6 ms·

It isn't nice, I know, but it comes down to: agreeable people tend to agree with other people. So they can't make significant original contributions.

jacquesm 7y ago
You are mis-understanding the meaning of the word 'agreeable'. Agreeable people do not tend to agree with other people, they tend to get along well with other people. "agreeable: quite enjoyable and pleasurable; pleasant."
- grabbalacious 7y ago
  I'm not arguing from the meaning of the word. People with different opinions have a hard time getting along. (Which is why I'm being downvoted by people who advocate for niceness!) People in general are scared of being singled out for disapprobation by the group and so they self-censor and don't create new ideas in the first place.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    > People with different opinions have a hard time getting along. Not necessarily. As long as they are civil and able to articulate their differences in a good way chances are the viewpoints will be shifted and possibly converge. It's a problem when people become so invested in their viewpoints and opinions that they become a part of their identity. That's one way to become a person who is going to react in a not-so-nice way to seeing those viewpoints and opinions challenged.
kryptiskt 7y ago
There have been very few men in history nicer and more considerate than James Clerk Maxwell, and he made the biggest leap of genius in physics ever with electromagnetic field theory, the foundation of everything that is modern in physics. Well, there is statistical physics too, which he also was a founding father of.
- kryptiskt 7y ago
  Off-topic but I'll take the opportunity to paste my favorite Maxwell quote (from James Clerk Maxwell, A Treatsie on Electricity and Magnetism, 1873): "In the present state of science the most universal standard of length which we could assume would be the wave length in vacuum of a particular kind of light, emitted by some widely diffused substance such as sodium, which has well-defined lines in its spectrum. Such a standard would be independent of any changes in the dimensions of the earth, and should be adopted by those who expect their writings to be more permanent than that body."
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  Very true, and an interesting example. While it's true that many great scientists were agreeable, sometimes lack of agreeability can mean you provoke more interesting responses, and more heated debate. Two examples - Karl Marx and Andrew Kliman, as political economists, were/are known for being not only rude but provocative in rudeness - to the point where a response is provoked simply because of the language they used. Marx's Capital, for example, got such a wide response not only because of the bold claims but also the rhetorical style it was written in (his contempt is shown in the famous preface to The Poverty of Philosophy, a response to Proudhon's The Philosophy of Poverty[0]). Kliman insists (and continues to insist) that his opponents don't understand him, that they haven't read the relevant litarture, and other things. He's even gone as far as accusing his opponents of having a psychological a-priori presumption against the theory he advocates[1]. On the other hand, Kliman is at the forefront of post-Samuelson heterodox economics today, and his extremely influential theories have spawned a great deal of debate. It's hard to imagine that debate happening if he were "quieter". [0] "M. Proudhon has the misfortune of being peculiarly misunderstood in Europe. In France, he has the right to be a bad economist, because he is reputed to be a good German philosopher. In Germany, he has the right to be a bad philosopher, because he is reputed to be one of the ablest French economists. Being both German and economist at the same time, we desire to protest against this double error." [1] "Mohun and Veneziani (2009: 278) state that we “conjecture that [his paper’s logical and factual errors were] not apparent to Veneziani because of a psychological a priori commitment to the falsity of the TSSI, in turn founded on a psychological a priori commitment to the demonstration of the internal inconsistency [...]"

jacquesm 7y ago

You are mis-understanding the meaning of the word 'agreeable'. Agreeable people do not tend to agree with other people, they tend to get along well with other people. "agreeable: quite enjoyable and pleasurable; pleasant."

grabbalacious 7y ago
I'm not arguing from the meaning of the word. People with different opinions have a hard time getting along. (Which is why I'm being downvoted by people who advocate for niceness!) People in general are scared of being singled out for disapprobation by the group and so they self-censor and don't create new ideas in the first place.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  > People with different opinions have a hard time getting along. Not necessarily. As long as they are civil and able to articulate their differences in a good way chances are the viewpoints will be shifted and possibly converge. It's a problem when people become so invested in their viewpoints and opinions that they become a part of their identity. That's one way to become a person who is going to react in a not-so-nice way to seeing those viewpoints and opinions challenged.

kryptiskt 7y ago

There have been very few men in history nicer and more considerate than James Clerk Maxwell, and he made the biggest leap of genius in physics ever with electromagnetic field theory, the foundation of everything that is modern in physics. Well, there is statistical physics too, which he also was a founding father of.

kryptiskt 7y ago
Off-topic but I'll take the opportunity to paste my favorite Maxwell quote (from James Clerk Maxwell, A Treatsie on Electricity and Magnetism, 1873): "In the present state of science the most universal standard of length which we could assume would be the wave length in vacuum of a particular kind of light, emitted by some widely diffused substance such as sodium, which has well-defined lines in its spectrum. Such a standard would be independent of any changes in the dimensions of the earth, and should be adopted by those who expect their writings to be more permanent than that body."
claudiawerner 7y ago
Very true, and an interesting example. While it's true that many great scientists were agreeable, sometimes lack of agreeability can mean you provoke more interesting responses, and more heated debate. Two examples - Karl Marx and Andrew Kliman, as political economists, were/are known for being not only rude but provocative in rudeness - to the point where a response is provoked simply because of the language they used. Marx's Capital, for example, got such a wide response not only because of the bold claims but also the rhetorical style it was written in (his contempt is shown in the famous preface to The Poverty of Philosophy, a response to Proudhon's The Philosophy of Poverty[0]). Kliman insists (and continues to insist) that his opponents don't understand him, that they haven't read the relevant litarture, and other things. He's even gone as far as accusing his opponents of having a psychological a-priori presumption against the theory he advocates[1]. On the other hand, Kliman is at the forefront of post-Samuelson heterodox economics today, and his extremely influential theories have spawned a great deal of debate. It's hard to imagine that debate happening if he were "quieter". [0] "M. Proudhon has the misfortune of being peculiarly misunderstood in Europe. In France, he has the right to be a bad economist, because he is reputed to be a good German philosopher. In Germany, he has the right to be a bad philosopher, because he is reputed to be one of the ablest French economists. Being both German and economist at the same time, we desire to protest against this double error." [1] "Mohun and Veneziani (2009: 278) state that we “conjecture that [his paper’s logical and factual errors were] not apparent to Veneziani because of a psychological a priori commitment to the falsity of the TSSI, in turn founded on a psychological a priori commitment to the demonstration of the internal inconsistency [...]"