Rationality Quotes Thread September 2015

elharo

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.

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.

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

It was a convenient quote, but I admit it overstates its case. A more defensible version would probably sound like "A disproportionate amount of advances in science comes from outsiders to the field".

The three names which pop into my head without going to Google are Schliemann (and Calvert), Wegener, and Sokal :-)

1hairyfigment11y

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.

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Rationality Quotes Thread September 2015

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