The Risk of Discovery | Hacker News Reader

The Risk of Discovery

paulgraham.com

537 pointstyn323 comments

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 income was computing astrology charts for royalty).

I say this to reinforce Paul's statement, "But that's because we know how things turned out." "How things turned out" includes reclassification of what he was working out as belonging to different fields. I suspect that at the time, he didn't consider himself to be moving from one field to another but rather to trying to build upon his previous work.

PG wants to make startups/hackers surpass earth-shattering thinkers, by considering the differences in the existential risks taken by each. Newton was betting (in PG's interpretation) that he would not go crazy or be seen as crazy. The existential risk for thinkers. Now to make scummy => crazy, where "=>" can also mean "greater or equals to".

Usually I see "greater or equals to" written as >=

Anyways, why shouldn't founders/hackers reach for such heights? But if I didn't know Paul Graham's background, I wouldn't assume that's what this essay infers. Rather, the essay doesn't say anything directly about startups.

I'm curious what's scummy about them to you?

I had no time to write a full-fledged comment but people here took offense. Shrugs. I meant that the existential risk for founders is that of looking or being scummy. The precise, non-offensive definition of the sense of "scummy" that I intended, which unfortunately does not rhyme with "crazy", is, "profit from information asymmetry". Newton did not clearly "profit" --- though I had almost taken the 3 bets to mean the ones he placed on the South Sea --- even though he had a massive edge. (Pretty much people are arguing about scale here, in my opinion.) I do think PG wants a modern edge over Newton's methods, which concretely means pumping the applied intuitions/phronesis of the SV intellectual elite using software value capture or the VC network. By the way YC do employ heavy-duty "scum filters", e.g. the women interviewers. This is all consistent to the point of being trivial.

Thank you for reading and commenting with good faith and a, as far as I can tell, correct historical frame in mind. As opposed to with some literalist naive and/or hostile, contemporary-navel-gazing nonsense that is completely missing the point of the essay.

For more thinking in a similar direction, see Nassim Taleb's excerpt on the Lindy effect (https://medium.com/incerto/an-expert-called-lindy-fdb30f146e...), where he elaborates on the connection between risk and survival of ideas.

It is a filtering, nonsense expurgating mechanism. I have no sympathy for professional researchers. I for my part spent the first twenty three years of activity in a full-time highly demanding extremely stressful profession while studying, researching, and writing my first three books at night; it lowered (in fact, eliminated) my tolerance for fake research.

I wonder if that explains why his first 3 books where so much better than what he has written since....

"If you hear advice from a grandmother or elders, odds are that it works at ninety percent. On the other hand, in part because of scientism and academic prostitution, in part because the world is hard, if you read anything by psychologists and behavioral scientists, odds are it works at less than ten percent"

Some of my favorite books of all time were Taleb's, but I have to say, his writing is the perfect demonstration of power law. 10℅ of his content is remarkably insightful and the remaining 90℅ is unadulterated bullshit.

I agree 90% of his insights are worthless, and yet the real insights that remain make reading his books very worthwhile. If I could produce 1 page of genius for every 9 pages of trash I would be ecstatic! Most authors never produce any real lasting insights at all.

The value of contrarians is not in the things they're wrong about, it's in the things they're right about. I'm pretty sure that was also the point of pg's mini essay.

Why are you using ℅ ("care of") instead of % ("percent")?

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".

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

I have been following his work (and social media discussions) since Black Swan, and it seems to me that the ideas are becoming stronger (to me) with time. The later ideas reinforcing and expanding on earlier themes. For example, Black Swan was about unpredictable and catastrophic risk, later Anti-fragility was about how to deal with risks including Black Swans, his work in progress (Skin in the game) is how to make systems more anti-fragile.

I encountered his ideas (10 years back!) at a time when my default way of thinking was very intuitive instead of systematic and analytical thinking (which many of my high-performing peers had developed over the course of engineering education). Perhaps because of this, I took to his ideas like duck (swan) takes to water. I never acquired a systematic(analytical) thinking approach despite being in academia till mid twenties though I could hack decent academic performances. It was in an engineering profession that I realized the advantage and importance of systematic thinking and tried to consciously develop it.

Strangely, the use of systematic thinking has also actually increased my appreciation of his ideas after a period of wavering doubt. The systematic (analytical) way of thinking is too seductive and it's successes too apparent that it appears far superior to my earlier intuitive way of thinking. However, I am gradually coming to realize that the intuitive way of thinking has a deep logic of it's own which is not visible or may not even be decipherable. It's logic can only be inferred by its effect which ofcourse a critic can also be ascribe to luck!

I tell people to "read enough Taleb that you understand why you shouldn't always listen to Taleb"

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 take a big view of the species, a creature that has been alive and thinking much longer than us, winding its way through time.

Our species?

Yep, it's a reference to homosapiens. We have been talking to each other for a while now, spreading our knowledge. It's the stories we pass on, logic, math, physics and medicine that predicated inhabiting nearly everywhere and becoming so many. We are on a higher-order mutation now, many thoughts live and die in a generation. The advantageous ones stick around (eg. Newton's). We pass them on from generation to generation. Now we are more connected, and it's moving faster. Stay cool and and enjoy the ride cousin.

Will do

Yeah alchemy seem like a completely different field than astronomy today, but at the time it was considered deeply connected - the metals was corresponding to the planets and so on. Because the heavenly order was considered reflected in the earthly materials and vice versa, studying one would lead you to greater understanding of the other.

For a modern viewpoint it might seem like Newton was "hedging his bets" by contributing to several totally different fields, but I don't think it was seen like that at the time. It was all "philosophy".

Other "philosophers" in the early modern period had similar interests. For example Tycho Brahe is remembered as an astronomer with a strong focus on empirical observation, but actually was just as focused on astrology, alchemy and medicine (which was connected to alchemy and astronomy because of the same philosophy).

Newton was a "renaissance man".

Ptolemy is likewise revered by astronomers as one of their founding fathers but they conveniently ignore the fact that in astrological circles he occupies a similar position due to his seminal work, the Tetrabiblos. Scientists can become very selective when dealing with alternatives to their world view.

Scientists can become very selective when dealing with alternatives to their world view.

No, they just remember people for their contributions rather than their mistakes.

What scientists cannot accept is that there are aspects of human life which are not observable or measurable. Science is good at measuring what is observable but many scientists then make that a foundation for denying, ridiculing or reducing what is not observable. Science then becomes, paradoxically, a religion.

Do you not also see a paradox in claiming to be able to observe the unobservable?

As others have mentioned in the thread, scientists didn't just wake up one day and decide to ignore everything supposedly "unobservable". Science was once intertwined with theology. Over the centuries, the methods we now call science produced results, while other supposed "ways of knowing" did not. Scientific knowledge converges over time, but religion diverges.

The unobservable category includes a lot more than religion. It may be that scientific knowledge converges more easily simply because it limits itself to what is observable or maybe, more accurately, what is mechanistic and observable. Take ghosts, for example. Do they exist? Let's conduct an experiment and take cameras to a supposedly haunted house. The ghosts in question decide to hide from the cameras. See, no ghosts. Told you so. The ghosts meanwhile laugh in background, taking a short break from scaring the inhabitants until the scientists leave.

Here's another question: does decadence exist? The physicist would say that it's a meaningless question; the historian -- or politician -- would be well advised not to listen.

(Barzun, in From Dawn to Decadence, defined a decadent period as one which has an objective which it wants to reach, which it could reach if it made the sort of changes which it has made in the past, and which it fails to reach nonetheless. I forget where I heard it, but there's an idea that there's social technology as well as physical -- and social technology is easier to lose.)

I think a lot of people mistake ghost hunting TV shows for actual science. The SciFi/SyFy channel is a shadow of its former self.

It seems also that you have a very caricatured understanding of scientists.

First of all, a claim of the existence of ghosts requires some evidence that cannot be explained by other, simpler means. The principle of parsimony (AKA Occam's Razor) is important because it works. So for our ghosts, we would need residents' observations of sounds, movement, or other unexpected events. They could keep a log of the time and place of every ghostly occurrence, and demonstrate that no other explanation (thermal expansion causing creaking floorboards, drafts moving the curtains, slightly asymmetrical mounting causing pictures to tilt, blood flow through the retina causing spurious visual patterns in the dark, etc.) explains the observations.

Then you bring in the scientists, and all of the observations cease as if by magic. There are still physical explanations. The scientists' movement may be masking subtler sounds. Their presence may have made the house warmer, so the joints are tighter and creak less. The lights may be on more of the time, so visual patterns caused by misfiring neurons aren't seen.

But even if you rule out all possible simpler explanations, you still have a way of fixing the ghost problem -- just sell the house to a family of scientists, or install cameras and microphones to scare the ghosts away.

Responding to the comment by clock_tower, that is the sort of platonic notion of "existence" that science avoids because it doesn't yield results. I'd say science doesn't really deal with "existence" in that sense, but "occurrence". So if you ask, "Does decadence occur?" The answer would quite obviously be yes. Using a more pragmatic definition of existence, you could say that any phenomenon you can define "exists", but you are likely to run into the problem of knowing which definition of a word someone is using.

Thus, I think you also may have a caricatured understanding of scientists, caused in part by the "fun-house mirror" effect from mechanically transliterating scientific jargon into a philosophical context.

This is clearly incorrect since cosmology operates with the distinction between the observable and the unobservable universe. But of course there have to be a reason (based on models which can be verified in observation) to assume the existence of the unobservable.

Science, by definition, makes no statements on way or another about what is unobservable. Some scientists may ridicule the concept, other scientists may revere that which they believe in, but science does not make claims about that entire field, and it wouldn't be improved if it did.

Also worth mentioning that his knowledge of alchemy got him an important job as Master of the Mint, where he worked to eliminate counterfeit coins. (Metallurgy is a branch of alchemy, and the purity of metals a major research area for alchemy.) Perhaps not as earth-shattering as principia, but from a personal perspective his investment in alchemy paid of handsomely.

And in a modern ironic twist, it turns out that the elements are connected to the stars.

Other than hydrogen, some helium, and a very small amount of lithium, all other elements were born of stars, through either normal fusion (helium, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, ...), supernovae (heavier atoms: nickle, iron, ...), and for the heaviest including gold, neutron-star collisions.

No, the models assumed by alchemists weren't right, but the central nugget was pointing in the right direction. And studying the metals does provide insight into the dynamics of stars.

(And yes: on Earth, helium and several other elements are found not formed by stars directly, but through the radioactive decay of heavier elements, though those are of stellar origins.)

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!

Makes you wonder what the "software industry" will look like in 300 years.

Good ideas tend to split & bifurcate, until the original term is considered simply common sense and the parts people care about are individual subfields that were trivial when they started. Recall that "industry" used to refer to anything that was mass-produced in a factory, which, back in the 1820s, basically meant textiles. As the general techniques proved their worth, "industry" split into subfields, such that we got the "oil industry" and "steel industry" and "auto industry" and "aviation industry" and so on.

