from Hacker News

The Scientific Virtues: Stupidity, Arrogance, Laziness

by bobcostas55 on 2/11/22, 1:00 PM with 54 comments

• by goatsneez on 2/11/22, 2:32 PM

  Just wonderful presentation of what values to hold for a curious, serious person trying to understand the (physical) world. Of cause, there is little bit of hyperbola on labeling some of these virtues, however, it is so enjoyable to put it this way nonetheless, and I would say does drive home the main point: the courage to be say I do no know.

  What was not said explicitly in the article is that all these virtues while needed in trying to understand (and find out, cut-through "bullshit") one has to hold of emotions and value judgements. And that is mighty difficult (things that we intuitively feel like should be or ought to be true). This is what B. Russell articulated so well in several of his maxims as well: "..the will to find out has to be much greater than the will to believe".

  As a parting remark, one can observes the exact opposite is (implicitly) demanded from researchers, and vanishingly small number of people are able to stand their ground against the current of modern scientism (which infested normal discourse, education institutions, and even research). "Selling" yourself, selling results, being vocal, advertise, publishing for sake of publishing, those things are part of a metric these days. What to do when adhering to the real virtues touched upon in this writing will essentially kill ones career?

• by pdonis on 2/11/22, 3:22 PM

  Of all the qualities described in this article, I think the most important is being able to live with not knowing things, as described by Feynman:

  "I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit and if I can’t figure it out, then I go on to something else, but I don’t have to know an answer"

  We humans are generally not wired to accept not knowing things; we are wired to believe some answer to any question we can think to ask, whether we actually have any real basis for an answer or not. But giving in to that temptation just means our beliefs are out of sync with reality.

• by zhoujianfu on 2/11/22, 4:25 PM

  The programmers virtues: Impatience, Hubris, Laziness

  -Larry Wall

• by jkhdigital on 2/12/22, 2:15 AM

  This is a lengthy read, but I was startled enough by an observation halfway through that I thought to comment on it: after mostly quoting legendary physicists to drive home points about stupidity and arrogance, the author quotes a certain Judith Rich Harris. I only recognized the name because, in the course of reading various parenting tracts, I came across her book The Nurture Fallacy and it absolutely upended my beliefs on the subject. That she would be placed alongside Richard Feynmann as an exemplar of scientific virtue is a testament to the boldness (and truth) of her theory, but it is inconvenient enough to her field that it has been largely buried and most parents will never hear the truth.

• by fungiblecog on 2/12/22, 12:07 AM

  Not just for scientists either. Almost every problem I experience at work has at it’s root someone who is too scared to say they don’t understand something.

• by pvaldes on 2/11/22, 4:26 PM

  Where is Masochism in this list?

• by gwern on 2/11/22, 11:49 PM

  I wonder if those Feynman examples are 'rubberducking' but done on other people?

• by purplepatrick on 2/12/22, 3:55 AM

  So, more like:

  Self Awareness, Naïveté, Perseverance, Emotional Distance, Vision, Skepticism, Humor

• by readingnews on 2/11/22, 4:39 PM

  I wonder if these quotes are all accurate? Some of them are very good indeed.

• by upsidesinclude on 2/11/22, 11:11 PM

  "I am the science."

  -Anthony Fauci

• by entropicgravity on 2/13/22, 6:35 PM

  Wow, I missed my calling.

• by giantg2 on 2/11/22, 3:27 PM

  I'm dumb and ask stupid questions. My curiosity has only hurt me.