timtyler comments on The elephant in the room, AMA - Less Wrong

22 Post author: calcsam 12 May 2011 02:59PM

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Comment author: XiXiDu 12 May 2011 04:13:46PM *  24 points [-]

You are clearly not capable of thinking rationally with respect to a fundamental belief where evidence makes the question overdetermined. Why should I listen to you?

People who hold obviously incorrect beliefs can still be highly intelligent and productive:

  • Peter Duesberg (a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley) "claimed that AIDS is not caused by HIV, which made him so unpopular that his colleagues and others have — until recently — been ignoring his potentially breakthrough work on the causes of cancer."
  • Francisco J. Ayala who “…has been called the “Renaissance Man of Evolutionary Biology” is a geneticist ordained as a Dominican priest. “His “discoveries have opened up new approaches to the prevention and treatment of diseases that affect hundreds of millions of individuals worldwide…”
  • Francis Collins (geneticist, Human Genome Project) noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project (HGP) and described by the Endocrine Society as “one of the most accomplished scientists of our time” is a evangelical Christian.
  • Georges Lemaître (a Belgian Roman Catholic priest) proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe.
  • Kurt Gödel (logician, mathematician and philosopher) who suffered from paranoia and believed in ghosts. “Gödel, by contrast, had a tendency toward paranoia. He believed in ghosts; he had a morbid dread of being poisoned by refrigerator gases; he refused to go out when certain distinguished mathematicians were in town, apparently out of concern that they might try to kill him.”

There are many more examples. All of them are outliers indeed, and I don't think that calcsam has been able to prove that his achievements and general capability to think clearly in some fields does outweigh the heavy burden of being religious. Yet there is evidence that such people do exist and he offers you the chance to challenge him.

Generally I agree with you, but I also think that calcsam provides a fascinating example of the internal dichotomy of some human minds and a case study that might provide insights to how the arguments employed by Less Wrong fail in some cases.

Comment author: timtyler 12 May 2011 04:43:31PM 12 points [-]

I think these kinds of list should always include Donald E. Knuth.

Comment author: gwern 12 May 2011 05:39:55PM 4 points [-]

Maybe we should make a list on the wiki? eg. I'm tempted to add Aumann, but as pointed out, 'There are many more examples' and XiXiDu made his point with the short list.

Comment author: gwern 13 May 2011 04:02:10PM *  0 points [-]

I made the list at http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Irrationalists

More suggestions welcome. I think I'm going to make a Discussion article on this to get a little more visibility.