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DanielLC comments on Rationality Quotes April 2013 - Less Wrong
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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.