I think a similar process is happening with software, where the "software industry" is bifurcating into embedded software, social software, payment software, etc, much of it in support of an existing industry; "software is eating the world". I suspect that we're in the very early phases of this. In the early history of the industrial revolution, most industries were ways to produce existing goods (clothing, iron, tobacco, energy) dramatically more efficiently, much like how much software today is embedded in old-line industries' line-of-business apps. But starting around 1900, you started getting industries (electricity, aviation, pharmaceuticals) that were largely unrecognizable compared to their substitutes. You're seeing the very beginning of that now with specifically Internet- and cloud-based industries, but it likely has another century to go.

Good point. I do both embedded (well) and web (so-so) dev, and they are worlds apart in almost every aspect I can think of.

The comment above yours made me think. If the outline holds, they are about to become even more worlds apart. It's funny to think that our grand children may marvel at how workers of today could move between fields with relative ease which then will be deemed worlds apart. We may all look a bit like renaissance men to them.

Thanks for your comment.

This is the kind of thoughtful comment I come here for - it's given me some ideas to go research on my own.

Quite so. What we now call natural science was all mixed together with supernatural, occult sciences. The two were separated only as a result of centuries of careful thought, plus the fact that the natural sciences made enormous progress, whereas the occult sciences just kept going around in the same circles.

It goes even deeper than that. At the time at Cambridge there was only one subject to study, called the Tripos, which included all these things. Overtime they've gradually stripped parts of the course into their own separate subjects. The only thing left is mathematics, which leads to a curious ceremony when you graduate with a maths degree which none of the other subjects have. So to Newton Theology and Maths were taught in the same major!

Also worth mentioning is the old universities did not have formal assessments so 100% students graduate with certificate. While this would be a bit woolly in our hyperactive world, I think being able to study without that pressure could significantly loosen up our perceptions of what we can and cannot learn. But since the sum knowledge base acquired by the human race has grown considerably (I know, a total understatement) true polymaths will continue to be rare. But in the first place, no one should be pressured to become one. There is so much content made accessible today that 'tinkerer' IMO is an honourable occupation. It probably needs a more glamorous label though ...

deGrasse's talk on science and theism has interesting remarks on when (and how) the "God in the gaps" appears on Newton's work, shows how back then natural/supernatural was mixed together.

https://youtu.be/N7rR8stuQfk?t=8m44s

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 common theme can best be described as "fearless thinking" or perhaps unconstrained thinking.

I suspect that the personality trait most closely associated with creativity like this is a lack of fear of embarrassment. When someone tells me something I have suggested is wrong I respond by asking questions to understand how they understand the topic so that I can learn from them. When you tell someone who has vested their self image in being right that they are wrong they take it personally and respond dismissively. They fight to have their point of view validated rather than understand a counter point of view. But this makes them unwilling to share partially understood topics because it could expose them to being 'wrong' in public.

Other times people self censor their own thinking. I get so frustrated when someone says "Well I thought that might be a solution to the problem but assumed it would be too expensive." That is an example of someone who had a creative idea, self censored it, and it had to come out through someone else in order to reach the collective consciousness of the group. I try really hard to have people not self censor but it is so ingrained sometimes.

And all of that then feeds back into the genius/hero narrative where the narrative of a person includes only their noteworthy accomplishments and so the perception is that people like that only do noteworthy things, and then they are impossible to live up to.

Dare to ask stupid questions, it could make you the smartest person in the room.

> I get so frustrated when someone says "Well I thought that might be a solution to the problem but assumed it would be too expensive."

Well darn it, that's how we were taught in engineering school.

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.

> Dare to ask stupid questions, it could make you the smartest person in the room.

It cost me a year (1/90th of my life? 1/75th? 1/50th? less?) to realize this. From what I understand, I'm far from alone -- and basically every career path risks this cost.

Emphasizing this nugget of truth by placing it at the bottom of your post is commendable.

"Physics seems to us a promising thing to work on, and alchemy and theology obvious wastes of time."

I'm not sure which "us" pg is referring to, but the essay gives me the impression that he meant something like "most people" (I could be reading him wrong, but that was my impression). Alchemy is obviously a waste of time -- I won't dispute that, and I suspect that "most people" would agree with that assertion.

Being that pg is an atheist, I would expect him to personally believe that the study of theology is a waste of time. However, even just taking Christian theology into account, given that over 100 million Bibles are sold or given away in the world every year (https://www.reference.com/world-view/many-copies-bible-sold-...), and the Bible continues to be "the most widely distributed and best-selling book in the world.", the "us" for which it is true that the study of theology is "crazy" or a "waste of time" seems to me to be much smaller group of people than the essay seems to imply.

Again, this is just the impression I got from reading the essay. I would be happy to have pg respond and let me know if my impression was incorrect.

(edited to remove unintentional indenting)

50 shades of gray was also a best selling book. However, I think most of the readers recognize that studying it is not going to advance technology/science in any way.

Replace 50 shades of gray with Hemingway or Shakespeare. Studying Shakespeare isn't going to advance technology or science, but it could advance art, which is a noble human endeavor, as is science.

There's a big difference between "a best selling book", and "the most widely distributed and best-selling book in the world."

And I was not addressing whether people think that studying the Bible advances technology/science, but whether people think that studying theology is "crazy" or a "waste of time".

I read the "us" to mean something ranging from "readers of this blog" to "elite tech/science people". Wherever it lands between those two, his assumption that serious academic or ideological interest in theology among that audience is in the minority (and declining over time) seems fair.

If you go by number of sold copies astrology is still going strong. Doesn't mean it's good.

I'm just guessing here, but I suspect PG doesn't care what "most people" think about theology. He is probably writing from the perspective from an educated person who see the enormous influence of Newtonian physics, and see absolutely no benefit from his theological thinking. Seriously, who today even knows what Newtons theological theories were?

I don't think it matters what his particular theology was. What matters is that theology matters. It affects how people experience and interpret religion, which has a vast impact on the world. So the article's utter dismissal of theology as a waste of time seems misguided to me.

Alchemy as well was not so ridiculous as people seem to think. Modern hatred for alchemy seems more like a way of patting ourselves on the back and saying "We're so smart! Good thing we don't believe in that nonsense like those benighted fools hundreds of years ago." But in reality alchemy was a pre-scientific attempt at understanding the world which, if I understand correctly, merged more or less directly into what we no consider science.

It seems to me that the two things PG dismissed completely in his article are in fact the foundations upon which our modern world is largely built. There's more to the world than physics...even if physics is, in a sense, all there is.

Newton was trying to predict the end of the world by studying the Bible. The people who wrote the Bible did not actually have any privileged information about the end of the world. Therefore his endeavor was a waste of time.

As far as I know Newtons theology had absolutely no impact on anybody except himself.

"The people who wrote the Bible did not actually have any 'privileged information about the end of the world.'"

Well, you might believe they did not, but many people in the world believe they did.

If you do not accept the Bible as revelation from God (and I would guess from your response that you do not), then I can see why you would reach that conclusion.

If, however, you do accept the Bible as revelation from God, the book of, well, Revelation :-D is a huge chunk of "privileged information about the end of the world". Granted, dates of events are not given, and a lot of the book is prophecy, so there is figurative language, but there is a lot of information there.

Just because someone believes something does not make it true. The bible predicted the end of the world in the first century. It turned out to be wrong, even though people believed it.

"Just because someone believes something does not make it true".

^ That is correct, and I never said that it was true because people believed it.

Of course the same could be said of your statement that "The people who wrote the Bible did not actually have any privileged information about the end of the world." -- it is not true just because you believe it.

Perhaps I should have just said "there are a lot of people in the world that do not agree with that statement", and left it at that.

"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.” ... But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance."

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.

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

What does this even mean? Jesus never mentioned Paul, and Jesus and Paul never even met.

"Jesus never mentioned Paul"

According to Luke, in Acts 9:15 he did:

"But the Lord said to him [Ananias], “Go, for he [Paul] is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel."

Apart from that, Peter also understood that Paul had been authenticated by Jesus as his apostle, see 2 Peter 3:

"Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction."

Being an apostle meant that Paul was expressly authorized and enabled to represent the Lord. Hence the saying, "you can't slip a piece of paper..." meaning that one can't try and play one off against the other, as if they hold opposing views. Paul represents Jesus, nothing more, nothing less. Paul is merely a servant, the words are those of Jesus.

Then again, God told Mohammad that Jesus wasn't dead at all, so clearly Paul and therefore Ananias are unreliable. Which just goes to show that when you base your chain of reasoning on believing people claiming God spoke to them, you get into all kinds of contradictions. Because lots of people claim God have spoken to them, and He does not seem to be very consistent in his messages.

Except even most modern theologians do not take the Bible literally.

You could also take some acid and have your own trip about the end of the world. John had a DMT trip in a dream and wrote it down.

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 is like the part of reality we've tamed, everything that is yet to be discovered, that's of interest to physicists, likely lies outside our laws, corollaries, and axioms as they now stand.

To me such ideas as the naive assumption that we know the limits of knowledge go hand in hand with the faith of atheism. But I digress.

> 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 with this universe.

> naive assumption that we know the limits of knowledge

I think very few people claim to know the limits of knowledge, but that is not the same thing as saying we know nothing. Asimov's essay on the Relativity of Wrong [0] is some of the best reasoning along this line of thought.

[He] went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong.

My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

[0] http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm

"> 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 that many people think of "faith" as meaning to "believe in something without any evidence of its viability", or to "believe in something despite evidence to the contrary". Both of those are unnecessarily narrow definitions of faith. Faith simply means believing that some thing or some set of things is true. The belief (regardless of what facts are believed) may be based on evidence, or it may not.

Insisting that "faith" is always believing facts without evidence, or contrary to evidence, is inaccurate. That would be "blind faith", and not all instances of "faith" are "blind faith".

[edit -- missed a comma]

Hopefully it's clear that I know the dictionary meaning of 'atheist'. I'll expand the point I was trying to make slightly and address your use of 'faith'.

In a very strict sense of the word, atheism is an assertion that there is no god/supernatural being. It is clear that this assertion is impossible to prove, only possible to prove wrong. For any god you prove does not exist it is trivial to imagine one that does and which can't be disproved in the same way.

This means that simply stating there is no god is not very useful or meaningful. Much more meaningful is to state that even if there is a god, they take no part in our world. This is the interventionist god that Nick Cave does not believe in.

You are correct in pointing out that the word faith can be used to collect beliefs together and give them a name. That is a reasonable interpretation of the parent's use of the term as well. Too often, however, the phrases "faith of atheism" or "faith in science" are used to draw parallels with other faiths, specifically faiths that require "blind faith" as part of their belief system. Take the whole line in context:

> To me such ideas as the naive assumption that we know the limits of knowledge go hand in hand with the faith of atheism.

The thrust of this statement, as I read it, is identical to the one Asimov discusses in that essay:

"If I am the wisest man," said Socrates, "it is because I alone know that I know nothing."

That is, it is impossible to know what you don't know and believing you do is foolish. He continues:

The implication was that I was very foolish because I knew a great deal.

The argument in the parent is that people who believe in atheism are foolish for believing they know the limits of knowledge. My counter argument is that atheists - like most people - don't tend to claim they know the limits of knowledge. Their distinguishing characteristic is that at no point does an explanation come to rest on blind faith. That is why saying "Atheism isn't a belief that there is no god" is a meaningful one.

