>>11529063The difference with Mochizuki is that he was already a famous working mathematican before - which is the only reason his uncomprehensible text was taken seriously at all.
Eric got to the level of a classical autistic (and dyslexic and all those things) physics PhD, certainly able to talk about hep-th from the pov at the level as a guy who's just closing his physics PhD, but he then just dropped the field (like many rightfully do) and actually managed to make it as a quant, since he's friends with the guy who early invested in PayPal and Facebook (Thiel).
So Erics story is picked up because he's an autist in the super rich circles, not because he's an autist who wrote notable papers before.
It comes across to me that his ideas may well be worth a look - but as he points out himself in great detail - a one-man-show-theory won't compete with a naturally grown collaborative physics framework that fits onto GR like string theory does. Just probabilistically, it's unlikely that any of his geometric ideas happen to by physicially right.
He's high functioning enough to be able to manage a real job and another guys millions, and thus he recognizes that his story is that of many crancks. There's of course literally hundrets or thousands of disenchanted smart grands which drop out of their PhD's and who have some half-baked "idea" that nobody ever looked at.
Eric only gets some attention because he's a somebody.
Good for him if he seemingly now this year goes fulltime back to broodling over geometric hep theories. I'd like to get wealthy by 55 and then just do pretty phsyics theories till the end of my day, even if it's not phsyically right what I end up with.
His Hopf-Fibration shilling on the Joe Rogan podcast was quite against my own view, but that's more philosophical than anything.
