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Comment by mjklin | Hacker News Reader

Nobel disease!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease

It has been argued that the effect results, in part, from a tendency for Nobel winners to feel empowered by the award to speak on topics outside their specific area of expertise, although it is unknown whether Nobel Prize winners are more prone to this tendency than other individuals.

I moderated a list for parents of gifted kids at one time. Bright kids tend to have bright parents, so most of these people were used to being the smartest person in the room and most of them defaulted to assuming that if you disagreed with them, you were basically "just stupid."

It was really challenging at first to get people to assume the other person was also smart and likely had good reasons for having drawn different conclusions.

>although it is unknown whether Nobel Prize winners are more prone to this tendency than other individuals.

I think we can at least confidently say that other people are more willing to listen to an NP winner. That could completely explain the phenomenon.

That was exactly my thought: The real problem is not the Nobel Prize winner going off on a wild hair. The real problem is people persisting in believing it just might make sense, never mind all evidence to the contrary, because "They won a Nobel Prize, so maybe it's just more brilliant insight beyond my understanding!"

Whenever I see this come up I always wonder if what's really going on is that the famous figure who has been rewarded with a prize that implies single-handed mastery or genius of a subject, was in fact the beneficiary of some unpretentious actual genius(es) who worked under them but didn't have the influence or connections to get the appropriate funding for the work that made their boss/advisor/PI famous.

Later in life the people responsible for their success have moved on to their own careers, and the celebrity genius now has to start over without the chemistry or medicine equivalent of The Wrecking Crew to keep them on track.

I think that's likely part of it, but I think it's also the case of "genius and insanity are 2 sides of the same coin."

Nobel prizes aren't given for being the best scientist, they're given for novel discoveries. And to make a novel discovery often means you're putting forth a theory that's probably a bit "out there" to begin with. Couple that with the fact that once you've won the Nobel prize you can convince yourself that your shit don't stink, so that when you make further wildly outlandish claims you can just convince yourself the masses just don't "get it" like how they didn't necessarily get it before you won your Nobel.

Musk is my current favorite example of this. I think he was undeniably a visionary when it came to electric cars and private space travel, but his success in those areas (in which he was heavily guided by his underlings, similar to what you point out) convinced him he can be an "unrestrained genius" in other areas, when in reality he's just a douche bag.

With all due respect, I feel very uneasy about putting that scam-artist on the same page as many people, but let alone NP-winners. Elon is just all around dumb with exorbitant amounts of money and sheer luck.

s/luck/persistence/

I dislike Elon Musk generally but you have to give credit where it is due.

People get old and they cannae hack it anymore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a94jraWNG-g

Normally, I would agree that PIs receive too much credit off the backs of their subordinates, but Pauling's writings were really a cut above for the time. He legitimately seemed like a brilliant scientist or made foundational contributions to chemistry.

I am failing to find the accounting of how he reportedly deduced the chemical nature of sickle cell anemia, but it is something else.

That he chased vitamin C does not make me think any less of him. Plenty of science is wrong and goes nowhere after significant effort.

I don’t see a personality failure (which happens here — people overestimate their own knowledge in another areas. It doesn’t need a Nobel prize, just look at this site. It is a very common thing in software developers - myself often included unfortunately, in my experience) contradictory to being truly smart. For Pauling personally, I have read some of his books and they were absolutely brilliantly written. Unless we say that he didn’t in fact write them, I really wouldn’t take away his own genius behind the prize.

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