There are probably other words that could be used instead of atheism to label this belief system that arises when you discard blind faith. No one needs a label for their belief that there isn't a teapot circling the sun in the exact same orbit as the earth, but 6 months the other side. Atheism is a useful word precisely because there is a long seated assumption in the consciousness of mankind that there must be a god.

I'm pretty sure what you're describing is agnosticism, not atheism. It certainly doesn't describe so-called "militant atheism".

This is a good point, so I looked into what other people have said about the two of them. The thing I think which most succinctly summarises my current understanding would be these arguments from [0]:

An atheist disbelieves assertions of the existence of a deity or deities and believes the burden of proof is on those who say there is a god.

An agnostic disbelieves assertions that the existence of a deity or deities has been demonstrated, but also disbelieves assertions that the nonexistence of a deity or deities has been demonstrated.

Specifically, an atheist is not saying that there is no god, just that we don't have proof for any god. A 'Strong Atheist' may go on to affirm that there are no gods at all, but that is not required for atheism.

Based on this, I think I was talking about atheism in the most part, but with a bit of agnosticism thrown in.

[0] http://www.diffen.com/difference/Agnostic_vs_Atheist

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 appropriate.

Whether atheism should be categorized along with religions is a question which should be addressed on its own merits by looking at the characteristics of atheism and religions themselves, rather than looking up a dictionary definition and seeing if the words match.

In that context, I think it is quite appropriate to claim:

> Atheism isn't a belief that there is no god, it's an observation that we don't experience any supernatural forces interacting with this universe.

Regardless of whether or not that is what is written down in the dictionary.

For further reference, see 'Arguing "By Definition" (LessWrong)': http://lesswrong.com/lw/nz/arguing_by_definition/

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.

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."

> 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

This is just a disagreement over definitions.

If you define alchemy as e.g. 'the search for the ability to transmute elements', then sure, nuclear reactions are alchemy. But that's not how the word is generally used. It's used to describe a practice bound up with a bundle of concepts, beliefs, and connotations[0], which mostly disappeared after the 18th century. (That's a useful thing to have a word for -- under a definition of alchemy for which nuclear physics is alchemy, you'd probably want to invent a different word to describe that practice, and then that just introduces unnecessary confusion when talking to people who use the more common set of definitions).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy#Core_concepts

The essay isn't about what matters in the absolute. It's about deciding where to spend a marginal hour, year, or life with imperfect information. And it's obviously true in retrospect that Newton's lifetime was spent in a way which produced more good to society than yet another theological life. Contrast his contributions to the most prominent 17th century theologians:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_theologians#...

John Milton is on that list. Newton was exceptionally important, but our world would be poorer without Paradise Lost. I'm glad Milton spent his time as he did.

>What matters is that theology matters

Don't you mean religious studies, more than theology? I think these are pretty different.

Although theological beliefs are rarely falsifiable, that doesn't mean they don't matter or render no benefit.

Yeah, just because they don't say anything about the world does not mean they can not be used. The theology of Luther and Calvin changed the world. Even today you can start your own cult or church and get power over lots of people and get rich.

But Newton did none of those things. His theology did not influence anybody and was therefore a waste of time, except for the personal gratification he gained from it.

There's plenty of falsifiable evidence that suggests that adhering to religion is good for the individual, So there are positive benefits as well. There are also examples of religions doing good for humanity.

To say that Newton's theology "did not influence anybody and was therefore a waste of time" is absolutely false. I remember my math teacher mentioning several of his statements and beliefs about the nature of God during lecture.

So what are some of the important theological discoveries by Newton?

Seriously: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=important+theological+discoveries+by+ne...

Despite his intense biblical study and belief in a creating God, Newton observed the distinction between religion and science made by Galileo: “The Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go.” During his presidency of the Royal Society, Newton banned any subject touching religion, even apologetics. He wrote, “We are not to introduce divine revelations into philosophy [science], nor philosophical [scientific] opinions into religion.”

Yet for Newton this distinction was not a divorce, much less a conflict. Although the books of God’s Word and his Works were not to provide the content of each other’s teachings, they were bound together. Newton did not consider one to be sacred and the other secular, nor did Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, or Pascal—all practicing Christians. Only later Enlightenment philosophy produced a model of “warfare” between science and theology.

Newton’s theology profoundly influenced his scientific method, which rejected pure speculation in favor of observations and experiments.

Thanks for the LMGTFY link, but since Google customizes results per user, perhaps you can point me directly to the source you intended to direct me to?

Note I am talking about original theological discoveries made by Newton, not just his beliefs in general, since we are discussing the influence of Newtons theological research. If a viewpoint was also held by Copernicus we can be pretty sure it didn't originate with Newton!

Whatever you think of theology in general, here is the sort that Newton did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton's_occult_studies#...

I think it's fair to say that Newton's work on it was a bet that paid off poorly.

It being popular you say, implies it's good? Wouldn't you have to instead weigh the good results vs. the bad results to know the net value to society?

"It being popular you say, implies it's good?"

^ I never said "popularity of belief" in any way implies the correctness of belief. I could find and list many popular beliefs that I am certain are blatantly false.

I merely pointed out that the essay seems (to me) to imply that "most people" in the world discount the study of theology as "crazy" and "a waste of time". The reference to the popularity of the Bible ( as "the most widely distributed and best-selling book in the world." ) was in support of my assertion that the "us" for which it is true that the study of theology is "crazy" or a "waste of time" seems to me to be much smaller group of people than the essay seems to imply.

I see your point, but in talking about Newton the context is science. In science anything that is not falsifiable is not useful, so in this sense is it not a fair appraisal?

If the context is useful tools for those that practice religion, then I agree most would not consider theology a waste of time.

I've always been under the impression that pg talks to a very small specific audience. He is talking to the SV tech crowd, and those who want to be part of it. Much of his business advice does not apply unless you want to be a high-growth VC-backed startup, and his non-business advice is no better or worse than anyone else's.

> "Physics seems to us a promising thing to work on, and alchemy and theology obvious wastes of time." I'm not sure which "us" pg is referring to, but the essay gives me the impression that he meant something like "most people" (I could be reading him wrong, but that was my impression).

I think "us" refers to the readers. Ie the kind of person likely to be reading an essay of his

An addendum to this: Many of the greatest unconventional thinkers of our time are similar to Newton in that they are right about one non-consensus thing and wrong about lots of others.

Some of those people become fantastically rich as a result of the one right thing.

Just because someone is wildly successful and right about one non-consensus bet, doesn't mean they aren't wrong about most of their other beliefs.

The occasional out-of-the-mainstream idea is a revolution, but the vast majority are just nutty and wrong.

When people say that Newton studied alchemy, what they actually mean was that he studied chemistry. He was studying what happens when you do different things to different elements. Sure he used the language of the time, but he was fundamentally doing chemistry. And the dream of the alchemists -- to turn base materials into gold -- was ultimately more or less realized when Henri Moissan created the first artificial diamond. Alchemy has a bad rep, mostly because it was shrouded in mystery and obfuscation, but at its core it was science, the pursuit of knowledge through experimentation.

Even more realized in particle accelerators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_of_precious_metals#G...

The difference between alchemy and modern chemistry is alchemy is based on a mystic, supernatural view of reality, whereas chemistry assumes reality is basically natural. That makes a huge difference, and chemistry would never have gotten very far if it had stuck with the old metaphysics.

Well it wasn't really "supernatural" at the time. It was literally a theory about the natural world. It just wasn't correct, and have since been replaced with different theories and models.

Yes and no.

I think of alchemy as early contact between mysticism and objectivity. People thought mysticism was a valid way to get info about the world. The failure of alchemy proved them wrong and may have partly led to a more skeptical "hypothesize and test" approach from the original "try to confirm religion" approach.

No, it was supernatural because it was about allegedly existing non-material entities and forces that cannot be observed through the senses, and that have will and the ability to influence the material world. Think spirits or gods. In Christianity from the beginning this was described in terms of reason versus faith.

Human beings have two basic ways of thinking about reality, the natural and the supernatural, and until modern science came along they habitually mixed the two together. So for instance if I asked someone why a tree was black, they would answer "it was hit by lightening" which is a natural explanation, and then "and the lightening was thrown by the God Thor" which is a supernatural explanation.

The great innovation of modern science (inspired by the Greeks) was to decide to stick entirely with natural ideas. It took centuries to make this change, and many battles, and it made possible modern technology.

Let me add that the way I am using the term "natural" and "supernatural" is not my invention, it is the standard way philosophers and scientists have spoken about these matters for many centuries.

I'm not sure I get this distinction. What definition of "supernatural" do you refer to?

For people who wonder why YC and pg are okay with some of Peter Thiel's more extreme behavior, this is why.

It's pretty interesting that pg describes the possible outcomes of contrarian ideas as either positive for society or merely a waste of time. Even though the pursuit of risky and contrarian ideas can also be hugely harmful for society.

Maybe they just believe in Thiel's free speech rights.

Peter Thiel isn't a regular guy with an imaginative twitter stream. He's an influential and highly connected billionaire. This has nothing to do with free speech.

Billionaires don't have rights to free speech?

Really, whatever you think about Thiel -- the decision of whether to maintain a high-profile business relationship with someone -- or chose not to, for whatever reason -- has nothing -- whatsoever -- do with "free speech" rights, in the usual sense.

> He's an influential and highly connected billionaire.

Which makes him totally different from the Member of Parliament for Cambridge, Master of the Mint, intellectual grandfather of the enlightenment, etc.

By the way, Isaac Newton MP did have a somewhat lasting influence on theology: he got to vote in 1688.

I have free speech rights too, but YC is under no more obligation to keep him around than it is to keep me around.

There was a good discussion related to this yesterday on Dr. Michael Burry. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13374573 Interesting discussions about reasonable risks, even when we know in hindsight that the outcomes were good.

Interesting discussion, although I disagree with the conclusion.

I don't think betting the house on a single event is "insane". Businesses make these all-in bets all the time and we're fine with it. Every Hollywood blockbuster is also a billion dollar all-in bet, but nobody bats an eye at that either. Individuals bet a huge percentage of their net worth when they buy a house. Yet when a person invests a large amount of their net worth in a single stock it's suddenly irresponsible? Hogwash.

The way we perceive risk in society is extraordinarily polarized. Some moderately risky behavior is considered normal, and other moderately risky behavior is deemed "insane". I don't think there is any rhyme or reason to it; just a matter of arbitrary cultural norms.

It's not necessarily as arbitrary as you're making it out. For businesses, the cost of failure is low and the potential upside is enormous. As a result, risk-seeking behavior makes sense, and people generally respect that. For humans, the cost of failure is very high, and the upside is only the productivity of one 2 meter bag of flesh with a brain inside. Taking existential risks as a human is foolish for reasons that do not apply to businesses.

I'm not sure what to make of your response. Texting while driving, or simply driving inattentively, is an existential risk. Investing aggressively on the stock market is not. Yet one thing is considered normal, while the other thing is considered reckless. Businesses tend to take too many risks. After all, decisions are made with other people's money, and there are career benefits to taking a risk that works out but there is hardly a penalty for squandering the company's money. Individuals tend to to take the wrong kind of risks: too careless about getting seriously injured and too timid about financial and career risks.

