List of compartmentalized people (who both win and fail at truth-seeking)

gwern

Following up on an impromptu list XiXiDu made of famous recent scientists & thinkers who also held quite odd beliefs, I've created a wiki article with that list & a few other people.

This Discussion is posted for feedback on a few points:

Is this a good idea in the first place? I feel vaguely uneasy, like it could be taken as a 'hit list' or a list of inviolable norms.
What's a better name? 'Irrationalists' is a bad name but the only half-way self-explanatory one I could think of at the moment.
Who's missing? There are currently only 8 people on the list right now.
Is it reasonable to limit the list temporally only to people who lived in the 20th century & later, and so had access to all the data and philosophy done then that we take for granted?
I added in a few 'See Alsos' that I could think of; are there more germane wiki articles? Especially LW articles? (I know Aumann in particular has been discussed occasionally by Eliezer - worth linking directly?)

Following up on an impromptu list XiXiDu made of famous recent scientists & thinkers who also held quite odd beliefs, I've created a wiki article with that list & a few other people.

This Discussion is posted for feedback on a few points:

Is this a good idea in the first place? I feel vaguely uneasy, like it could be taken as a 'hit list' or a list of inviolable norms.
What's a better name? 'Irrationalists' is a bad name but the only half-way self-explanatory one I could think of at the moment.
Who's missing? There are currently only 8 people on the list right now.
Is it reasonable to limit the list temporally only to people who lived in the 20th century & later, and so had access to all the data and philosophy done then that we take for granted?
I added in a few 'See Alsos' that I could think of; are there more germane wiki articles? Especially LW articles? (I know Aumann in particular has been discussed occasionally by Eliezer - worth linking directly?)

The case of Kurt Gödel (already on the list) is really unfortunate — he starved himself to death apparently out of fear of being poisoned — but I think many folks would classify it as one of mental illness rather than merely "odd beliefs". Mixing mental illness in with odd beliefs held by otherwise mentally healthy people seems problematic. (The other example I'm thinking of here, not currently on your list, is John Nash.)

On the other hand, consider Isaac Newton — groundbreaking scientist and mathematician ... who wrote more pages of occult Biblical interpretation than he ever did of physics or math. There's supposition by some historians that he was mentally ill as well, of course.

EDIT: After seeing Vladimir_M's comment, I agree: This list is a bad idea. Please put it away or keep it on your own site.

Remember that Newton lived before Darwin. The Bible was the history of the world and nature was obviously the work of an intelligent designer. It may be supposed that Newton's occult investigations were performed rationally, given those premises.

4Desrtopa15y

Newton experimented extensively with alchemy. If he wasn't already mentally unstable, he may have been driven mad by prolonged mercury exposure.

-14

List of compartmentalized people (who both win and fail at truth-seeking)

-14

-14

-14

List of compartmentalized people (who both win and fail at truth-seeking)

-14

-14