I get emails from crazy people

Working on for scienceblogs.com, I would say that I receive more interesting emails than the average person. Most of these emails are legitimate such as offers to send me books to read, and those are always appreciated. Some of the emails quote scripture and say that I am going to burn in hell. I would have to say that I appreciate those as well; I rather doubt the people would send them if they realized how much they put a smile on my face.

Well, here is one for the crazy record books. Because this email is truly deserving of ridicule, I will interject. from time to time. To wit:

Greetings Jake,

Considering your involvement with science, the following Press Release may be of interest to you.

As an astute person, you probably would agree that for a long while humans -- especially the scientists -- had been claiming that they wanted to solve all the mysteries of physical existence. They have also repeatedly indicated that they wanted to understand the causes of human behavior.

You may have also expressed similar sentiments, even if only to yourself.

So far, so good.

But would you really want to obtain all this knowledge, were it available? Would you really want to learn the physical truth of everything, including that of why humans think and behave as they do?

Yes, and yes.

The test of whether you would, or not, can be assessed by the following announcement that the knowledge-of-all is available in a new book, 'Revelations of a Human Space Navigator', by Victor Senchenko.

Holy crap. And here I thought that my impending two decades of graduate education were for some useful purpose. How was I supposed to know that all information could be revealed in a single book?

Quick as a flash, the level of your disbelief has just probably risen into stratosphere.

That's because:
A. You may presume that humans already know nearly everything there is to know. After all, look at all they have achieved.
B. You may presume that such knowledge is unattainable, so that the idea of obtaining such knowledge is preposterous.
C. Perhaps, despite not having examined the book for yourself, you can't believe that a single person, especially one you've never heard of, could possibly provide such knowledge out of the blue. It has to be some hoax.
D. Many other variations of those above, accompanied by expletives.

A. No. B. No. C. Yes. D. Fuck, yes.

Listen here, Mr. Senchenko. I am onto your sneaky rhetorical tricks. You are going to call me on my incredulity and play honest be fessing up to the idea that no one can possess such information to make it sound like you are not a total whack-job. Then you'll start by making me doubt the validity of my own knowledge.

These, of course, are natural human reactions. Reactions to dismiss outright a claim without having it first examined. Such reactions are understandable. They occur because current humans do not know who and what they are.

Actually they occur because people have experience with revival preachers, used-car salesman, politicians, confidence men, and other crooks. You are playing the counter-intuitive equals true card. You do realize that the statement, "All your beliefs are false because they make sense," negates the totality of human knowledge including yours, don't you?

They don't know what? Is this some stupid joke? But wait a second...consider the following realities that currently apply to human knowledge, which you may object to:

1. The very basics of most current human knowledge are flawed, because current science of physics and chemistry were founded on erroneous presumptions. Oh, the atoms exist, alright, but what these atoms are made of, and their fundamental structures and behaviors, are quite different to what they are currently presumed to be. This can easily be proven. For instance:

Were an electron to be a "negative" while a proton a "positive" -- as current science upholds -- then the negative electrons and positive protons would instantly unite, because opposites attract. Similarly, electrons, as "negatives", would disperse, as similar negatives would repel each other. So how then do they remain together, without either uniting or dispersing?
This is just a single example of all the flaws in current sciences.

What you are describing is the Bohr model of the atom with little electrons in orbits around a central positively-charged nucleus. Most of learned in early high school that the Bohr model is limited in a number of ways, one of which you point out. The problem is solved by the notion of wave-particle duality applied to electrons. More fundamentally, the laws of classical physics do not apply at the level of the electron.

These are small points, however. The more important philosophical point is that a scientific model is useful only insofar as in makes predictions. You have the system backwards. We do not make assumptions and derive out models from those assumptions. We make experimental observations and form out models to fit the observations. Then we make predictions and go out and test them. Good science goes regularly to the well of reality.

