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satt comments on Rationality Quotes April 2013 - Less Wrong
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― David Lamb & Susan M. Easton, Multiple Discovery: The pattern of scientific progress, pp. 100-101
Columbus's "genius" was using the largest estimate for the size of Eurasia and the smallest estimate for the size of the world to make the numbers say what he wanted them to. As normally happens with that sort of thing, he was dead wrong. But he got lucky and it turned out there was another continent there.
Wait... he did that on purpose?
Yes, actually. He believed the true dimensions of the Earth would conform to his interpretation of a particular Bible verse (thwo-thirds of the earth should be land, and one-third water, so the Ocean had to be smaller than believed) and fudged the numbers to fit.
Ah, OK. I had taken DanielLC to be implying that he had fudged the numbers in order to convince the Spanish queen to fund him.
Exactly. In fact, it was well known at the time that the Earth is round, and most educated people even knew the approximate size (which was calculated by Eratosthenes in the third century BCE). Columbus, on the other hand, used a much less accurate figure, which was off by a factor of 2.
The popular myth that Columbus was right and his contemporaries were wrong is the exact opposite of the truth.
Perhaps Columbus's "genius" was simply to take action. I've noticed this in executives and higher-ranking military officers I've met-- they get a quick view of the possibilities, then they make a decision and execute it. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but the success rate is a lot better than for people who never take action at all.
Executives and higher ranking military officers also happen to have the power to enforce their decisions. Making decisions and acting on them can be possible without that power but the political skill required is far greater, the rewards lower, the risks of failure greater and the risks of success non-negligible.
This is how Scott Sumner describes his own work in macroeconomics and NGDP targetting. Others see it as radical and innovative, he thinks he is just taking the standard theories seriously.