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William Shockley, one of the primary inventors of the first practical transistor, was basically a Nazi, as was Henry Ford. Thomas Edison tried to build a radio
by api 6y ago
William Shockley, one of the primary inventors of the first practical transistor, was basically a Nazi, as was Henry Ford. Thomas Edison tried to build a radio to talk to ghosts. Nikola Tesla claimed his inventions were channeled in dreams. Jack Parsons, one of the key rocket scientists of the early space age and the primary inventor of modern solid fuel boosters, was a follower of Aliester Crowley who tried to invoke supernatural entities with sex magic while high on peyote. I know two biology Ph.D's who are Biblical-literalist 6000 year creationists, and one of the most brilliant artists and writers I've met thinks we faked the Moon landing. In the Silicon Valley orbit I've met many neo-reactionaries and neo-fascists and on the flip side people who are so "woke" they see every human interaction in terms of racial and cultural power dynamics. I've met yet more engineers who are into occultism, ghost hunting, and... I could do this for a long time.
In my experience the more intelligent a person is the more likely they are to believe bizarre and extremely heterodox things.
One of my issues with the modern skeptic movement has always been how they try to whitewash the history of science and engineering and forget about all the wild ass shit all these people believed (and that present-day scientists and engineers believe when you get a few beers into them).
- tinus_hn 6y agoIf some scientists behind the scenes are madmen, why is that an issue with skeptics who refuse to believe them at face value? I don’t get that leap.
- api 6y agoThat's not what I meant. I was talking about what I see as a whitewashing of history, an attempt to take the wild thrashing punk concert that is the actual history of human thought and render it down into soft rock for easy listening.
- hprotagonist 6y ago“kill your idols” is good advice against this trend you identify. we as a society do it to everyone; it’s a great way to neuter radicals, mostly to our disservice.
- hprotagonist 6y agoadd to this the neopuritan “un-person them and all their works” reaction when it is remembered that people are people and that common features of our technology and culture are due to people with occasionally pretty godawful other ideas. Like, what do you want me to do, refuse to have a COVID test because the guy who figured out how to make it work had some extremely bad ideas about HIV? I assert without proof that i could find someone making that claim somewhere deep in the depths of alternet or salon or tumblr, but i think it's specious. A worldview that admits of more complexity and tangled-up-ness is more robust against that kind of insanity.
- Radim 6y agoYou forgot the father of scientist-nutcase-weirdos, Isaac Newton himself! Perhaps there's a different lesson here: at some level of intelligence, you pierce through the patterns of stability your fellow men had weaved for their survival and sanity (and yours). And then anything goes. Maybe you also realize the "should of giants" are really the shoulders of men? Capricious and agenda-driven and haphazard, if you care to zoom in with enough resolution. For Christmas I got Freeman Dyson's "Disturbing the Universe". I never realized how poetic the man was. I always admired Dyson for his courage to speak out and his scientific insight, but he makes beautiful connections between poetry and science, Faust and Newton, creativity and sanity, integrity and death (he served in WW2 and died last year). A chillingly honest and humane read.
- lordgrenville 6y agoThis makes sense. If you're acknowledged by society as a rare genius, you're more likely to give credence to your heterodox or just odd ideas.
- jswizzy 6y agoYou are putting the cart before the horse here. People who think outside the box and challenge society and norms are the ones who push the limits of our current knowledge. Conformist and those who seek approval from others will not risk their credibility or reputation on untested ideas.
- samatman 6y agoI upvoted this because, y'know, you're right. I take a different conclusion from the facts you present, but I know better than to get into it in HN, other than maybe to say: wow, lots of the primary discoverers of scientific principles, and inventors of basic technology, had this shamanic side, maybe there's something to that. You're probably getting dinged for describing Shockley as "basically a Nazi". I mean, I hope it's not for describing Henry Ford that way, since yeah, that's accurate. Shockley sued someone for that characterization and won. I'd hazard that characterizing him as a racist, and proponent of eugenics, would be less controversial; I'm not at all interested in litigating William Shockley's reputation. Worth point out, though, that both Ford and Shockley were pretty boring "normies" whose opinions were widely held by others. So your point would have been better made by dropping the first sentence, or even burying it a bit further down.