Lubos Motl

Yes, it is a false dichotomy, but the point is that it is one that follows directly from your argument: all your 'just like' comparisons apply as well to human biology as they do to the study of the mind, and if a thing studying itself is hopelessly compromised by subjectivity, then, by your argument, this must be so for human biology.

History is another example of human self-study that is not rendered impossible by subjectivity. In this case, there is a term, 'whig history', for one form in which the investigator's bias is applied to his analysis of past events. The fact that this term exists, and that the phenomenon it labels can be identified and corrected for, shows that it is possible to work around the subjectivity of self-study.

As for quantum mechanics, it seems there is indeed a good deal of subjectivity, at least in the Copenhagen interpretation. By your argument, that should have destroyed physics as an objective science, yet physics has been extraordinarily fruitful since the discovery of QM. Here is an example of Luboš Motl dealing, in his characteristic style, with subjectivity, and, in fact, discussing the topic "Why subjective quantum mechanics allows objective science."

https://motls.blogspot.com/2012/11/why-subjective-quantum-mechanics-allows.html

It is somewhat ironic that all your arguments for the impossibility of understanding the mind, on account of a lack of objectivity, are themselves subjective.

You are, of course, free to hold the opinion that…

I agree with the grandparent post, because I think it's misleading to lump all of mathematics together. I'm very bad at mental calculations and basic arithmetic, and I couldn't memorize integration formulas if my life depended on it, so I've never had very high grades in math, at least until I hit university. Yet I have a relatively easy time picking up the theory behind SAT solvers, Fourier transforms, or solving complex integrals.

I think some people are better at concrete things like geometry or arithmetic, some people are better at logic, some people are good with operators and algebra... but one does not imply the others, and engineers may have an above-average capability for abstraction or logic that does not translate to much higher results in a high-school level exam.

The study here is said to have studied people "from grade school to college and beyond", so I suspect the "math ability" they tested really has little to do with the math ability required for science and engineering.

Here's another (slightly caustic) blog post which appears to be about the same study:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/07/janet-hyde-boys-girls-in-math-not.html

It is enough to read a brief review in Science to see that the headlines don't follow from the paper at all. The review explains the main reason of the results: they have detected no signal because the tests were too simple. They didn't really test "g" or the ability to think mathematically but rather attainment.

This blog mentions some poll that was apparently made among google employees. But link to picture is broken :/

http://motls.blogspot.si/2017/08/james-damore-deserves-1-million-in.html

> As Damore reminded us, most of the people who agree with him only dare to agree privately.

> What do they answer when their opinions are measured through a poll run on Google-plus – which the SJW officials in charge could still hypothetically access? Some other Google employees gave us the following pie chart:

> 14% strongly agree, 22% almost agree with Damore's letter. That's some 36% if you combine it – over 20,000 employees of Google. If you add the 13% of neutral folks, you will get almost 49%, a slightly greater percentage than 48.5% of those who almost disagree or strongly disagree. Clearly, even if the participants of the poll face some risks that their vote could be used against them, the supporters of Damore's view are at least comparable in size to the opponents.

And linked from that, Lubos Motl's even less charitable take:

http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/09/bousso-et-al-catastrophe-imminent-time.html

Much like most other doomsday prophets and other kinds of crackpots, the authors are completely unable to understand the point and the arguments that they're assuming something fundamentally wrong in their very first axioms - and that's why everything they write down has to end up being a complete nonsense.

Instead, they obviously expect a long sequence of follow-up papers that will discuss whether the Universe will cease to exist in 5.31 or 5.32 billion years and worship the amazing prophets, Bousso et al., who have predicted this amazing doomsday. This is also clear from a staged dialogue included in the paper where a semi-dumb person asks various questions about the doomsday that the authors would clearly like to be discussed in other people's papers.

I can personally attest to the truth of Scott's characterization of Lubos Motl's personality. Lubos once publicly called me a "category 5 loon" [1] for something I said in a presentation on quantum mechanics [2]. What he didn't seem to realize was that the thing he was attacking me for was presented as a straw man. There's a lengthy introduction where I said, "The thing I am about to tell you is clearly false, but it seems to follow logically from the things they tell you in quantum mechanics 101. The trick is to figure out where the flaw in the reasoning lies." (And BTW, I can still fool card-carrying physicists with this puzzle even today.)

AFAIK Lubos has never apologized (not that I ever really gave a lot of weight to his opinion).

[1] https://motls.blogspot.com/2012/10/evading-quantum-mechanics-again.html

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc

There is more to it - the number -1/12 actually pops up in physics when doing something awfully similar to 1+2+3...

This may be useful:
https://motls.blogspot.ca/2014/01/sum-of-integers-and-oversold-common.html

"
The real problem is that the definition of the sum involving the limit of partial sums – limits that way too often "diverge" or "refuse to exist" – isn't the only definition or the best definition or the most natural definition that may be connected to the sum. There exist better definitions of the infinite sum – numerous definitions that turn out to be more natural in physics applications – and they generally produce the result −1/12−1/12. It is no trick or sleight-of-hand. The value −1/12−1/12 is really the right one and the rightness may be experimentally verified (using the Casimir effect).
"