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The Scientist as Rebel

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33 pointspoindontcare7 comments

Wow, this actually looks really great.

I just got through reading Edward Frenkel's book "Love and Math", which was excellent up until he started to make claims about how mathematics would save the world, triumph of objectivism, etc. etc. And just prior to this he wafts over Godel without even mentioning incompleteness.

So I'm heartened to read Dyson talking about incompleteness as a failure of "reductionism". And then throwing Einstein into the same dumpster. (But we all love uncle Albert anyway.)

“In the history of science there is always a tension between revolutionaries and conservatives, between those who build grand castles in the air and those who prefer to lay one brick at a time on solid ground.” -Freeman Dyson

I keep looking for these revolutionaries, because all I seem to find are people who rather we tow the party line, study popular theories and methods that will win grants, are more busywork than difficult since they are doable but are tractable and easily fundable with low risk since they are but minor adjusting of the skirt of the already established theory.

To me the question is, how can we structure things so the incentives aren't biased so strongly towards what keeps bureaucracies happy, and so there's greater incentives for more innovative work? The current system seems to make it very difficult for anyone to do innovative work.

The problem is doing so without funding crackpots that look identical to revolutionaries from the outside.

Ok, I'm really liking this. Finally, someone writes about science as if they get it, or at least get me, rather than as if it's Really About the snarky comments peer-reviewers make when you have the appalling rudeness to try and publish!

This needs to be shouted from rooftops. Emotional ideologies run strong in mankind, and a big dose of empirical thinking would solve nearly all of our species' problems.

Technically, most of our problems are surmountable. However, our collective behaviors due to our evolutionary instincts are leading us to ruin.

I often find that if a young student's first teachings are in science, they will forever grow up to be empirically minded. Sadly, our education systems are more about indoctrination in national propaganda than any kind of quest for knowledge. Such is the sad state of mankind [1][2].

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1cNaFG1VII

2. https://youtu.be/WnAQQ4StnEg

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