Around 2018 I got obsessed with slings - I've made a couple from paracord and was practicing almost every day. After about a year I only managed to consistently launch stones in the rough desired direction. Another (COVID) year and got to the level where my spread was about 5 degrees. Systematically hitting a reasonably sized target was still beyond my ability. Plus early symptoms of tennis elbow...
Slinging is hard, requires a lot of dedication and systematic practice. Stil, the feeling when the rock hits a target and "explodes" is worth it.
So, about a century ago. That'd be my estimate as well. And only if are on the "otherworldly genius" level as Ramanujan was.
> Dismissing this author for a lack of affiliation is probably accurate
I'm not really dismissing him just for lack of affiliations. That's just one of several "smells" that point towards the crackpotedness of the whole thing: single author, personal self-promoting website, lack of peer-review, vague non-mainstream-academia language, selling own ideas as generally scientifically accepted ones, and, yeah, lack of affiliations. To me, that's too many strikes to dismiss the whole thing outright.
> to improve the public discourse with engagement with ideas that arrive in it
I would really like to improve the public discourse here. The problem with your proposed approach is that it doesn't account for Brandolini's law. People with overinflated egos can and will generate bullshit faster than actual experts would be able to disprove it.
Am physicist. First of all - this paper was never peer-reviewed. (And I suspect will never be.) The "summary table" looks weird and all over the place: both in levels of abstraction and in cause-effect relationships. The rest of the contents of the paper reek of "non-mainstream unrecognised genius" stuff.
PS. Oh, and author is not affiliated with any actual research institution.
Slinging is hard, requires a lot of dedication and systematic practice. Stil, the feeling when the rock hits a target and "explodes" is worth it.