gwern comments on Rationality Quotes: October 2009 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 October 2009 04:06PM

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Comment author: gwern 31 October 2009 03:08:13AM *  3 points [-]

It's also worth noting that when you do Galileo's Tower of Pisa experiment, the heavier object does land first. (You think you release them at the same time, but you don't - your muscles let the heavier object go first.)

I find sometimes we here denigrate our distant predecessors too much; I have heard well-educated people call the Greeks fools for rejecting heliocentrism, despite the fact that the Greeks had powerful arguments against heliocentrism like the lack of stellar parallax, or we mock them for the 5 elements, despite the incredible feat of devising atomism just by considering basic logical paradoxes caused by alternative ontologies.

Comment author: wedrifid 31 October 2009 03:16:59AM 0 points [-]

You think you release them at the same time, but you don't.

And even if you do, there is air to consider.