lukeprog comments on A brief history of ethically concerned scientists - Less Wrong

68 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 09 February 2013 05:50AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (150)

Sort By: Best

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: lukeprog 10 February 2013 04:10:19AM 3 points [-]

Maybe.

I'm not an expert on the history of science, but it seems to me like:

Lots of psychology could have been done decades or maybe a century earlier, but nobody bothered until the mid-20th century.
If Einstein hadn't figured out General Relativity, it might have been another 15-25 years before somebody else figured it out.
On the other hand, things like computers and Bayes nets and the structure of DNA wouldn't have taken much longer to discover if their actual discoverers hadn't been on the case for whatever reason.