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The Risk of Discovery

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Risk of Discovery

#241

Post by adrienne »

_xhok wrote: post #67
1337p337 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, PG presents them as different bets, one of which paid off. They were the same essential bet from Newton's perspective. For example, books on physics at the time referred to religion heavily, sometimes as a cornerstone of an argument. Even Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica says "Collocavit igitur Deus Planetas in diversas distantiis à Sole, ut quilibet pro gradu densitatis calore Solis majore…

That's a very interesting insight, but isn't it also true that Newton decidedly left theology out of calculus and mechanics? What distinguished his three laws was that he chose not to explain, for example, the motion of something by its "ferver" or "jubilance," as his predecessors did. People at the time may not have treated the fields so separately, but Newton did. Edit: I just ran the quote through Google Translate…

Um. No, he definitely didn't leave theology out of his mathematics. See, for instance:

http://inters.org/Newton-Scholium-Principia-Mathematica

"This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all: And on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God Pantokrator,or Universal Ruler...." and, like, this stuff is all over the place in the Principia. You cannot separate Newton the theologian from Newton the mathematician from Newton the physicist.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#242

Post by landon32 »

junko wrote: post #234
emiliobumachar wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some of our best scientific discoveries were mistakes Could you give a few examples?

Penicillin is a famous one.

I think you're talking about a different type of mistake than nitrogen is. You seem to be talking about accidental discoveries, or discoveries that were discovered while using mistaken techniques.

When Alexander Fleming discovered that penicillin fought bacteria, he was not mistaken at all. He was spot on- it did kill bacteria. Sure, its discovery may have been caused by a mistake, but what he learned about penicillin was correct, as far as I know.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#243

Post by junko »

olavk wrote: post #172
all_usernames wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving aside alchemy, (which one can assume most people are fairly uninformed about), the whole notion that theology ought to be considered a waste of time in modern day belies a pretty surprising degree of ignorance. The study of God and religious ideas is equivalent to the study of human nature and the significance of existence itself. This is true regardless of which belief system you care to study. Even avoiding…

"The study of God" is useless, but the study of people believing in God or gods is useful and quite interesting. These are two different things! The theology of Newton was the former - he literally believed the Bible was the word of God, and by interpreting it he could foresee how the world would end. It was a waste of time because we know now the Bible is actually written by humans.

> "The study of God" is useless

With respect, "God" is just a term referring to a being that has supreme powers that humans imagine to be the best of the best - and different people define these powers and other attributes differently. So even if you are an atheist, the study of Gods can still be an interesting reflection of people and society!

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#244

Post by xolb »

What PG calls "bets" I would call interesting topics for Newton. Maybe he just liked the subjects. Calling bets is saying he was trying to actually accomplish something out of their studies and work. I don't think a curious mind would work like that. Even in physics, he studied a broad range of topics, not only Mechanics.

Furthermore, you don't need to make a breakthrough in everything to satisfy your desire for knowledge. Even more so for Newton, which was known by his seclusion and introversion.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#245

Post by landon32 »

kukx wrote: post #75

I don't think that studing chemistry (I like to think about alchemy as a precursor of chemistry) or theology should be stigmatized. I understand that it was just an example to support the core idea of the article, but it still leaves a bad taste.

I don't think they should be stigmatized, but I also don't think that was really what pg meant to do. How much was Newton able to contribute to theology and chemistry, compared to how much he contributed to physics?

Sure, maybe he just worked less hard on theology+chemistry, or he wasn't good at those topics, but what seems more likely is that there were no useful discoveries to be made there at the time given the tools + world context Newton had.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#246

Post by whack »

nitrogen wrote: post #212
asavadatti wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a Google Keyboard (GBoard) thing I think.

Right, it's easier to find ℅ than % and easy to mistake one for the other.

Holy s*, you guys are right. I've been using this phone for three years and never realized that ℅ is not percent. I always just assumed it was a display glitch that caused the "break in the circle".

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#247

Post by landon32 »

dhfhduk wrote: post #194
kowdermeister wrote: post #18

> Newton made three bets. One of them worked. But they were all risky. Except it was three: - Optics - Gravitation and mechanics - Mathematics There are many scientists out there who spend a lifetime on theories that turn out to be bogus, but calling it a bet is entirely missing the point.

A couple of years ago, I went to a museum exhibition of DaVinci's notebooks. I was completely unprepared for what was my primary reaction: that DaVinci just documented every idea in his head, and that some of them just happened to pan out. But for some reason, we credit him for the small percentage of ideas that just happened to work, and ignore all the wrong ideas. To me, he didn't seem like a genius, he seemed very…

You have some interesting points.

Re: DaVinci, do you think it's possible that he knew most of his ideas were bad? I write down every product idea I have, but I know that maybe 1 in 10 would actually be used by people and maybe 1 in 10 of the useful ones would be good investments of my time to work on. I think that writing down all the bad ideas helps me think of good ideas though.

Re: Scientific geniuses are admired too much, I think you're right. The Media totally picks out the success stories because that's what interests people. Then The Media is incentivized to make these successful scientists seem really smart, also because that's what interests people. Sam Altman has talked about a similar thing. When you meet the Brian Chesky's and Mark Zuckerbergs today, you see brilliant, confident entrepreneurs that seem like geniuses that must have some special DNA. However, the reality is that 10 years ago these people seemed totally regular, just struggling entrepreneurs like so many others. Though they are clever and hard working, it's not like they're made of a different thing than everyone else.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#248

Post by emiliobumachar »

matt4077 wrote: post #107

It's either ignorant or insulting to name theology in the same breath as alchemy. Theology is still an academic discipline and it doesn't even require a believe in the supernatural. Unless this is pg's attempt to insert himself into fight about "theology" vs. "religious studies".

Pg was probably narrowly talking about Theology as studied by Isaac Newton.

I think we can all agree that that was a waste of time. (hindsight is a wonderful thing).

Relevant smbc: http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2007-12-27

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#249

Post by nitrogen »

whack wrote: post #246
nitrogen wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, it's easier to find ℅ than % and easy to mistake one for the other.

Holy s *, you guys are right. I've been using this phone for three years and never realized that ℅ is not percent. I always just assumed it was a display glitch that caused the "break in the circle".

I didn't notice until some of my texts only allowed half as many characters per message due to switching to Unicode.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#250

Post by emiliobumachar »

swalsh wrote: post #94

I urge anyone to play a bit of 'why' with a young child, mixed with the Socrates method. If you can get them to try and answer beyond "I don't know"... you'll be taken to some crazy mental places no adult can take you.

Interesting. How young would you suggest?
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