I knew a man in his 40s that believed monks could levitate and stop bullet with their mind. He didn’t believe in washing and lived free in his brother’s empty appartment, and living on part of his dad’s fortune.
He looked totally “normal”, educated and comfortable financially, but if you got close to him or had him to talk for more than a couple minutes… oof!!
Just get your mind to buy you a bullet proof bet. Simple.
I had a colleague once. Terrific guy. He was funny, professional and generally pleasant to be around.
One day I told him I watched Walking with Dinosaurs. He answered, with a deadpan stare, that dinosaur bones were placed in the earth by God to test our faith 😕
I had a highschool school biology teacher who, despite being very thorough and professional in teaching it, didn’t believe in evolution. Turned out he had a few other mistaken beliefs, like the ones about me being attentive in class and studious outside it.
I used to work with a guy who moonlighted as a Methodist minister. He was mostly a totally normal, nice, funny guy. But every once in a while he would say some absolutely bonkers shit.
He casually asked me, “where do you think the government is hiding the nephalim bones?”
This shows that educated and intelligent are two entirely separate things, and don’t always come together.
Not sure about Malaysia, but in a lot of countries once you get tenure you can just start saying crazy shit, especially when it’s completely unrelated to your area of expertise…
Dr Solehah, an Arabic language and linguistics scholar,
Especially with language, it’s pretty easy to have a very very narrow range of education. Loads of people move to another country and then become “experts” on their native language.
Among the controversial historical assertions attributed to Dr Solehah are claims that ancient Malays could fly and had taught the Chinese flying kung fu, as well as claims that ancient Romans learnt shipbuilding techniques from the Malay world, according to NST.
More recently, Solehah suggested that ancient Kedah’s rich iron deposits may have been linked to a meteor shower or extraterrestrial impact.
Classic academic. Absolutely dumb as bricks on anything outside their lane, but never lacking confidence.
Fringe theories are important for the health of established narratives. It pushes against what we assume to know and what we actually know. Anyone who cannot tolerate such theories is a close minded bigot. Let the facts show that they are wrong. The pursuit of knowledge is not about slamming doors but opening them and having a look around.
It’s not necessary that ever possible opinion, no matter how unfounded, is represented in academia. That just fucks the signal/noise ratio even further. If that’s all you want, you could replace a professor with a poorly trained LLM and not know the difference.
But a hypothesis isn’t just something someone has pulled out of their ass: it’s an interpretation of facts.
And as a long-time martial arts practicioner (including one of the internal arts) I can confidently assert that trained martial artists can do some surprising things, but flying isn’t one of them. The ancient martial artists put out a lot of woo-woo to obscure their real teaching and skills. It’s never wise do disclose your full capabilities and limitations.
A seemingly magic phenomenon I’ve personally experienced is getting taken down with minimal application of force. In the middle of fighting, the person winds up on the floor and wonders how they got there. It’s like slipping on ice. But that’s the result of astute application of physics, not magic. I’ve been taught the technique. If you know where to nudge, someone’s polar moments of inertia will do most of the work for you.
And, in less controlled situations, you can also simply smack them in the face.
Malaysian academic Dr Solehah Yaacob, who drew public scrutiny over claims that ancient Malays could fly
There’s a difference between dissenting opinions and batshit insane ideas.
This theory has surely been proven as bullshit, though. It’s not good to tolerate every opinion, no matter how outright wrong it is.
It’s not harmful. It’s not asserting genetic superiority. Leave it to be. None of us were alive back then and flying doesn’t leave evidence.
It is harmful and it is literally asserting genetic superiority? Its not “all people could fly,” it is “ancient MALAY people could fly.”
While I agree that being able to openly discuss such a topic is wholly fine, asserting it to be true is problematic for a professor who people look towards as beacons of knowledge, for the good and bad that heings. But it is also harmful in that letting crazy theories roam and be treated as just as valid as anything else, is actually a HUGE reason the US is in the state it currently is in. Allowing kisinformation to flow and only pushing back against people pushing back, lets ANY misinformation flow. The giants that still walk among us, the flat earthers, etc, they all exist in a state that is literally dismantling education and sowing seeds for fascism to rise and just generally acting as a direct pipeline to those extremists.
It says they taught it to the Chinese for flying kung fu. That’s not about genetic superiority.
I would argue the opposite. By censoring or pruning the established narrative to a single “factual” sequence, you give the most power to fascism. The freedom of ideas, even if incorrect, is essential to freedom but also to critical thinking. When we have a strong “factual” narrative with no other fringe theories allowed, it does not exercise the critical thinking skills of the population.
If she was exercising any level of critical thinking she would realize how insane her ideas are.
I’d argue spreading complete bullshit is always harmful. And if scientifically proven a bullshit (and this was not her only horribly wrong claim), she should not be kept in an academic position. If she’s not academic and therefore in position of authority, then let her believe whatever she wants - I agree with you on this condition.
The problem is that science cannot prove a negative. They can only produce evidence that, to the best of their knowledge, it appears that people weren’t flying, but there will always be additional questions at every level. Soon enough the research will run out of answers.
I.E. “Well, do you have records of every region of Malaysia during that time? What about every family? Maybe it was passed down in just one lineage. Can you show me the evidence you collected on every single Malay? Maybe it was just one person.”
When dealing with people making obscene claims, the only sensible way forward is to require them to produce evidence of their claims or get off the proverbial stage.
Nothing is really proven in history. Story is right there in the name. Now there is overwhelming evidence for certain stories over others. And I agree the university is free to terminate researchers that don’t align with the desired messages of their donors. Academics do not need to be in consensus - and in fact that’s an unhealthy state for them to be in.
Extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence. That lacking, it’s just bullshit.
