I feel like a lot of people here are pontificating about something they don't understand. It smells like few people here are mathematicians, and yet they're speaking with reddit levels of hubris, attributing simpletons' logical fallacies to a published astrophysicist. Usually Hacker News is better than this.
I'm myself not a mathematician, but I believe I understand his argument, and I see no fallacies. Everything he's written falls out of assuming power laws govern the pertinent quantities. In the absence of additional information, this seems not just valid but the correct starting assumption.
I hope we all understand the linked website is a casual release for the public. With the reception he's getting here -- the absolute lack of respect for a professor's passion project -- it's no wonder few scientists bother to engage with the public. He's written a formal paper on this: https://academic.oup.com/mnrasl/article/456/1/L59/2589573
A dollar says that his ideas have survived close scrutiny by his colleagues, both mathematicians and astrophysicists. One of them might step in to teach us something, if we were a bit more respectful.
I'm myself not a mathematician, but I believe I understand his argument, and I see no fallacies. Everything he's written falls out of assuming power laws govern the pertinent quantities. In the absence of additional information, this seems not just valid but the correct starting assumption.
I hope we all understand the linked website is a casual release for the public. With the reception he's getting here -- the absolute lack of respect for a professor's passion project -- it's no wonder few scientists bother to engage with the public. He's written a formal paper on this: https://academic.oup.com/mnrasl/article/456/1/L59/2589573 A dollar says that his ideas have survived close scrutiny by his colleagues, both mathematicians and astrophysicists. One of them might step in to teach us something, if we were a bit more respectful.