Bad Idea

Galactic Center Haiku (I)

I was wandering through an American Astronomical Society Conference last year, trying to look at the hundreds of posters people had made to display their research. It didn't take long for me to realize, once again, that it is impossible to read all of them. Most of them had way too much information, because the authors wanted to explain all of their research. I just wanted to find the interesting punchlines, and look at some pretty pictures.

I started thinking, how can I make a poster that gets to the point as succinctly as possible? Of course, the answer was, "Haiku!" You're limited to three lines of five, seven, and five syllables per poem. I knew I could write it, since I leaned it in grade school (along with couplets and limericks), and it doesn't even have to rhyme.

This idea didn't really appear out of nowhere. Haiku was also the preferred means of expression for my fellow astronomers, who wrote haiku to express their frustration while studying for their qualifying exams, or when complaining via e-mail about their collaborators. I wish I had copies of those.

Anyway, here is the poster I made after coming up with the idea. I actually put it up at a Galactic Center workship in Santa Barbara in April 2005.

The Crackpot Diagram

Over coffee the other morning, some of us started talking about the wacky ideas people seem to have: things like thinking the moon landing was a hoax, or the Earth is only 6000 years old, and so on. The things we discussed could be refuted quite soundly, yet people persist in believing these crackpot ideas because they are aligned closer to their personal beliefs than the truth is. As a result, the crackpots have to invent elaborate conspiracies in order to justify their beliefs.

Somehow, we got to ranking which ideas were the most absurd. For instance, is it more believable that the moon landing was faked on a Hollywood sound stage, or that the Earth is 6000 years old? Well, the people who landed on the moon are still alive, whereas people 6000 years old are not. However, we still decided that thinking the Earth was 6000 years old is more absurd, because it requires that all the evidence of fossils, radioactive dating, geologic strata, and pretty much everything astrophysical has been designed to mislead us godless scientists. Now, that is a wild claim.

This discussion inspired the "Crackpot Diagram", a way of ranking ideas that it are simply illogical to hold. I also added a second dimension, the number of people who believe each idea, just to convey my opinion that just because an idea is widespread, it doesn't make it any more reasonable. Of course, I haven't justified any of the placements on the diagram. That makes this diagram a bad idea. And, hey, this blog needs comments.