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enfascination comments on Seeking examples of people smarter than me who got hung up - Less Wrong
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Hi, I wrote the post. I want to be good at being wrong, I want to be excellent at it. I aspire to develop habits of thought that will protect me and my peers from nursing too gently the need to be right. I thought I might learn something from the ugliest cases.
What happens to even the greatest minds that causes them to get attached to their theories? I don't know, but your examples will help me find out. A history of baggage? A reputation to protect? Mere age? Pure guts? I agree with pragmatist that Einstein's concerns about QM aren't a great example of the prompt. Hoyle, on the other hand, is a great example --- he resisted the Big Bang to his death --- for decades after it had become the most plausible model.
Each of the bulleted examples up top was a great mind with too much emotional baggage to keep from being left behind by science. I don't want it to happen to me, and generally I want to cultivate in scientific discourse a tone that makes it safe for even the most agitated reasoner to bow out with grace. Thanks for your input and for your leads.
Not 'less' wrong? I'm not even sure from reading the rest of your comment whether this is a typo or whether you intended something I didn't understand.
Sorry if I wasn't clear. I want to be good at admitting that I was in error, and to collect cases of great thinkers who failed to do that. So yes, I want to be less wrong. Admitting one's errors is a tool in the less wrong toolbox. We like to think we're good at it, that its easy, that we're detached, but I've seen that being content with my level of self-criticality creates complacency and fosters lapses. These examples demonstrate it.
On the subject of admitting one's errors, I think DanArmak is right that Newton doesn't belong on the list if his opinions of alchemy were representative of the time. To replace him, two others from my list of leads: Ernst Haeckel on Lemuria and Jagadish Chandra Bose on sensation/perception in plants and inorganic compounds.
Why do you care which scientific theories are right?
This post is less about The Truth that and more about science as a personal endeavor, as something you do on yourself to be a better thinker, or not.
But what is it that you want to be better at thinking about?