hairyfigment comments on Rationality Quotes Thread September 2015 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: elharo 02 September 2015 09:25AM

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

Comments (482)

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

Comment author: gjm 17 September 2015 08:57:44AM 6 points [-]

That sounds clever, but is it actually anywhere near true?

I went to the Wikipedia "timeline of science" page and sampled a bunch of 20th-century advances. Maybe about 10. Not one of them had anything to do with anyone being forced to change fields.

I have no idea who Peter Borden is (nor for that matter any idea whether he actually said it: "Most quotations on the internet are made up" -- Abraham Lincoln) but I would at this point suspect him of being too ready to believe things merely because they sound good.

Comment author: hairyfigment 17 September 2015 09:27:17AM 1 point [-]

I don't think it's remotely true. Only Newton comes to mind as a possible example, and only if we accept the claim that he wouldn't have written so much about physics if he could have published his critique of the divinity of Jesus.