people Mathis has accused of being Jewish are Jack Nicklaus, C.S. Lewis, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Adolf Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte and Pierre-Simon de Laplace.

Diagnosis: One of the most hysterically delusional cranks on the whole of Internet. And as with so many promoters of garbled, incoherent insanity, Mathis actually enjoys a number of followers ready to display anger, lack of comprehension and general idiocy in comment sections across the web. He must nevertheless be counted among the Internet’s curious splashes of color rather than as a serious threat to anything whatsoever.


Hat-tip: Rationalwiki (Mathis does not seem to like his rationalwiki article or hesitate to accuse its editors of being in part of a conspiracy to suppress him and his insights).

10 comments:

  1. Wow! I tried to read his take on Calculus. This is so mindbogginly stupid. I studied Maths and my brain is just trying to catch up on what this crank actually tries to tell. Thanks for pointing me to this guy, thiw will be fun!

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  2. Outrageous! I suppose that this wanker will next try to convince us that you actually get paid to crank out hit pieces on anyone who dares to critique or even question our current cultural milieu. We all know it's dangerous to question authority. Thank you for the heads up! I will be sure to steer clear of anyone questioning the official narrative from now on. You sure are a swell guy, I hope you get a raise AND a promotion!

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  3. You spooks are ssoo transparent ..that's not even him, as any fool who knows anything can see. Your own ham handed tricks are outing you:) ..if you don't want people reading him, then stop slandering him like 6 year olds

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  4. Let’s start with the fact that your picture is NOT the Miles Mathis you are referring to. You could easily go to Miles W Mathis’ site and grab a real pic; he has them posted.
    This may be a small point, but there is clearly a reason you purposely post a picture of someone who looks the part of what you claim Mathis to be.
    Your whole act is transparent, intellectually lazy and disingenuous, and more and more people are tuning you out - hence your frantic upping of the smear ante.

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    1. You may be right about the picture; it may be a fan rather than the guy himself.

      As for laziness: Look, this kooks don't deserve the effort it is to actually engage with their mad ramblings and nonsense in any substantial way - kudos to those who do (follow the links to people with genuine expertise who have actually bothered), though I fear that doing so gives crackpots like Mathis a sheen of legitimacy they definitely don't deserve. The point of these entries here is rather just to expose the loons to people who might encounter these loons but don't necessarily know a lot about the relevant topics, and guide them to sources that can be used to explain why these lunatic ideas are lunatic (that's what the links are for).

      "more and more people are tuning you out" ... say, what do you think this blog is? I don't think there has ever been "more and more people" tuning either in or out here. This isn't Neil Degrasse Tyson's blog, you know.

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  5. Ok so you guys who run this site are obviously gatekeepers/Disinfo for the system. This is not written to you. This is for those who have read some of Miles conspiracy papers and have found truth in them. I agree there is truth there in most of those papers. However what you do not know is that Miles is a plagiarist and is adding disinfo to many of his papers. His science theories are basically a limited hangout to the complete nonsense of modern mainstream science. I am thinking his job is to lure people in with a lot of conspiracy truth then hold them into accepting most of the major Science lies.

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    1. mgordan

      very interesting comments on matthis. I find he says a lot of very good stuff, mixed in with some out-on-twig stuff (eg Princess Diana still alive)

      But your point on science is very interesting.

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  6. Thanks for this. I looked him up, and Mathis is crazier than a shithouse rat. Bless his heart.

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  7. Guess some folks are getting nervous 8) Miles,
    using nothing but some common sense and critical thinking has been DEVASTATING the "official narratives" the deep state likes to push on the serfs. When you start to see holes in such sacred as the Lincoln "assassination" and Salem Witch "trials" the serfs might start
    to stop obeying and even paying their taxes...8)

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  8. Ha Ha! I really enjoyed reading this entry! Sounds like this dude is WAAAAAAY "out there"! holy shit... the mind boggles at how far the delusion pit goes...

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