Will_Pearson comments on Crisis of Faith - Less Wrong

57 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 October 2008 10:08PM

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Comment author: Will_Pearson 12 October 2008 10:19:04AM 0 points [-]

Phil Goetz, who I was replying to, was saying that type of thought should be unnecessary, if you don't hang on to your ideas tightly.

Not hanging on to ideas tightly is great for engineers and experimental scientists. It doesn't matter to a chemist if MWI or bohm is right. He can use either, switching back or forth from the view points as he sees fit.

For a theoretical quantum physicist, he has to have some way of determining at which face of the knowledge mine to work, he has to pick one or the other. If it is not a strong reason then he might split his work and get less far with either.

For this sort of person it makes sense to pick one direction and run with it, getting invested in it etc. At least until he comes across reasons that maybe he should take the opposite direction or neither direction, then the crisis of faith might be needed.