I'm not claiming that all risks by society are judged incorrectly, just that it happens frequently enough that much is to be gained by being really skeptical towards the consensus views on risk.

pg has no reason to fear for the impact of "contrarian ideas" like fascism. His person is secure for life. Nobody has threatened his way of life, and he knows nobody can credibly threaten his way of life.

Lost lives may be merely wasted time if you take a maximally macro view of humanity. That detachment is likely comforting if you can pull it off. Me, personally though... I'm a social human being and I care about - even love - other human beings, and their lives represent far more to me than that.

For people who wonder why YC and pg are okay with some of Peter Thiel's more extreme behavior, this is why.

For his "weird" behavior, yeah, probably.

For some of his "other" behavior -- his support for Trump, generally; and his (very recent, and very disturbing) attemps to soft-peddle, and normalize sexual violence -- more likely it's because they lack awareness of some basic political history.

You're getting downvotes. Could you explain some of the stuff you're describing? Maybe the thinking about normalizing sexual violence?

It mostly refers to a discussion -- now flagged, though there's no reason it should be, as it's perfectly within HN's community guidelines -- about an interview he had in the NYT recently ("Peter Thiel, Trump's Tech Pal, explains himself", or some variant thereof) in which he definitely soft-peddles, and attempts to district attention from the famous Billy Bush tape, in which the Grabber-in-Chief-Elect says, well, you know what:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13378029

That's what I mean by "normalizing" -- "it's no big deal, what are all these people so uptight about?" -- that whole line.

As for "basic awareness of political history", I'm referring of course to events in the 1920s and early 1930s. With respect to which it is, in my view, really, really hard not to see close parallels (despite certain differences) with the current situation. Unless, that is, one spent one's formative intellectual years going out of one's way to not become aware of certain things.

Or maybe you should ask the downvoters to explain themselves.

Unless that's the only tool of "expression" they have.

Or maybe its because Thiel is a useful person to associate with and enough money is on the line that pg's claim that he'd be the "first to bring about the resistance" doesn't apply because Thiel, like Andreessen, is too important to be stood up to.

I've lot so much respect for YC wrt Thiel. Trump is such an obvious villain that if you're not against him you're an enabler. I don't care that he's become normalized in the American and Russian press the rest of the world is laughing at the USA and crying inside. We're slowly finding out which people are actually committed to their ideals and which are just interested in being more powerful, even if it comes at the cost of allowing a total maniac to the nuclear throne.

Roughly half the country voted Trump so it's a bit excessive to shun all of them.

About 23%, actually. Roughly half the country didn't vote, or they did but their votes weren't counted because of voter suppression laws largely passed by Republicans.

I respect the 28% of voting age America that voted for HRC. I also have respect for the people that voted Stein or Johnson in non-battleground states. Call it 30%. But as a Canadian who's been to America dozens of times over the years I've slowly lost respect for the GOP and Trump was the final nail in the coffin. 90% of the GOP is evil or brainwashed. The other 10% that I still have a small modicum of respect for includes people like Kasich.

So I respect about a third of American electorate. The third that didn't vote I don't respect. The third that voted for Trump I don't respect.

As for America the country, I respect most of the intelligent people working at the State Department and the CIA that I truly believe are working towards a peaceful more prosperous world, though I admit that their history is much more checkered (waterboarding, etc) than their counterparts in Germany, but they've done good work basically everywhere outside of the Middle East. Tough area to play right though, lobbyists, Israel, Turkey, multiple religious factions, critical market for the economy / national security.

But all their work is jeopardized by this horrible demagogue and enough of America either stayed home or voted for him. A man that bragged about sexual assault and swindled the poor for their student loan money and chanted "lock her up" to crowds of tens of thousands. We're laughing at America in the morning, but we're crying at night.

He's a villain to you because you have different ideals. To many, he is a figurative Bruce Wayne in the Gotham City of corruption that is D.C. Any man who "is with her" either has a confused sense of allegiance to the USA or needs a shot of testosterone.

If what you say is true then pg's essay is deliberately deceptive, and pg is deliberately holding Thiel to a different standard. Although possible, I think it's much more likely that pg is sincere in his convictions. Regardless, I find Thiel's vision for America as reprehensible as you do.

By definition contrarian ideas are pretty harmless, since pursuing an idea in a society that disagrees with you is like pushing a boulder up a hill. The results are also very hard to predict - sometimes you think about the weird behaviour of light and set the stage for the atomic bomb, and other times you start out making explosives for Nazi Germany and end up feeding the third world. Finally, they can be the product of their environment as much as a single intellect, as with Newton/Leibniz. For those reasons, which make genuinely contrarian ideas unpredictable and unstoppable, I think trying to prevent them is a bit of a red herring.

Peter Thiel isn't like Haber or Einstein, because most of his potentially dangerous ideas are only contrarian in our little bubble. When he challenges democracy, he's on the side of millennia of kings and queens and emperors and chieftains, as well as everyone who has ever said "if I were king for a day..."; when he manages to be the highest profile Trump supporter in the tech world, he is backed by nearly half the voters in America; when he says that a monopoly is exactly what a company should aim for, a great many CEOs and HN readers privately nod. His genuinely contrarian ideas aren't frightening, they're considered laughable, which is why the media mocks him so much for seasteading and "vampirism".

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".

How does theology not involve a belief in the supernatural?

Theology is the study of religion or things supernatural, not necessarily tied to a practice in any belief.

How can you study the properties of something you don't believe exists?

Edit: People are downvoting this, but I genuinely want to know how "theology is the study of supernatural things" and "theology does not rely on belief in the supernatural" are not in complete contradiction.

You've stumbled upon one of the most profound spiritual questions there is.

How is that a spiritual question? More skeptical.

Religious faith from certain perspectives is something like: choosing to believe despite being unable to comprehend with your rational mind. That's the basic core of the inquiry, you start from there and see what happens.

Choosing to believe without evidence is antithetical to the core of inquiry.

"Choosing to believe" in the supernatural is the opposite of "theology does not require belief" in the supernatural.

No, that is religious studies. Theologians all believe in god or other supernatural entities.

There's debate on the terminology, so I'll credit your first point. But there are atheists who also study theology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Avalos is one such example.

Websters: the study of religious faith, practice, and experience; especially : the study of God and of God's relation to the world

I find theology and alchemy very similar. Both go to great lengths to prove something that is highly desirable for a human (afterlife and cheap gold) but very unlikely if judged with a clear mind.

Theology is a broad term and includes the anthropology of religion, history, and philosophy. Many atheists study theology in good faith.

That's just like if the NAME "alchemy" had been kept and continued to be used for what we now call "chemistry". Changing the name helped the bullshit die away. If it were all "alchemy" we'd have some advanced chemists but also some people continuing the bullshit and asserting that alchemy is legitimate. It's quite unfortunate to keep the name "theology" for the practice of the anthropology of religion or the history of religion.

Alchemy was not about "cheap gold". It was the study of natural elements and transformation and purification of materials. It was a proto-science which later turned into mineralogy, chemistry and medicine. It was part science, part philosophy and part occultism.

to use etymology: theology -> theism. It's the study of divine, god, etc. that sort of thing. It's not a normal scientific pursuit. Sure, it's still an academic discipline but not one with any scientific rigor or merit. To assert that its continued existence is what makes it more legitimate than alchemy is some mix of appeal to authority and appeal to popularity.

See reductionism: https://xkcd.com/1734/

I'm going to disagree with the "or merit" part. For two reasons - the first being related to theology itself, and the other related to another field which is sometimes classified as being without scientific rigor - philosophy.

One merit of theology is the study of religious traditions and whether or not they should continue or be discouraged for various reasons, as an example.

Not only scientific pursuits have merit. I'm not sure if that's what you were trying to imply with your combination of statements, but it's possible to infer that from your choice of words.

Indeed, and thanks for the feedback, esp. in the form of pointing out the interpretation rather than assuming things or putting words in my mouth. I agree with everything you said. I think it would be good to make a distinction between the anthropology of religion and theology (the latter as the study of the "divine" itself, as though there's such a thing to study. Anthropology has merit for sure and even the practice of religion and even belief in things that aren't scientifically supported may have utility or purpose even if their premise is factually baseless (which isn't to say that everything lacking scientific evidence is necessarily false, just well, lacking scientific evidence).

I agree (and others do, too) that there should be a greater distinction between anthropological study of religion vs. theology - and it is argued by some that "religious studies" is more appropriate a classification of that than theology itself. I don't have too strong an opinion on the matter, personally, but still appreciate your clarification on what you meant. It's a muddy topic (as tends to be the case with anything surrounding religion).

The entire Christian theological claim is that Jesus of Nazareth, a "son of man" and the "son of God", walked among us in history, and that these things should and must be tested and verified according to the historical method.

See Paul of Tarsus (a former persecutor of some of the first Christians) writing to the Corinthians circa 55 AD:

"And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead."

See Luke the physician writing to Theopilus:

"Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught."

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 deep concepts usually not found in this forum, religion remains at the heart of the greatest human conflicts of the present day, and is critically central to any understanding of the largest cultural forces in the world. Yeah, what a waste of time!

You're describing antrophology, not theology.

It's the difference between studying Tolkien universe as art and tracing its influences on culture etc on one hand, and searching for Silmarils on the other.

"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.

This is my experience, and I think a lot of (devout, conservative) theologians believe this -- although that definitely express it in different language! Look at critiques of seminary programs as being "too academic", for example. The "academic" subjects are basically anything and everything that doesn't over-lap with human psychology or business (apologetics and church history, for example).

> "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!

The study of the belief in astrology can be an valuable anthropological research. Actually thinking you can predict the future through horoscopes is a waste of time.

"It was a waste of time because we know now the Bible is actually written by humans."

The Bible itself has always claimed to be "written by humans", moved by God according to his interactions in history, speaking his words according to the authority given them.

The Bible itself has also been against false prophets (those claiming to speak for God), insisting that every word should be tested according to what came to pass.

For example, take the book of Isaiah. It claims for itself to be written by a human, Isaiah the son of Amoz during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. We know now it was written circa 700 years before Christ. Isaiah speaks about the suffering and rising of the Christ (see Isaiah 53 for an accessible example).

Now the question is, does that not match what we know of Jesus of Nazareth, and do the words of Isaiah not also authenticate Jesus of Nazareth?

And when Isaiah speaks about Cyrus the Great of Persia, many years before his time, does that not match what we know of Cyrus? And was Cyrus himself (according to first-century Jewish Roman historian Josephus) not amazed when he read Isaiah's words concerning himself? Or should we force the book of Isaiah to be post-dated so as to sit more comfortably with a naturalist philosophy?

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 different authors at different points in time - before, during and after the exile.

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. This probably matches numerous unfortunate souls before and after, but clearly not Jesus, since he was actually revered by his followers and did utter quite a lot of words, even during his execution. In other words, the passage disproves that Jesus could be the Messiah - unless you apply a healthy dose of cognitive dissonance.

