Reflecting back on the Joy Cristian controversy, I think one lesson jumps up front and center:
Always check the math first.
When Joy first uploaded his claims on the archive, there was flurry of preprint activities: everyone explaining why Joy cannot be right, and Joy responding that they do not understand the geometric algebra and dismissing the counterclaims.
Now for me I have the advantage of working in both worlds: academia and industry. and in industry my job is to write software programs. I think I am an above average coder and seeing what Joy claims my first instinct was:
this is interesting, if correct I can build a software program to test the claim (which I actually did later).
But to code it properly, I need to understand the math to build a correct implementation. So I started to follow Joy's argument mathematically. To my surprise I discovered that the math is bogus and I wrote a preprint showing where and how it fails.
But the larger lesson is why nobody else in foundations double checked the math. The initial reaction was: Joy must be wrong because it contradicts my intuition/formalism in which I operate.
But this is a bad approach. Who say your interpretation is the correct one? A Bohmian will never convince a MWI supporter he is right. Also a MWI supporter will never convince a Copenhagen person he is right and they are wrong.
Math on the other hand is clearcut. If you discover a math contradiction then the argument dies right then and there. No more "I am right, no I am right" arguments.
Checking the math consistency is task zero.
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