2. The reason that the knowledge-of-all is still unknown by humans is because humans still do not know exactly who and what they are. Because humans do not know who and what they are, they misunderstand themselves and everything they do; the consequences of which is their current environmental plight, resulting from what they had been doing to each other and to this planet. This situation is very real: already more advanced that it is realized, making it very threatening to the extension of human survival as a species.

Hold on there, Captain Vague. Why even make a point when we can allude to things?

3. Because current humans misunderstand themselves from not knowing who and what they are, they fail to obtain the knowledge-of-all -- knowledge that has no connections to any spirituality, aliens, or any other human devised mumbo-jumbo -- knowledge that provides:

-- PROOF FOR THE NON-EXISTENCE OF GOD (yes, that is correct),
and reveals:
-- WHO AND WHAT HUMANS ACTUALLY ARE.

Well, now you have intrigued me. You doubt the existence of God, which is fine. So do I. On the other hand, how do I just know that you are going to try and substitute your newer mumbo-jumbo for previously debunked mumbo-jumbo? Listen, if this book involves a trade between your private quackery and the historical inheritance of quackery, you can forget it. That dog won't hunt.

The only problem is that to acquire this knowledge requires courage and fearlessness of inquisitive individuals. Courage and fearlessness to overcome their prejudices and self-opinions towards knowledge currently unknown to them: knowledge that is bound to shatter their current notions and beliefs, be those of science or religion. Courage and fearlessness to examine and assess -- without fear or favor -- the 'Revelations of a Human Space Navigator'.

I can feel my penis growing with your homage to my courage and fearlessness. Your appeals to my manhood or my desire to feel part of an intelligent elect are not going to work.

Now then, as an astute person, would you still want to obtain all this knowledge? If you do, it is availably. If you don't, it shall still remain available, for it is not going away. For as long as humans exist.

In defending the uniqueness and originality of these revelations, the author issues a challenge to Any and Every person on the planet who purchases this book: were that person to provide the author with a physical proof that his revelations had already existed at any period of the Human Age, (as knowledge not derived or sourced from this book), then the author, himself, will refund that person the full purchase price of the book.

I got a better deal. How about I don't buy your book in the first place and save on postage?

Furthermore, the author challenges any human -- be it any professor of physics or chemistry, any professional psychiatrist, any academic or any student, or any human at all -- to examine these revelations and repudiate them by means of their current knowledge. The reason that none shall do so is because this cannot be done. (Emphasis mine.)

No, actually the reason that "none shall do so" is because the doctors and professors are too busy with the pressing problems of disease, poverty, war, violence, hunger, and death to debunk the strange theories of quacks and mystics pretending to legitimate scholarship.

For additional information on the news that is the subject of this release, please visit http://www.victorsenchenko.com

Media Contact:
VictorSenchenko.com Media Team,
victorsenchenko.mediateam@victorsenchenko.com

1) This guy has a media team? There are multiple people working day and night to publicize this nonsense.

2) I will quote you Billy Madison: "Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."

The book has a website that you may feel free to peruse if you would like to waste time at work.

I was amused by this particular comment:

"Is your book not good enough to have been published by a reputable book publisher?"

Basically, what can be said is that publishers are humans. As humans, most of them imagine themselves as being prudent, knowledgeable and very intelligent, insisting that they are more than capable of assessing any work presented to them from merely two or three sample chapters when considering a publishing proposal. When informed that it is impossible to evaluate a unique work, such as mine, without examining the book in its entirety, publishers either send a rejection, or, as with Prometheus Books, become elusive.

...

Furthermore, publishers are in business to make financial profits. Understandably, this represents a substantial outlay for marketing and promotion for every book a publisher produces. This causes them to make choices based on assured sales rather that promoting new notions that are unknown to humans. What chance has physical truth when an assured dollar has to be made?

The recourse of all nuts is to say that their ideas are too good to be published by the money-grubbing publishing industry.

I'm sorry, Mr. Senchenko. The position of mystic cult in this country is already being more than adequately filled by the Scientologists. You are just going to have to find so other country whose sensibilities you can continue to assault with your presence.