from Hacker News

Intolerable Genius: Berkeley's Most Controversial Nobel Laureate (2019)

by oli5679 on 12/29/24, 7:40 PM with 24 comments

by not_your_vase on 12/29/24, 8:17 PM
Somewhat reminds me of Bob Widlar - who was an alcoholic, aggressive, confrontation-seeking jerk, but at the same time he was also one of the biggest genius of the last century, when it comes to electronics engineering.
by Amorymeltzer on 12/29/24, 8:56 PM
It's mentioned, but his memoir, Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, is absolutely worth the read. It's a quick read, bouncing between inventing PCR and meeting aliens. His views on all sorts of things—HIV/AIDS is the big one—were atrocious, but his life (as told by him) was a fair balance for getting to understand the guy.
by giardini on 12/29/24, 9:20 PM
I thought it would be Robert Trivers who had some rough spots in his academic career, but I was wrong! Trivers is in biology, which has no Nobel prize.
Trivers instead got the Crafoord Prize, which awards $500,000. See what Steven Pinker said about Trivers' ideas:
https://www.edge.org/memberbio/robert_trivers
by MrMcCall on 12/29/24, 9:34 PM
> In Esquire Yoffe wrote that “… genius and gentility don’t always share the same chromosome.”
That writer is ignorant of the truth.
The truth is that very few people want to take responsibility for their ideals, attitudes, and behaviors, plus their self-evolution or lack thereof, of them, with respect to their compassionate treatment of others. That's always wherefrom the cult of personality springs forth.
The vast majority of such aholes have nothing to blame but their choices and their selfishness and their lack of seeing any problem with them, although there are physical problems in a very small percentage of people that can cause damage to one's instincts, moral compass, and self-control, among them the results of various substances.
by wenc on 12/30/24, 5:06 AM
Veritassium did a recent video on Kary Mullis and PCR.
It's one of the most accessible videos on PCR I've ever come across (I have no background in biology), and also an interesting history of Kary Mullis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaXKQ70q4KQ
by throwaway81523 on 12/30/24, 12:41 AM
It's about Kary Mullis. I was trying to remember if Duesberg had won a Nobel.
by MrMcCall on 12/29/24, 9:17 PM
> Schekman, who calls Mullis’s Nobel a “complete fluke,” compares him to the man in the White House. “He’s the molecular biology equivalent of Donald Trump in terms of his personal behavior,” he says.
Priceless.
The key to that ahole's life is that his use of LSD damaged his sense of morality and comprehension of the truth. As glorious Finland have demonstrated, the ability to learn how to know when something is true or not is within not only our human capacity, but within a pedagogic system. On the negative side of this human ability, we can also choose to believe any horsesh_t our minds latch onto, as we can always to choose to reject any evidence we deem "inconsequential".
The general populace's inability to recognize a liar then makes them susceptible to charismatic fools and charlatans. That the power structures of our societies reward and protect those "accomplished" tricksters is another layer to the problem.
We are all the sum-total of the moral choices of our lifetime, which have an inertia in opposition to our ability to veer in a different direction.
As Don Juan tells Castaneda, the use of "power plants" (hallucinagenic drugs) is overall bad for the body and should be avoided. Don Juan only used them on Carlos because Carlos was so stubborn, and needed the jolt, if the book's premises are to be believed.
by UniverseHacker on 1/3/25, 8:05 PM
What an uninspired and dishonest view of Mullis.
This basically presents him as an idiot that just got very lucky once - a "complete fluke," that had an unfortunately awful personality... and then goes on to try and spread the credit for his invention to other people that did trivial and straightforward parts of proving he was right after the fact.
You cannot separate his weirdness from his ability to invent PCR: his unconventional way of thinking is exactly what made both his discovery and his behaviors and personality. It is quite frankly, disgusting that our culture and scientific community cannot accept intellectual diversity and neurodiversity, and people like him that are different enough to actually bring a new perspective are systematically pushed out.
If they're accepted at all, it is the Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer story- only as long and because they are useful, while constantly needing to provide massive value that others don't have to provide, just to exist in the same spaces while being neurodivergent.
I've had the opportunity to know and work with a few people that were just as "weird" as Mullis and had ideas just as good- but all were pushed out fast enough they didn't get to contribute anything and/or the credit was stolen entirely. Of two of the smartest and weirdest colleagues I've known as scientists- one is now an off the grid subsistence farmer in the middle of nowhere, the other dead by suicide. Both were capable of far more than any of the people that pushed them out.
by timr on 12/29/24, 8:56 PM
"Intolerable"
Ugh. Here's a crazy thought: instead of trying to cancel everyone who says something you disagree with, maybe you can just remember them for the thing they accomplished, and ignore the parts you don't like? It's embarrassing that this headline is in a magazine published by a major university.
People are complex. When you throw out everyone for the worst thing they ever said or did, you don't have anyone left -- other than the people who haven't disappointed you yet [1].
[1] or worse...the people whom you refuse to see honestly.