"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 caricature neglects to mention and skirts around the key details of the passage:

The suffering servant is the kingly representative of his people, appointed by God, who, though innocent, will bear the punishment of his people's sins on their behalf. He will be smitten by God and they will mock him for it. He will be rejected, suffer and die, but he will rise, and make many to be accounted righteous.

The substitutionary atonement is clearly repeated many times in Isaiah 53:

"Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted."

"But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed."

"We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all."

"For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished."

"He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth."

"Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand."

"After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities."

"For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

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".

"All the parts about atonement for our sins is theological constructions to make Jesus match the prophecy."

No, I was just quoting from Isaiah there. That's Isaiah speaking many years before Jesus, describing and requiring the Christ to be a Suffering Servant.

Not many ancient historians would contest that Jesus was a historical person, or have any reason to question that he died the way he did. Nor would they contest the public life of John the Baptist or Pilate or Herod for that matter, or that the New Testament documents contain eye witness testimony, as well as incidental historical detail in the form of taken-for-granted shared understanding of historical events in the minds of those who were then alive and able to contest and examine the facts. Many of those who witnessed to Jesus suffered for their convictions, and faced tremendous pressure and incentive to quit.

"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.'"

Have you read the remarkable account of Jesus before Pilate?

At the end of the day, you must decide for yourself.

I think you misunderstood my point about circular reasoning, or maybe I was not clear. I know you quoted Isiah. I am disputing the quote matches Jesus very well, except for the theological justifications which was concocted up after the fact to make Jesus match the prophecy.

You are correct most historians assume a historical Jesus did exist. Just as they assume Mohammad and Gautama Buddha existed.

Insulting to theology or to alchemy? Alchemy is basically chemistry done with a strong philosophical framework based in the thinking of Paracelsus and Hermes Trismegistos. "Making gold" is just a naive interpretation - it was research concerned about transformation of materials. When the underlying philosophy was abandoned it turned into modern chemistry. (The word "alchemy" has the same root as "chemistry".)

You can of course argue the underlying hermetic philosophy was BS - but it was and is no better or worse than theology.

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

  "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost
   almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the
   game winning shot and missed."

- Michael Jordan

Which basketball player has not missed a shot, has not lost a game, hasn't missed game winning shots?

Did they all become like Michael Jordan?

Failure may be on the path to success, but failure does not guarantee success.

Yeah, but you could also easily ask how many would-be Jordans stopped short because of all their failures. Point is Michael wouldn't be Michael without it.

Cory Doctorow made a similar connection between science and alchemy a while ago:

"FLOSS .. is better for the same reason that science is better than alchemy. Back before we had science we had alchemy, a lot like science except alchemists never told anyone else what they thought they'd learned and so they were prey to the most common human frailty which is self deception, which is how how alchemists discovered in the hardest way possible that you shouldn't drink mercury, and when alchemists started telling each other what they thought they'd learned, and subjecting themselves to adversarial peer review, and they started publishing their source they turned something base into something noble, they turned superstition into science and created the enlightenment, and FLOSS is everywhere because it continues the enlightenment tradition."

Source: [1:40 to 2:20] http://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon/oscon-tx/public/content...

I find it funny that capitalism requires what is essentially an irrational behavior. It seems to me that big public corporations, which avoid risk, and only buy startups once they have been established, are the rational actors. On the other hands, three guys in the garage doing a startup often do it not because they calculate expected profits, but because they want to do it for other than monetary reasons - typically to show that things can be improved and done differently. And so they are willing to take huge, irrational risks.

Similar in some ways to how evolution depends mutation?

This is actually on the mark. Evolution doesn't care about individual outcomes, it concerns with survival of the genes, or species.

So even if those guys in the garage act irrationally as individuals, someone has to take those risks, otherwise the society as a whole would be out-competed.

And that's why some people have evolved (not me :-)) to take more risks, at the personal expense.

Startups are not much risk, though. You start out without, you try to make something, if it doesn't work out just having the experience as long as it wasn't a total catastrophe makes you hirable anywhere you want or you try again.

The most you might lose is the support of friends and family if your dreams aren't fully realized. Which can be a lot, but that is why the people who have the most to lose don't try startups.

There is opportunity cost which is working for a big company from the start.

If startups are not risky enough to be irrational to get involved, are you saying then the big companies are acting irrationally when not getting involved?

That's of course a dual view. But it seems to me that the big corporation is more likely the one that calculates the correct expected ROI than the startup in the unknown space..

Founding a failed startup does not "make you hireable anywhere you want."

Of course not, it's hyperbole. Your criticism can be applied to anything [1], because nothing will make someone hireable everywhere.

The point is that if you go through a decent period [2] of running a start-up you will acquire experience and skills that will make you much more attractive for hire compared to yourself without that experience. What's more, the quality of this real world experience will most likely far surpass anything you would gain in a classic university in the same amount of time [3].

[1] Depending on how literal we want to be with these word games, there are some tricks that can be done with the "you want" part of the phrase to adjust how much it applies.

[2] Let's say 6 months full-time minimum.

[3] There's no way to give a universal estimate here for everyone. However for people who are capable of self-teaching, the startup experience can be orders of magnitude more useful than university time.

Capitalism don't require irrational behavior. What is needed are things like comparative advantage and economic profit[1]. Someone who has capital has different incentives than someone who whose major offering is labor or expertise.

Newton's studies were motivated by his dislike of farming and need to revenge a bully. He got time for his most productive work because plague closed the University for two years.

----

[1]: if you are not familiar with these terms, look up definitions, because they don't mean what you think they mean.

Do you agree there is a difference in behavior between startups and big companies, though? In the way they are willing to invest into something?

If you agree, then how can you say both act rationally?

Why wouldn't rational people who have labor to offer, instead of joining a startup, go work for a big company? The pay is usually better I hear.

Addendum: I am sure you can explain the difference in behavior by invoking "preferences" or "utility" (which is actually meaningless in humans, cf. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13276760, but that aside) of monetary rewards; however, that doesn't explain why there is the difference in the first place. If some entities are rational, they should perceive the world the same way and thus have the same preferences.

You can explain it using prospect theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_theory

>If some entities are rational, they should perceive the world the same way and thus have the same preferences.

This is incorrect. Rational economic behavior is sequence of choices that gives the optimal level utility for the actor. Utility function is given and outside rationality.

Different people have different capabilities and resources available to them. Even if they had different utility functions they would behave differently for the reasons I described above.

> If you agree, then how can you say both act rationally?

Why should there be only 1 optimal way to play this game?

Example of a game with 2 optimal ways to play - tossing a coin and betting on head or tail.

Surely the optimal way to proceed when faced with betting on a coin toss is to keep your stake and guarantee you walk away with some money.

Now it may be possible to evaluate the utility of engaging in a start-up and so act rationally in entering in to such an endeavour but I'd warrant that's not how it [ever] happens. Instead it's far more realistic to assume it follows the lottery model: that people's sense of hope, or wishful thinking, makes them choose to play [at lottery, or startups] despite the analysis indicating an alternate choice is most logical. We humans are not creatures of logic.

Capitalism is also quite rational - feeding human greed while exploiting the proletariat. Initially, it can be irrational to take some risk, but beyond that, it's clean-cut rationality, and a business must behave rationally (considering rising returns as a consequence of rational conduct) or be out-competed or fail.

About the people on the garage, I don't think you can say it is irrational if they get a big non-monetary benefit from doing it.

Nor if they do it for non-monetary benefit.

Depends, is non-monetary benefit rational? Doing something that risks your food/shelter/comfort/family without guaranteed material return is probably always irrational; doing something for the thrill, or out of love, for friendship, to have the experience, etc.. All ultimately irrational wastes of energy.

There is no rational reason for you to live, you can - and hopefully do - want to, but that's not rationality. That's irrational humanity, or based on irrational axioms.

How's taking a calculated risk an irrational behavior? By your definition rational behavior would require perfect knowledge about the future, a goal forever beyond those of us mere mortals.

There are plenty of discoverers who incurred some level of risk and lost in a way that isn't covered up by history. Marie Curie's discovery killed her. Tesla's genius manifested not only in groundbreaking discovery, but also mental illness and isolation. And just ask Elisha Gray about the risks of discovery.

But, yes, history has a survivorship bias. But that's literally one of the oldest observations made. It's often said, "History is written by the victors." What PG is saying is just another version of that age-old observation.

I wish pg would start writing longer form essays again. His startup essays had a huge impact on my approach to building startups. They were hugely insightful and inspirational for me.

This essay has a great core insight, and I get you don't need more words to say it, but I still miss the longer ones

If you'd like a longer read along the lines of this note, then you might enjoy Bruno Latour's Science in Action: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Science-Action-Scientists-Engineers...

I found the book super interesting in terms of explaining how innovations happen and how we talk about them in retrospect. Although it is about science, I think a lot of the thinking would apply to programming innovations too. And unlike most blog posts, there is actually some serious sociological research behind it :-).

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 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

Scientific value != value. I view theology as a study of how humans characterize their relationship to that which is beyond logic: god, infinity, existence, whatever. To me, this study has individual and collective value even in modern times, despite the fact that it has no scientific value.

"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.

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.

Do you know of any unambiguous breakthroughs in understanding that have come out of academic theology in the past, say, 200 years? By "unambiguous" I mean "accepted by the majority of other academic theologians."

I have nothing against theology as a hobby or religious pursuit, but at some point we have to say "the well is dry" and admit that there is no grounds for spending public funds on it. Specifically: the only payback we can expect lies in the student's personal religious experience.

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.

Wait, I thought alchemy and theology were pretty mainstream back then? How was it risky? Just because they turned out to be wrong, I don't think it was crazy for someone to be studying these things back then. Seems like a modern example would be someone studying something like string theory or dark matter and later we discover these things are wrong... but there is no reason to think that today.

The penalty for unsanctioned alchemy was hanging.

His theological conclusions would have been considered heresy. The penalty for heresy was the loss of all property and status and, sometimes, death.

He was indeed taking a serious risk in studying these things.

While I appreciate what you are saying, I think the type of risk pg was talking about was the risk of wasting his time/career, not the risk to his life. The more I think about it, I think a good modern example may turn out to be someone studying AI (specifically AGI). If it turns out to be possible, and you succeed, it would be huge. If it turns out to be not possible, you would have wasted your career. So maybe the lesson is to do more than one thing.

> 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.

> Except it was three

Maybe he's referring to the bets Newton (somewhat implicitly) made by dedicating time to physics/science as well as alchemy and theology.

I think alchemy at the time was just another domain of science than anything else. To them it was like today's dark matter and dark energy or figuring out cold fusion or reaction-less drives.

These are not really bets, it's all what Newton was, a man's passion, life and legacy.

You're probably right. I think/hope you got the point anyway :)

Newton was betting that he would not go crazy or be seen as crazy. The existential risk for thinkers.

How is calling it a bet missing the point? As a scientist investigating a phenomenon in the natural world, assuming you wish to make a new contribution to your field, you are betting your time that you will both arrive at a new understanding of your subject matter and also be the first to do so.

If you just bet that for example string theory is a good enough field for research then you'll be deeply disappointed if it turns out to be nothing but a mirage.

