orthonormal comments on The Importance of Self-Doubt - Less Wrong

23 Post author: multifoliaterose 19 August 2010 10:47PM

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Comment author: orthonormal 21 August 2010 07:45:40AM 3 points [-]

You should count Bacon, who believed himself– accurately– to be taking the first essential steps toward understanding and mastery of nature for the good of mankind. If you don't count him on the grounds that he wasn't concerned with existential risk, then you'd have to throw out all prophets who didn't claim that their failure would increase existential risk.

Comment author: taw 21 August 2010 08:05:40AM 0 points [-]

Accurately? Bacon doesn't seem to have any special impact on anything, or on existential risks in particular.

Comment author: [deleted] 21 August 2010 08:23:00AM 1 point [-]

Bacon doesn't seem to have any special impact on anything

Man, I hope you don't mean that.

Comment author: orthonormal 21 August 2010 08:19:54AM 1 point [-]

He believed that the scientific method he developed and popularized would improve the world in ways that were previously unimaginable. He was correct, and his life accelerated the progress of the scientific revolution.

The claim may be weaker than a claim to help with existential risk, but it still falls into your reference class more easily than a lot of messiahs do.

Comment author: taw 21 August 2010 08:49:40AM 0 points [-]

This looks like a drastic overinterpretation. He seems like just another random philosopher, he didn't "develop scientific method", empiricism was far older and modern science far more recent than Bacon, and there's little basis for even claiming radically discontinuous "scientific revolution" around Bacon's times.