Desrtopa comments on Rationality Quotes November 2011 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Jayson_Virissimo 01 November 2011 06:28PM

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Comment author: djcb 01 November 2011 09:48:31PM 16 points [-]

The nurse recorded the time of death, 9:21 P.M. He discovered, oddly, that the clock had halted at that moment —just the sort of mystical phenomenon that appealed to unscientific people. Then an explanation occurred to him. He knew the clock was fragile, because he had repaired it several times, and he decided that the nurse must have stopped it by picking it up to check the time in the dim light.

[ James Gleick - Genius - The work and Life of Richard Feynman; this is a really chilling passage, which describes the moments just after Feynman's wife has passed away, which devastated him. Somehow, this struck me.]

Comment author: Desrtopa 13 January 2013 03:06:12AM 12 points [-]

Alternate explanation: The clock stopped before his wife died, but the nurse recorded 9:21 as his wife's time of death, because she determined the time by checking the clock, not realizing it had already stopped.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 13 January 2013 03:33:25PM 4 points [-]

Things like this always remind me to doubt clever-sounding explanations of phenomena I wouldn't actually have predicted in advance. Obviously, "not supernatural" is a very strong bet - but the specific hypotheses? Those are less obvious.

Comment author: MugaSofer 13 January 2013 03:33:05PM -2 points [-]

According to this comment, he had seen the nurse pick up the clock. So there's that.