These people live for research. They can work on anything (because interests them) and no matter if it has earth shattering consequences or small breaks they can still be happy during the process, so calling it risky or dangerous is laughable.

I think the point was that Newton devoted a lot of time to things that are not optics, mechanics and mathematics - we do not remember him for the other things obviously, which is why it is rarely known, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton's_occult_studies

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 much like a broken clock that just happened to be right twice a day.

There's a certain survivor bias in these sorts of discussions, where we identify great contributors as taking huge risks, and so forth and so on. This is true, but we also maybe tend to give them too much credit because we ignore all their failures. We tell ourselves that's why perseverence is so important, but then turn around and make fun of people or even become angry at them for wasting our time when so many things don't turn out. The difference between perseverence and shotgun approaches to pursuing knowledge seems arbitrary to me lots of times.

If you followed every one of DaVinci's ideas, for example, you'd be screwed, because he was so wrong about so many things. Today, he'd probably be seen as a crackpot because it would be so difficult to know when his idea was right and when it was wrong. The value of his ideas lies as much in his audience, the people who realized what of his ideas was correct, as much as, if not more, than in DaVinci himself.

I guess I've grown really disillusioned with advancements in science, because so much of it involves a sort of mythmaking that seems fairy-tale to me. To me, the reality seems more distributed, involving small contributions, gradually changing over time, with a lot of randomness involved.

I don't mean to come across as saying we shouldn't encourage experimentation and tinkering, or that it shouldn't be valued. In fact, I'd argue the opposite. But at the same time something seems off about our incentive structures--the way we give credit seems off.

Think of it this way: we do science because at some level, what's correct and what's not is an empirical idea. You could have 10 very reasonable explanations and 9 of them will be wrong "just because." In many cases, being intelligent has nothing to do with why the 9 are wrong, otherwise all we'd need would be philosophy and math. So why do we pretend that the 1 person who was correct was correct because they are a genius? It seems like you can't have geniuses and a need for science at the same time.

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.

About mathematician Yutaka Taniyama:

> He was not a very careful person as a mathematician. He made a lot of mistakes. But he made mistakes in a good direction. I tried to imitate him. But I’ve realized that it’s very difficult to make good mistakes.

I bet if you compared DaVinci's mistakes to the mistakes of your average Renaissance thinker you'd find a striking difference in calliber (and breadth).

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.

I would love to hear more about this

Interesting. How young would you suggest?

The most valuable thing we have is time. Unless you are born rich or wealthy time is sustenance and living money. The tradeoffs and risks involved for those born rich and those who have to work for a living are world's apart.

In the era Newton came from you would have to be wealthy to be able to afford other interests beyond surviving. So a lot of the big leaps were made by those from rich families or those lucky enough to have some sort of wealthy backer.

Plus certain things like education, family, kids are attached to specific timelines in a typical life. Health and the ability to do things are also attached to timelines. When you take a risk you could be putting all of those on line.

The ability to expend time with no certainty of returns is a luxury only those from a wealthy background have. And naturally they will be more successfuly as there are more efforts from people of those backgrounds.

also, i have the impression that alchemy's bad reputation is a bit undeserved. IIRC some alchemists believed matter was made of fundamental components and followed the scientific method well. so, that bet may be less risky than we perceive it now. this only makes pg's point stronger: it'd be the most interesting for a biography of Newton to talk about alchemy.

Indeed. Alchemy was the precursor to chemistry. The whole turning lead into gold trope was an obvious failure in hindsight, but that was not the sole point of alchemy. An awful lot was learned about chemistry and the nature of matter.

But... isn't it true that at Newton's theology was at the foundation of his physics? The idea of a single deity whose intelligence crafted a rational world, the laws of which it is man's duty to uncover, is certainly not incidental to his discoveries.

I agree with the core insight that we sometimes ignore the risk taking of high achievers while looking at their life in hindsight. However, I would not say with certainty that Newton was pursuing these fields with the mindset of betting on them. He could have been certain about the validity, value and fruitfulness of intellectual pursuits in those fields.

Interestingly, this is the second time in the past 24 hours I've encountered the idea of comparing a VC (Marc's reference) with another class of high achievers. (previous one, a comparison with entrepreneurs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13371813)

The other anecdote concerning Sir Isaac Newton that seems most apt, and it was particularly well dramatized in Neil DeGrasse Tyson's updated Cosmos series, arose when the Royal Society delayed publishing his Principia due to the spectacular failure of their Encyclopedia of Fish the year before! I am not sure which amazes me more: that "natural philosophy" encompasses everything in the cosmos from optics to marine life. Or contemporaneous short-sightedness can imbue one subject with the most paramount economic and social import, whilst viewing the other as nothing more than a mere parlor trick. Only to have the perspective of history upend such dogma centuries later!

Short-sightedness or a matter of economics, considering printing was probably not as easy and cheap in those times as it is now?

Yay! I was going to mention Cosmos but you beat me to it. I certainly appreciated the deep and rich history associated with Newton in particular among others in the fields of math and science. Their lives were often hard and wrought with conflict vs. the powers of their times, which is hugely important.

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.

pg's "theology" is a strawman.

Theology is nothing but a study of the implications of the historical events concerning Jesus of Nazareth, those events themselves being subject to the historical method.

Either I am missing something, or pg is essentially implying some or all of the following:

1. The person of Jesus Christ did not exist in history.

2. There is insufficient information concerning him.

3. Studying the historical person of Jesus Christ according to the historical method is akin to, or of similar value to, the study of alchemy, i.e. a waste of time.

I seriously doubt whether any historian interested in ancient history would make such claims.

It's pretty ignorant and reckless coming from pg.

Yes, to dismiss theology along with alchemy -- in the same sentence -- as altogether useless is childish oversimplification. Rejecting Biblical faiths is one thing, but to ignore the impact the Christian worldview has had on Western science, including the life of Isaac Newton (who would never have invested time in studying the physical world if he didn't believe it had a Creator, and therefore order), either shows a gross lack of historical knowledge or poor taste. It's a pity because I agree with him otherwise about the risk taking, which was the main point of his article.

If want to use words like childish, ignorant, poor taste, you really need to make your case better. Many scientists does not believe in a creator but still believe the physical world to have order.

In any case, whether a creator exist or not, it is still a waste of time to search in the Bible for information about his plans for the future, like Newton did.

If you are going to argue it wasn't a waste of time, you have to point out what useful information Newton discovered in his studies of the Bible.

Theology is not the study of the historical Jesus. The study of the historical Jesus using the same methods as other historical research is just historical research.

Theology on the other hand is the study of God and the Bible from a religious rather then historical angle. So it is a completely different subject.

No, Theology is "a study of the __implications__ of the historical events" concerning Jesus Christ, which is another way of saying it studies the meaning of the historical events concerning Jesus. If there are no historical events concerning Jesus, then Theology is a waste of time. You cannot study or know anything about God, which he has not himself already revealed in history. That's a fundamental tenet of Theology.

Therefore, before Theology, one must first establish the historicity and details of those events according to the historical method and textual criticism (without any bias or presuppositions from naturalist philosophy). Theology then takes it from there. And really Theology is nothing more than a study of what is already there in the Bible, for the Bible is a record not just of the events themselves, but also the meaning of those events. It provides the facts and the rubric for interpreting those facts. "Theologians" never invent or bring anything to the table, which God has not already made clear.

> "Theologians" never invent or bring anything to the table, which God has not already made clear.

That is a religious viewpoint, a leap of faith. From a rational perspective, there is no reason to think God put anything special in the Bible. The Bible is a collection of texts about things people have believed, but there is no reason to think God had a hand in it anymore than in say the Quran or the Edda.

>> "Theologians" never invent or bring anything to the table, which God has not already made clear.

> "That is a religious viewpoint, a leap of faith"

No, it reflects an understanding of the scientific method, which makes no claim to have any tools or ability to study the supernatural. Or do you disagree as to the limits and scope of science? Science is limited to the study of the natural world, which includes the study of history (according to the historical method).

"From a rational perspective, there is no reason to think God put anything special in the Bible."

By logic, that is false. If, the supernatural (should it exist) wished to break into the natural world by working events and leaving information which humans could study and understand and be sure of in terms of history, then so be it, but you have no rational ability to challenge that right. Or have you already disallowed the possibility of the supernatural or precluded any ability on its part? As Paul said to Agrippa in his defence, "why would any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?"

You do however, have the scientific ability to study history, to see if such events have not in fact taken place. History is the study of events, regardless of the "probability" of such events. Only a frequentist would hold that an event cannot happen because they themselves deem it unlikely. To the historian, events either happened or they did not.

Finally, as a corollary, it follows that there is also no scientific ability to disprove anything supernatural (as much as some naturalists would love to do), merely to prove it, and then only on the basis of its interaction with the natural world which can be studied by science. Carl Sagan would tell you the same thing.

The problem for some is that they are hampered by naturalist philosophy (as opposed to science) or frequentism, or their lifestyle or worldview, or what others think of them. As Jesus himself said to the religious Pharisees who opposed him: "How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?"

I mostly agree with everything you say, just pointing out that it is a religious viewpoint to take some claims of the supernatural at face value and reject others.

History shows us many accounts of the supernatural, but we cannot believe them all, since they are contradictory. E.g. Paul claiming he saw Jesus in a vision, Mohammad claiming God told him that Jesus was not killed, legends that Alexander was the son of Zeus and so on. At least some of these accounts of the supernatural must be unreliable. It is purely an act of faith to decide to believe some and not others, since there is no scientific way to validate the claims.

"At least some of these accounts of the supernatural must be unreliable."

Sure, as with all knowledge, it's up to you to use your discernment, objectively.

"It is purely an act of faith to decide to believe some and not others, since there is no scientific way to validate the claims."

The New Testament documents, at least, contain the plain and often awkward testimony of people who walked with Jesus. The validity of their claims can be investigated according to the historical method, and the textual reliability of the documents themselves can be investigated according to textual criticism, as you know. Above all, this testimony centers chiefly on public, verifiable events (the intersection of Jesus' life with public figures such as John the Baptist and Herod, the trial of Jesus by Pilate, the death of Jesus, the burial of Jesus in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb, the resurrection of Jesus according to eye witnesses, the immediate explosion of the persecuted 1st century church from this point onwards). That is different from "he said/she said".

Further, the faith referred to in these documents is never a blind faith, as people often impute. Rather, it is a faith in a God who is unseen (obviously), founded on a bedrock surety of things heard and seen (eye-witness testimony). The word faith simply means "trust". The question is, are the witnesses reliable? Is their testimony "trustworthy"? Do you trust Paul of Tarsus, a student of Gamaliel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamaliel) and later a converted persecutor? Do you trust his farewell to the Ephesians in Acts 20:13-38? Do you trust Peter, a middle-class fisherman with hired hands? Do you trust John, brother of James, son of Zebedee? Do you trust James, Jesus' half-brother, leader of the early 1st century Jerusalem church?

More than this, the striking thing with the person of Jesus is that he has contemporary witnesses pointing back to him, but he also has the whole weight of the Old Testament documents pointing forward to him centuries in advance, the very purpose for which they exist.

