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I personally don't care, but if I had to pick, I would want a scientist that was technically proficient, flexible in their thinking, and was able to explain the

I personally don't care, but if I had to pick, I would want a scientist that was technically proficient, flexible in their thinking, and was able to explain the current way of thinking to a level acceptable to his peers. That'd be it. As far as personal beliefs, if I had to pick, I'd want a guy who had the craziest damn personal beliefs I could find. Perhaps involving the Great Pumpkin, or tiny elves that live in the forest and come out at night. Why? Because science is not orthodoxy. That is, science is always provisional and always open to change. Some jerk who "just knows" that string theory is right is the last guy I want looking at string theory. Give it to the guy who reads palms and is waiting for the Xanians to arrive in their spaceships after the eclipse. There is an assumption here, that having some sort of faith would preclude being able to do your job. It's not true -- or rather, it's being inflexible that prevents you from doing your job as a scientist. People are marvelous creatures. They can be hard-headed and inflexible in an infinite number of ways, most of which do not involve some formal belief system. As a for-instance, I imagine many people would think that believing in Intelligent Design would be a disqualifier for studying cosmology. And they would stubbornly resist changing their mind to the contrary. This is exactly the kind of inflexibility you need to watch out for. If you already know where you're going to end up, there's not much point in taking the journey. Very interesting that thinking of this problem in terms of flexibility and creative thinking (the key elements to move science forward) turns up a completely different answer than thinking about it in terms of "what's most likely correct?" which is an interesting question but not germane. All you're checking with that "does this guy believe what most of us do?" is whether or not most other scientists think this guy is a good guesser, ie, he agrees with them. That's a bit too much popularity contest and groupthink for me.

nika 16y ago
Orthodoxy, in all ways seems to plague people. Plus you get that employee who has the unorthodox beliefs and you know you've got someone whose had to think about them. Someone whose had to overcome the inertia and social pressure for conformity. In business, repeating what others have done is not nearly as profitable is discovering something new. This could be new technology, but it can also come from understanding the market in a way that others did not see. Groupon could have been done in 1998 or 2003. It is not technically all that complex, but the different perspective on the market created massive value.
dasil003 16y ago
You know I might be able to get behind the idea that religious beliefs shouldn't be privileged against other "crazy" beliefs, but I can't help but feel that Dawkins has an unjustifiable axe to grind against religion. The idea that people are divided into rational and irrational is just plain wrong. We all take things on faith, because we do not (and likely can not) have perfect information. Science is great at deducing rules from observation, but life is more than a series of facts. I am agnostic, not because I believe any religious texts literally, but in general the very nature of my own consciousness leads me to believe that we are here for a purpose, and I believe that purpose could be communicated to us from "a higher power", and if that were the case, of course the tool of choice would be through parable digestible by the masses within a given culture. If God exists, he is certainly not comprehensible by our limited brains, and so of course a metaphor like a bearded man in the sky is the closest we're going to get anyway. There is a significant number of science purists who seem offended by the fact that I might choose to believe something vague and untestable. They set up strawmen about the irrationality of believing in a flying spaghetti monster without evidence, all the while ignoring all the subtle beliefs that they take on faith. The fact is that almost any idea can be broken down, and attacked on various levels—just try the three-year-old test and ask "Why?" a half dozen times, and pretty soon you're on some heady philosophical ground. At the meta-level I feel like the intolerance of religion today is no different than the intolerance of atheists from generations past. Fundamentally it's about people who are uncomfortable with people who hold different beliefs, which is inevitable if we are to be free thinkers. The fact that science is about factual observation and the pursuit of true mathematical models doesn't make it axiomatically right. Science is orthogonal to morality, and morality is a key part of human relations.
- pjscott 16y ago
  > The idea that people are divided into rational and irrational is just plain wrong. Who even made this claim? Obviously there's a spectrum. Perfect rationality is uncomputable; the best we can do is approximations. As Isaac Asimov cleverly put it: "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." > I am agnostic, not because I believe any religious texts literally, but in general the very nature of my own consciousness leads me to believe that we are here for a purpose, and I believe that purpose could be communicated to us from "a higher power", and if that were the case, of course the tool of choice would be through parable digestible by the masses within a given culture. If God exists, he is certainly not comprehensible by our limited brains, and so of course a metaphor like a bearded man in the sky is the closest we're going to get anyway. Those are some pretty non-obvious claims. Are you sure that parables of a highly anthropomorphic god would work better than, say, a straightforward (albeit complicated and confusing) explanation? How do you know that thinking of a "bearded man in the sky" is the best we can do? > At the meta-level I feel like the intolerance of religion today is no different than the intolerance of atheists from generations past. At a meta-meta-level I feel that statements like this are usually an attempt at social signaling rather than a properly thought-out factual claim.

