DCrowe comments on Einstein's Arrogance - Less Wrong

30 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 25 September 2007 01:29AM

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Comment author: DCrowe 29 July 2011 09:44:14PM 3 points [-]

I guess a defense of old Albert would go something like this; the route he took to establish his theory didn't rely upon empirical evidence of the sort Eddington was trying to discover but rather was an elegant way to explain certain unusual properties of light and energy which, once he had formulated his theory, it seemed obvious to him could not be explained any other way. The kind of empirical validation which Eddington was carrying out was a laudable and necessary step in the process of theory confirmation/falstification but nevertheless it is entirely reasonable for Einstein to believe that no such confirmation was necessary as, relative to the theoretical status quo prior to the theory of relativity, the theory of relativity had vastly greater explanatory power and so any theory which might supplant it would have to incorporate elements of the theory, or postulates very similar to the theory, to explain the same things. Einstein had a sense of humour and was, I take it, simply relaying the idea that he thought it much more likely that any negative result from Eddington's expedition would turn out to be due to poor expedition data rather than a problem with the theory; I don't think he was every claiming (non-sensical) 100% certainty. The man may have been a genius, but he wasn't an idiot.