And then you have Jesus' own polarizing words, the genius of his parables, his transcendent teaching ("But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you", "So give back to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's"), his own testimony to his Father, and his own testimony to his death and resurrection. Do you trust Jesus or was he a fraud? Do you trust Jesus or was he mad? As an honest observer, his life and his own words allow for not much more choice.

We exercise faith/trust in the laws of physics on a day to day basis, and faith in the knowledge of the past or present, in terms of people we know existed or exist. We never meet them but we can know them through people who did. In the New Testament documents, it's the same principle as you come face to face with Jesus "the Christ".

There is an option beyond Lewis trilemma God/Madman/Fraud which is that Jesus, Paul etc. were sane and genuinely believed the things they say, but they believed it based on worldview build on religion and therefore not connected to reality. (Like Newton researching alchemy - he was sane and honest, he just worked from faulty premises.) Add to this that the Gospels are not genuine first-hand accounts but rather express the gradual building of a myth among the early Christians based on second-hand accounts (written down a generation after the events) and a growing body of legends.

Clearly the Gospels are not 100% trustworthy (since they contain contradictions), so unless you want to reject everything, you have to make some kind of effort to discern the believable parts from the legends. For example in the Mark, the oldest version, Jesus does not talk a lot about himself, and there is no reason to consider him anymore than a human preacher. In John the myth have grow to the level that he more of less proclaims himself a God. This clearly illustrates how the story Jesus the preacher over a few decades turns into Jesus Christ the Son of God (or even God himself).

Clearly, that is mere form criticism, which is not an academic discipline (though perhaps it still survives in some universities). It speaks more of the presuppositions of those who practice it than the text they claim to study.

The core idea of this article is that high reward is usually accompanied by high risk. To exemplify this, pg gave a great example of Newton pursuing physics, alchemy and theology.

However, this was just one example. I think the article could be greatly improved by giving, like, 50 examples (in an abbreviated form, like "Newton: physics, alchemy, theology"). With one example it's sorta easy to think, "eh that might just be an exception". With 50 example, it's easy to think, "wow, look at all of that; the core idea definitely does seem to be true".

It's a good example but I think the core of the article is that there is inherent success bias in the history of science and engineering. The scientists of the past that were working on dead end problems were not necessarily worse scientists, it could have been pure bad luck. But in hindsight it's difficult to tell those people from the incompetent.

"The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success." - Bruce Feirstein

This is similar to what Ben Thompson just wrote about [1]. It's easy to forget the bets, such as Apple TV, that weren't so successful.

[1] https://stratechery.com/2017/the-ten-year-anniversary-of-the...

Most people have not forgotten the Apple TV.

> Newton made three bets. One of them worked. But they were all risky.

Risky? What is the definition of risk? What was the downside to Newton making these 'bets'? What was the risk of Andressen deciding in college to think that what he did was the right way to go? And importantly (and my point) wouldn't the exact same action by a tenured professor be more of a risk?

Let's take the risk that Donald Trump took vs. Hillary Clinton. Trump is hated by many now and would be regardless of whether he won or lost the election (in many ways decimated his brand). The same is not true for Hillary even though she did take a reputation hit it's nowhere near what Trump (with his rhetoric) took. So same thing "run for President" different people different levels of risk.

I find this essay pretty confusing. It seems to contradict itself at some basic level.

"Maybe the smartness and the craziness were not as separate as we think."

This seems kind of obvious to me. Yes, creative and driven people are interested in lots of strange things. Yes, genius often means the ability to take ideas or discoveries from apparently widely different areas and tie them together to form new understandings.

"Newton made three bets. One of them worked."

This makes no sense. Of course his physics was a success. But how could anyone judge the theological pursuits of an individual to be a success or a failure?

And if the pursuit was a failure, then doesn't that negate the earlier implication that his studying theology ("crazy") was in some ways associated with his success in physics ("genius")?

I've been saying this for years: science is far too conservative, dogmatic, and risk-averse.

The reality is that genius minds are intellectually fearless. Newton was into alchemy and fringe theology. Edison tried to build a machine to contact the dead. Many of the great minds of the 60s who at least envisioned everything you're using now were into all kinds of "crazy" stuff: parapsychology, psychedelic consciousness expansion, shamanism, etc.

Was some of that stuff silly? Sure. Was some or even most of it a dead end? Sure. But that's not the point. The point is that great minds fear no idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSolPNn0G7M

Loved the insight, but I don't agree with the conclusions. Maybe Newton was just genius all along, and we have yet to discover the "hugeness" of alchemy and theology.

I think what you're saying compliments the conclusions made by PG.

If you think alchemy might have promise, go and study it! You'll be taking a risk, but it might just change the world (and put you in the history books).

I started typing out a comment but you said what I was trying to say in half as many words, thanks

Newtons dabbling in Alchemy made him very sick, so there was definitely a risk there. He also invested and lost his life savings in a speculative stock bubble. The bet that really paid off financially was his occult connections that got him a job as warden of the royal mint where his currency manipulation lead to an increase in demand for coins and made him a huge personal fortune. At least that's what I heard. Happy to be corrected.

Graham's casual dismissal of 'useless' theology demonstrates a complete lack of awareness of the demise of the secularization hypothesis.

I honestly think that Newton was well aware of the unlikelihood of making breakthroughs in theology and alchemy[1].

In physics he had a lower[2] benefit but much higher probability of progress.

  1. Plus he went a little mad from chemical fumes.
  2. Really.  Imagine[3] making a real breakthrough in alchemy or theology!
  3. I can't imagine it and you almost certainly can't either.

Nuclear science can be considered a breakthrough in alchemy. We can even create new elements!

So what's the take-away? Make many high risk bets in hoping one will pay off?

Newton is an exception as well. While his biographers down-play his failures, he is also credited (at least in High School Physics) with things that were the work of dozens or even hundreds of scientists - or giants you might say.

For those interested in Newton's theology and alchemy work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton's_occult_studies

Plus there is the Newton Project, http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/prism.php?id=1. One time I looked his alchemy writings were in a code that he had concocted. I recall he had astronomical (astrological) terms for chemicals. Maybe, that ties in with what someone else wrote above about there being a belief at the time that things on earth reflected what was in the heavens.

Newton had an epic insight into combinatorics. The calculus work he did during the university quarantine shutdown is great to page through. I wonder how much farther Newton, Gauss, Euler, and Erdos would have gotten if they knew how to code.

Neal Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle" goes into great detail about Isaac Newton's life, and his focus on alchemy and theology. It is of course fiction, but well researched and utterly fascinating. I recommend it!

Maybe alchemy and theology was just how he blew off steam. It seems like me did them a lot, but you know, we all like to have our hobbies.

Trying to describe the mindset of newton 100s of years after his death seems a bit reaching.

On his essay tab, PG's "Risk of Discovery" is loading at the bottom, instead of the top near the more recent ones - is this happening for anyone else?

I bet Newton pursued what he was interested in, rather than thinking "well, I better hedge my bets!"

We do not in fact know how Theology turned out. But we will know or rather we won't when we do.

What exactly was Newton risking? An entrepreneur who quits her job and takes out a mortgage to start a business is risking her livelihood. If she fails, she and her family could end up on the street. Newton came from a wealthy family. If he failed in his intellectual endeavors the "risk" for him was to live out his life as an ordinary rich person and only ending up in the more obscure history books.

I think Fredrick Smith (founder of Fedex) is a much better example of someone taking an entrepreneurial and intellectual risk.

http://about.van.fedex.com/our-story/history-timeline/histor...

I may be mis-understanding the authors intent, but I don't see him as saying that Newton risked wealth or comfort, rather that he risked time-spent on fruitful endeavors.

He was risking his time and attention in studying it. The opportunity cost is nontrivial, especially if you have the kind of IQ Newton had.

Opportunity cost

Good point, and there's evidence to support the fact that the main indicator of a successful entrepreneur, is if he or his family is wealthy.

Newton's theology was extremely heretical (to all major religious factions, as he was an anti-Trinitarian!) at a time when religious politics in England were brutal and could easily be fatal; being expelled from Cambridge for violating the religion oaths/tests would've only been the start. And, incidentally, alchemy was, besides being highly disreputable & associated with con artists, illegal in England for centuries before and for most of Newton's career: punishable by death and then confiscation of the deceased's estate (Levere, _Transforming Matter: A History of Chemistry from Alchemy to the Buckyball_). So if the full extent of Newton's activities & beliefs had been known, he could have lost his good name, job, life, and any family wealth.

So what exactly was Newton risking?

Everything.

Good points. His position must have been tenuous anyway as it was a requirement of Cambridge that all Fellows become ordained Anglican priests. Newton only avoided this by special exemption from Charles II and it is not likely that he could afford to be exposed as breaking other regulations. Maybe this is part of the reason he was so reluctant to publish, he may have wondered if his physical reasoning could be construed as somehow against the prevailing religious beliefs of the time, especially when you see the approbation Newton's intellectual predecessor Galileo suffered for his new physics.

But you are actually making my point for me. Opportunity cost is a vacuous argument. Everything you do has an opportunity cost. That's not a risk, it's just a consequence of the laws of physics.

Maybe publishing would have counted as taking a risk for the reasons you cite, but Newton resisted publishing for a very long time, so he was actually avoiding that risk. So once again it really seems to me that Newton is not a good example of the merits of taking risks. (Quite the contrary in fact.)

Newton's family was not well off. His father, a yeoman, died before he was born, his mother remarried a reverend, who also died before Newton came of age. His mother wanted him to be a farmer, which is not lucrative unless you have huge tracts of land(which he did not).

When he was first admitted to Trinity, he was a subsizar - that is, he had to perform valet duties in order to pay for his education. He only stopped doing those duties when he was awarded a scholarship.

Well, my source was:

http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/9-things-you-may-n...

"When Newton was three, his mother wed a wealthy clergyman, Barnabas Smith..."

"In 1705, Newton was knighted by Queen Anne. By that time, he’d become wealthy after inheriting his mother’s property..."

Newton's mother died in 1679, when Newton was 37. Principia was published in 1687.

I'm curious, was the risk material for Newton, or just virtual, like "risk of failure" which would just be an embarrassment.

if they failed they still had their lands and titles.

Sorry, Newton didn't "make bets", he was not a Silicon Valley VC. He worked on problems that he found interesting and that he believed would reveal eternal truths established and maintained by God.

Exactly. PG: Get your grubby money-first hands off the biographies of those who are driven by a genuine interest in understanding the world.

Please don't get stuck on semantics. When you decide to take a longer route because you think there will be less traffic, you "make a bet". You "make a bet" by deciding to go to college instead of straight into the working world. Anywhere there is a decision to be made with uncertain outcomes, you "make a bet". It doesn't have to be about money, although it often is.

But none of that has to do with Newton. Was alchemy or physics the long route? Only Newton knows and he's dead.

Not trying to be dense here, I just don't see the insight. How is what you are saying any different than "you don't know what's going to happen" without Newton attached to it?

When you write "Was alchemy or physics the long bet?" it seems you concede that Newton made a bet, and that it didn't involve money. That was my only point: We all make decisions that involve some amount of guesswork on risk vs reward, and it's not always about money.

