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The Risk of Discovery

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Risk of Discovery

#291

Post by _urga »

olavk wrote: post #287
_urga wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Bible predicted the end of the world in the first century." The Bible explicitly refuses to give a date for the end of the world, and proactively voids the claims of any who would. If anything the Bible anticipates a long patient delay with a purpose: "They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.…

Paul predicted the end the world to arrive in his lifetime. He was wrong. See: 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17

No, Paul is addressing the church, then and now. His use of the word "we" in the passage you quote has that sense.

It's characteristic of Paul, see Ephesians 2 for another example.

To come back to your point, if you read the rest of Paul's letter to the Thessalonians, you will find Paul's position (which is in fact Jesus' position) on the matter:

"Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night"

You can't slip a piece of paper between Paul and Jesus. Jesus himself authenticates Paul as one of his apostles.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#292

Post by sangnoir »

orthoganol wrote: post #270
ChuckMcM wrote: post #196

I love this insight. I have often experienced in my life seeing someone come up with something really useful in the midst of spouting complete rubbish. Oddly it is about 50/50 internal and external, where half the time they stop in the middle of what they are saying and realize they have a really good idea, and half the time someone else stops them and says "hey, that could really work." or something like that. The c…

A stronger version of this, which is how I interpreted PG's post, is dare to spend years of your life grinding away (in relative isolation) on something that seems crazy, with no guarantee of any success, but full of promise. I think there are actually very few people who would take such a risk, even though I think it's a necessary risk if you want to be part of "huge, if true."

> I think there are actually very few people who would take such a risk, even though I think it's a necessary risk if you want to be part of "huge, if true."

I beg to differ - we will never know the number of people who take such risks due to survivorship bias. I have a hunch that a lot of people through the ages took risks that never paid off and they never got famous, instead, they bankrupted themselves, got committed into asylums or lived their days in anonymity. No one writes biographies about them, if they did, no one would want to read them.

> dare to spend years of your life grinding away (in relative isolation) on something that seems crazy, with no guarantee of any success, but full of promise.

If I were to come up with a VC creed, it would probably be very close to this. Distill it down to concise Latin and you got yourself a bona fide VC Firm motto.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#293

Post by jacobush »

state_less wrote: post #63
lmkg wrote: post #32

I'm not sure that those lines of study were actually considered separate at the time. A century earlier than Newton's time, math and geometry were considered subfields of astronomy; and astronomy was considered the observation of the realm of the divine. Not only was there not a divide between physics and theology, people actually thought that math was a tool for studying theology (one of Copernicus' sources of incom…

It is also important to recognize that Newtons time had come. Newton doesn't make those discoveries 1000 years before or after. Our thoughts are placed in time, just as much as this message is in response to the timing of the authors post. In addition, It's not too infrequent that you'll find another scientist who wrote about the same thing 30 years earlier, or in Newton's case with Leibniz, concurrent. Rarely do we…

Our species?

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#294

Post by jacobush »

abecedarius wrote: post #170
lmkg wrote: post #32

I'm not sure that those lines of study were actually considered separate at the time. A century earlier than Newton's time, math and geometry were considered subfields of astronomy; and astronomy was considered the observation of the realm of the divine. Not only was there not a divide between physics and theology, people actually thought that math was a tool for studying theology (one of Copernicus' sources of incom…

Yes, Newton actually wanted to include "classical scholia" in the Principia showing that he was just recovering the occult knowledge of the ancients: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1984HisSc..22....1C I don't know why he left them out -- I guess he knew it'd be controversial.

Nice detail!

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#295

Post by _urga »

jp_sc wrote: post #125
callmeed wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got that too. The essay definitely had an anti-religious undertone to me.

You cannot study what -by definition- it's impossible to observe or measure directly or indirectly. Believing in God it's an act of faith, you cannot KNOW nothing. So yes, in modern times, theology and alchemy has the same scientific value: none

"You cannot study what -by definition- it's impossible to observe or measure directly or indirectly"

You're limiting knowledge to the hard sciences.

That kind of thinking is not scientific, but merely Scientism.

You're also ruling out many scientific domains, e.g. history which operates according to the historical method.

