The other thing that happens is that those who notice something that goes against the orthodox view are dismissed out of hand. As in Alicorn’s point 2, soothsayers are ignored. They often are outsiders, untrained/unconditioned by the accepted view, so their arguments are frequently inadequate.
Nowhere is this more apparent than with the abusively named “Cantor-cranks”. They have noticed something fishy about Georg Cantor’s 3 proofs that the real numbers are uncountable, but because Cantor did such a good job of diverting attention so completely onto the reals, the cranks tend to fall into the same trap. Yet all along the cause of their dislike of Cantor’s proofs lies with his treatment of the natural numbers as a finite quantity.
Generally, the experts dismiss all objections as boring, or as pseudo-maths, and if the crank can argue against one proof, then the “experts” move on to the other proofs, as did Cantor, further reinforcing the original misdirection.
The other thing that happens is that those who notice something that goes against the orthodox view are dismissed out of hand. As in Alicorn’s point 2, soothsayers are ignored. They often are outsiders, untrained/unconditioned by the accepted view, so their arguments are frequently inadequate.
Nowhere is this more apparent than with the abusively named “Cantor-cranks”. They have noticed something fishy about Georg Cantor’s 3 proofs that the real numbers are uncountable, but because Cantor did such a good job of diverting attention so completely onto the reals, the cranks tend to fall into the same trap. Yet all along the cause of their dislike of Cantor’s proofs lies with his treatment of the natural numbers as a finite quantity.
Generally, the experts dismiss all objections as boring, or as pseudo-maths, and if the crank can argue against one proof, then the “experts” move on to the other proofs, as did Cantor, further reinforcing the original misdirection.