For sake of argument, let's say Newton's reward was the advancement of human knowledge. He made some high-risk bets that didn't pay off (alchemy, theology), and some that did (physics, calculus).

All PG is saying is that when we look at famous historical figures, after centuries of deification, we tend to focus only on the bets that paid off, and ignore all the failures. But those failures are crucially important to who these figures were as people, and it does them (and ourselves) a disservice to only focus on the successes.

I didn't 'make a bet' by going to college, it was the assumed thing in my family, it was culturally ingrained that I would go to college. This way of looking at life as a series of 'bets' that one makes is it's own particular kind of culture, one that Newton did not belong to.

Newton didn't investigate alchemy and theology because he was trying to diversify his fame investment portfolio. To see him this way is to do a disservice to him and to history.

Replace 'bet' with 'choice.' It's the same message.

I'd say that asserting Newton had no choice does him a greater disservice. Call them bets, choices or decisions; there were opportunity costs involved, paths to choose, and he chose some that worked out and some that didn't.

> Please don't get stuck on semantics.

That's a blaming statement used to indicate someone is being pedantic, which can then be used to "prove" them wrong by the followup. All of your counter examples are based on the obtaining a better position, which is all about dealing with globalized suffering (money is stored work and work is a unit of causality and suffering is a result of causality).

Newton presumably pursued understanding the unknown, which means he chose his own suffering/work that was different from any objective based on making bets to get ahead in life at the time.

I think it's entirely fair to point out that Newton wasn't betting at the time. He was discovering purely for the sake of discovery.

Are you denying he had any choice in what areas of discovery to pursue? And that there were no trade-offs involved? If not, then you are stuck on semantics.

I'm not stuck on semantics, so that's the truth of the matter, whether you attempt to rationalize I am or not. Make no mistake that semantics are always important. Without the English language, neither you or I could communicate concepts here. It also allows you to attempt to reword what others are saying, but I'm not going to allow that here.

When you attempt to state someone is "stuck on semantics" and that person actually hasn't said as much, you are speaking for their intent. When that is backed up with the intent of proving them wrong on some topic, it only serves to indicate intent. The older I get, the more irritating this behavior becomes, especially when the person refuses to acknowledge what is being said and continues to rationalize from their point of view in order to frame a statement by someone else. You act as if language (and semantics) are logical. They aren't, and neither are humans. We'd do well to stop speaking for each other in aggregate in an attempt to make it more logical. This concept itself is counterintuitive.

Newton had every choice to pursue interests. Not having prior knowledge of "areas of discovery", it would appear he pursued what was interesting to him. If you look at Faraday, he pursued things to find a single source force - I would expect Newton though along the same lines. In fact, even if he knew someone else was interested in an "area of discovery", he could have just been interested in that topic for purely knowing purposes.

Wanting to know more about things, the nature of things if you will, is not something that can be considered a "bet". It's simply curiosity.

Tomato, To-MAH-to.

Look at Newton's Early life (0) and we can see that he did not 'make a bet' with his life. Though he managed to get into Cambridge on a scholarship (an element of luck), he was considered 'undistinguished as a Cambridge student.' His 3 really big accomplishments (optics, gravitation, calculus) were generated when he was on break for 2 years from Cambridge due to plague. The question we then must ask is: what would he have done otherwise? It's a 'bet' if there is an element of risk, though it seems this discussion is more about what different English speakers use the word 'bet' to mean. What were the downsides to just poking about with math and lenses in your 'free' hours? Maybe he missed out on some farming/church duties or he traded this time to do Optics instead of gossiping. I don't know. What did young mid-17th century celibate Englishmen do in those days while hiding from the black death? Tennis? Point is, he wasn't really risking anything but a little bit of time spent in the mid 1600's English countryside that he had to spend out there anyways. A 'real bet' would have been staying at Cambridge despite the plague to work on Optics with the professors, as the risk there was quite clearly your life.

(0) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_of_Isaac_Newton

He could have chosen to focus solely on theology. He could have chosen to focus on entirely different areas that were all dead-ends. People are really getting hung-up on the word "bet"; evaluating opportunity costs is part of life. To focus on one word and miss the forest for the trees speaks more about the critic than it does of Newton.

Every decision you make with incomplete information is a bet.

Judging that way each and every one of our actions (including me writing this comment) is a bet, because AFAIK we still live in a world where we do not have "complete information". From time to time I think about one of Mark Twain's short novels which I read as an adolescent, where a lady decides to take the left road instead of the one on the right (or vice-versa) when she reaches a road-junction, and because of that single decision her life changes dramatically.

Indeed! And how about that classic Robert Frost poem, "The Road Not Taken" [1]

Edit: WOW, after reading the commentary on the poem, I never realized how wrong I was. The poem is a joke, he's saying it didn't really matter which path he took. All these years I took it so seriously, which apparently is a common mistake dating back to the very first time the poem was read in front of an audience.

[1] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/core-poe...

After reading the "poem guide" there I have to agree, WOW. My mind is blown. Despite destroying what it meant to me for 30 years, the older me appreciates the poem even more for its subtlety.

There's an episode of The West Wing that brilliantly uses that misconception. Can't find it on youtube unfortunately.

There wasn't quite the sharp division of disciplines, either. Thinking about it that way comes from the public school system (which the author ought to know, because if I'm not mistaken, he mentioned that in a previous essay). Mathematics (which didn't warrant a mention as a bet that paid off in a blurb about the guy that invented calculus), metaphysics, and the natural sciences were all areas of study, but they weren't different bets: they were interrelated components of our understanding of the universe.

guy that co-invented calculus...

I'd say co-invented would apply more if he worked together with Leibniz on it. Instead, they both invented it independently, around the same time (with differing notation, but both gave the means to reach the same results).

no, guy that invented calculus independently, but around the same time as someone else did

I think you are agreeing with the author, who is trying here to refute the misconception that Newton was simultaneously a brilliant, grounded, impartial truth seeker who discovered physics and a batshit conspiracist who dabbled in alchemy and theology.

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 vel minore fruatur."

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. Still, merely casting God as being ultimately responsible is a step forward from interweaving theology throughout your physical theories.

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.

Oops, I didn't know that!

Existential risk of goingg/being-seen-as crazy.

your time is finite and your most valuable resource (usually), betting your time is the biggest bet you can make

He wagered his time. Everything you choose to work on means you're not working on something else. So by choosing to work on something, you're necessarily "betting" that it's going to be more fruitful than the infinitely many other things you could be doing.

Expending resources, whether time or money, on something with an uncertain outcome is a bet. I'm not sure what the objection is to using that term. Nobody said Newton was a Silicon Valley VC.

This is mostly confirmation bias. It's quite common to be 'kind of crazy', and it happens at all levels of intellect, from your working-class 'nutter' to your high-born 'eccentric'. There's nothing special about being smart when it comes to being 'kind of crazy'.

Calling his study of theology and alchemy "crazy" seems a bit short sighted. Newtons intense devotion to understanding the scriptures was likely what allowed him to make so much progress in science. Since God saw what a devoted student he was, chose to reward him in that manner of scientific enlightenment. The study of scripture was primary, his science, secondary.

Except that that fails to account for the many devout believers who tried and failed for such enlightenment, or the fact that others have reached great scientific and mathematical heights without being devout students.

Also, having read a fair bit about his life, his scientific and mathematical endeavours were most definitely not secondary to anything.

PG's articles sure have gone down hill :(

Or maybe you're just remembering his successful articles and forgetting his lower quality ones?

It's amusing that he uses a modern chauvinism ("making a bet") in this way, while noting that some of Newton's "bets" were only "wasteful" (risky, bad, whatever) when viewed through the lense of modern knowledge.

He has a good point, put poorly, and without good support in his chosen example.

What do you mean by calling the phrase "making a bet" a chauvinism? It just seems like a figure of speech. Gambling has existed for a very long time.

(I don't mean to disagree or agree with you, just genuinely don't know what you mean, might end up going either way after you explain your cryptic (to me) remark)

In this context it imposes a modern view of "opportunity cost" that would simply not have occurred to Newton or any of his contemporaries. It's just too far back in history to really be useful as a support for his argument, especially given the convoluted and mixed approach used.

I think you have a point here. Newton seems to have been encouraged in his mathematical/physical pursuits by several people early in his career, when he was studying and, later, a young professor at Cambridge.

This kind of slow work and accumulating recognition (by a series of Cambridge alums up through the Lucasian professor at the time, throughout 1661 to 1672) is not really well-described as a "bet".

I'm not seeing what the risk was. He was taking a chance that he was wrong, yes, but that was just science. Risk suggests a danger. But what was it?

Excommunication, ostracism and poverty.

But that's the thing: he was wrong about that stuff and he didn't suffer any real consequences for being so.

Here "risk" is opportunity cost. You can spend all you life in theology and die unknown. Newton is famous only because of physics, the other fields were waste of his time. There are countless people who spend their life perusing projects that do not produce anything valuable. And then there are few that win Nobel.

>There are countless people who spend their life perusing projects that do not produce anything valuable.

It can't be understated how painful that has to be from their perspective.

I suppose a similar story is where they do produce something of value, but it's incremental in nature. Incremental advancements usually don't receive much recognition.

> It can't be understated how painful that has to be from their perspective.

Why? Somebody can play videogames all day, because it's fun, and then die all of sudden. They didn't produce anything valuable, and yet, they didn't feel bad about it.

It's only painful if you rethink it, and basically say, I should have spent my time doing something else. Which is a paradox of choice.

The comment I was replying to was explicitly in context of projects. Not merely wasting life, but wasting life in pursuit of something.

The motivation for most people when they pursue something is to succeed, and their efforts to have mattered.

As an aside, I regularly run into people today -- nearly 400 years later -- who primarily know Pascal, a contemporary of Newton, as a theologian.

> die unknown

Is this really the motivation for anyone?

This is one of the main motivators in science. People do science trying to discover something no one knows and be recognized for that. Very few would be still motivated if you leave just discovery part and drop recognition.

As show very tangibly by Apple recently opening up and allowing their AI researchers to publish.

https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/26/apple-publishes-first-ai...

> AI is an increasingly competitive field, and Apple's past reluctance to contribute to scientific knowledge may have scared away potential hires who wanted their discoveries recognized. If papers like these become relatively commonplace, Apple might have an easier time attracting the talent it needs for self-driving car platforms, Siri and other AI-based projects.

>You can spend all you life in theology and die unknown.

You can do that in physics and natural philosophy too. What's your point? There are plenty of theologians. This idea that the only noble pursuit is scientific, which PG seems to be saying in this essay from my reading, and in fact other commenters, is borderline scientism.

Why would theology have been a bad thing to pursue, other than some sense of satisfaction you don't even get from people remembering you after you are dead?

Sure, but I'm not sure it's clear that working in e.g. theology didn't help him in his more technical work.

Have a broad and well-rounded view tends to help. I don't know a good mathematician who doesn't read, write, play music, explore other fields with passion and vigor. You get fresh ideas and it keeps your mind limber and flexible.

I'm not sure you could say a Newton who knew nothing but physics and physics only would have made the same breakthroughs.

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