nika 16y ago

Orthodoxy, in all ways seems to plague people. Plus you get that employee who has the unorthodox beliefs and you know you've got someone whose had to think about them. Someone whose had to overcome the inertia and social pressure for conformity. In business, repeating what others have done is not nearly as profitable is discovering something new. This could be new technology, but it can also come from understanding the market in a way that others did not see. Groupon could have been done in 1998 or 2003. It is not technically all that complex, but the different perspective on the market created massive value.

dasil003 16y ago

You know I might be able to get behind the idea that religious beliefs shouldn't be privileged against other "crazy" beliefs, but I can't help but feel that Dawkins has an unjustifiable axe to grind against religion. The idea that people are divided into rational and irrational is just plain wrong. We all take things on faith, because we do not (and likely can not) have perfect information. Science is great at deducing rules from observation, but life is more than a series of facts. I am agnostic, not because I believe any religious texts literally, but in general the very nature of my own consciousness leads me to believe that we are here for a purpose, and I believe that purpose could be communicated to us from "a higher power", and if that were the case, of course the tool of choice would be through parable digestible by the masses within a given culture. If God exists, he is certainly not comprehensible by our limited brains, and so of course a metaphor like a bearded man in the sky is the closest we're going to get anyway. There is a significant number of science purists who seem offended by the fact that I might choose to believe something vague and untestable. They set up strawmen about the irrationality of believing in a flying spaghetti monster without evidence, all the while ignoring all the subtle beliefs that they take on faith. The fact is that almost any idea can be broken down, and attacked on various levels—just try the three-year-old test and ask "Why?" a half dozen times, and pretty soon you're on some heady philosophical ground. At the meta-level I feel like the intolerance of religion today is no different than the intolerance of atheists from generations past. Fundamentally it's about people who are uncomfortable with people who hold different beliefs, which is inevitable if we are to be free thinkers. The fact that science is about factual observation and the pursuit of true mathematical models doesn't make it axiomatically right. Science is orthogonal to morality, and morality is a key part of human relations.

pjscott 16y ago
> The idea that people are divided into rational and irrational is just plain wrong. Who even made this claim? Obviously there's a spectrum. Perfect rationality is uncomputable; the best we can do is approximations. As Isaac Asimov cleverly put it: "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." > I am agnostic, not because I believe any religious texts literally, but in general the very nature of my own consciousness leads me to believe that we are here for a purpose, and I believe that purpose could be communicated to us from "a higher power", and if that were the case, of course the tool of choice would be through parable digestible by the masses within a given culture. If God exists, he is certainly not comprehensible by our limited brains, and so of course a metaphor like a bearded man in the sky is the closest we're going to get anyway. Those are some pretty non-obvious claims. Are you sure that parables of a highly anthropomorphic god would work better than, say, a straightforward (albeit complicated and confusing) explanation? How do you know that thinking of a "bearded man in the sky" is the best we can do? > At the meta-level I feel like the intolerance of religion today is no different than the intolerance of atheists from generations past. At a meta-meta-level I feel that statements like this are usually an attempt at social signaling rather than a properly thought-out factual claim.