Theology (in the original Christian sense of the word) stands on the historical method. It's interested primarily in those historical events from which we can learn about God. If Jesus is not historical, if God has not acted in history, then there's nothing to know about God, and there's no such thing as Theology.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#296

Post by olavk »

_urga wrote: post #290
olavk wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Josephus also claims that Vespasian (the Roman emperor) was the prophesied Messiah. I'm sure Vespasian would have been amazed and flattered, but what does this this prove or disprove? According to textual criticism (the branch of research where you apply source criticism to the biblical texts the same way you would for any other historical source), the book called Isiah is a compilation of texts written by three diff…

"The prophecy in Isiah 53 talks about a guy who was incredibly ugly and despised by everyone, who was killed disgracefully, and who never uttered a word." You reduce the passage to being about "a guy who was incredibly ugly" whereas the context (see Isaiah 52) indicates someone beaten horrifically, "his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness". Your carica…

All the parts about atonement for our sins is theological constructions to make Jesus match the prophecy. Why do we know Jesus died for our sins? Because the prophecy said so! How do we know the prophecy describes Jesus? Because Jesus died for our sins! And so on. It is a giant circular argument.

If we extract the "factual" statements about the figure in the prophecy, you will see it does not match what we know about Jesus. All the matches are theological construction after the fact to make the pieces fit. And you have to ignore or gloss over the parts that does not fit: "He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth".

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#297

Post by JoeAltmaier »

_urga wrote: post #295
jp_sc wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot study what -by definition- it's impossible to observe or measure directly or indirectly. Believing in God it's an act of faith, you cannot KNOW nothing. So yes, in modern times, theology and alchemy has the same scientific value: none

"You cannot study what -by definition- it's impossible to observe or measure directly or indirectly" You're limiting knowledge to the hard sciences. That kind of thinking is not scientific, but merely Scientism. You're also ruling out many scientific domains, e.g. history which operates according to the historical method. Theology (in the original Christian sense of the word) stands on the historical method. It's int…

History is studied through indirect measurements - written accounts, archaeology, oral history. All reasonable scientific routes. As allowed by the OP?

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#298

Post by _urga »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #297
_urga wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You cannot study what -by definition- it's impossible to observe or measure directly or indirectly" You're limiting knowledge to the hard sciences. That kind of thinking is not scientific, but merely Scientism. You're also ruling out many scientific domains, e.g. history which operates according to the historical method. Theology (in the original Christian sense of the word) stands on the historical method. It's int…

History is studied through indirect measurements - written accounts, archaeology, oral history. All reasonable scientific routes. As allowed by the OP?

Yes, that would be the historical method.

But that is different to the "observe", "measure", rinse-and-repeat methodology which is commonly understood as the scientific method.

The methods by which one studies physics and history are different, but history is no less scientific, and it falls within the sciences, as does theology since it depends on the historical method.

Theology cannot argue or learn anything about God for which there is no historical basis.

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#299

Post by majewsky »

Cogito wrote: post #208
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you say dismissing alchemy is probably a bad thing too. Alchemy was the search for the ability to transform matter (particularly Pb->Au). I rather think that nuclear fusion/fission are still consider worthy fields and that creation/discovery of an alchemist's stone - a way to convert readily between different forms of matter - would still be considered a worthy development. I agree too with your synopsis. Physics…

> faith of atheism I used to entertain this idea, that you need faith to believe there is no god just as much as you need it to believe there are 1000. Perhaps you do. What does not require faith, however, is observation - at least to the limits to which we can test and trust our observations. Atheism isn't a belief that there is no god, it's an observation that we don't experience any supernatural forces interacting…

Or, if you prefer pop-culture references, the same thing was summed up in a joke on The Big Bang Theory. Quoting from memory: "Right and wrong are absolutes! There is no scale between them!" - "Of course there is. Saying that a tomato is a vegetable is less wrong than saying it is a suspension bridge."

Re: The Risk of Discovery

#300

Post by majewsky »

dkbrk wrote: post #230
nocman wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"> faith of atheism I used to entertain this idea, that you need faith to believe there is no god just as much as you need it to believe there are 1000. ..." "Atheism isn't a belief that there is no god" ^ actually it is: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/atheism?s=t noun 1. the doctrine or belief that there is no God. 2. disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings. I think perhaps part of the problem is t…

Linking to a dictionary definition has little relevance to such a discussion. The meaning of words depends on their context. "faith" has specific connotations when used in the context of religion, and the phrase "faith of atheism" attempts to apply these same connotations to atheism, implicitly placing it in the same category as religions and neatly sidestepping the question of whether such a categorization is approp…

Arguing "by definition" has value to it when it helps advance a conversation by uncovering the subtle ways in which the different definitions of each party diverge from each other. It's only unproductive if one party doesn't realize that all definitions are man-made, and stubbornly insists that the other party's definition is wrong.

Insofar, I think that introducing the definition has brought a net positive value to this discussion here.

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