PhilGoetz comments on Rationality Quotes September 2011 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: dvasya 02 September 2011 07:38AM

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Comment author: cwillu 05 September 2011 01:43:36AM *  11 points [-]

[...] Often I find that the best way to come up with new results is to find someone who's saying something that seems clearly, manifestly wrong to me, and then try to think of counterarguments. Wrong people provide a fertile source of research ideas.

-- Scott Aaronson, Quantum Computing Since Democritus (http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec14.html)

Comment author: PhilGoetz 10 September 2011 03:37:36PM 2 points [-]

It's even more useful to you when they turn out to be right. (As happened to me with sailing upwind faster than the wind, and with Peter deBlanc's 2007 theorem about unbounded utility functions.)