[SEQ RERUN] Einstein's Arrogance

MinibearRex

Today's post, Einstein's Arrogance was originally published on 25 September 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Albert Einstein, when asked what he would do if an experiment disproved his theory of general relativity, responded with "I would feel sorry for [the experimenter]. The theory is correct." While this may sound like arrogance, Einstein doesn't look nearly as bad from a Bayesian perspective. In order to even consider the hypothesis of general relativity in the first place, he would have needed a large amount of Bayesian evidence.

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Today's post, Einstein's Arrogance was originally published on 25 September 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Albert Einstein, when asked what he would do if an experiment disproved his theory of general relativity, responded with "I would feel sorry for [the experimenter]. The theory is correct." While this may sound like arrogance, Einstein doesn't look nearly as bad from a Bayesian perspective. In order to even consider the hypothesis of general relativity in the first place, he would have needed a large amount of Bayesian evidence.

some people wanted Venus or Mercury to orbit the sun.

Something other than "sun" meant here I assume? Or did you mean "just Venus and Mercury"?

Ok. I can't find any sources that just wanted Venus and not Venus and Mercury. So my earlier claim may be incorrect. I'll try to dig through this a bit more and see what turns up.

4JoshuaZ15y

No. This is correct. Some people wanted Venus to orbit the sun with the sun and other planets orbiting the Earth. Others wanted the same arrangement for Mercury but not Venus. Others wanted it for both Venus and Mercury (this was much more common than just a single one). There were a lot of hybrid models floating around. This piece gives a good summary of just how much stuff was floating around and doesn't even bring up some of the more obscure other hypotheses that were also batted around. (There are some minor issues with that piece. I think he's slightly too unfair to Kuhn but this is a side point.) ETA: Actually, thinking about this more this is probably slightly wrong: I don't see why anyone would have wanted just Mercury to be in solar orbit. Just Venus makes sense (due to the phases), but there's no reason anyone would have said just Mercury, so I'm probably remembering incorrectly and the two versions were Venus and Mercury together or just Venus.Will try to find sources and track this down.

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