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I've seen the argument: if someone is so clueless about rationality as to be religious, how could they make a good scientist? And the "answer" is: nevertheless,

by philh 15y ago

I've seen the argument: if someone is so clueless about rationality as to be religious, how could they make a good scientist? And the "answer" is: nevertheless, there exist religious people who do good science. So I'm not convinced by the argument here. It makes too many unstated assumptions. I support this boycott, and this argument might make good rhetoric, but I wouldn't use it directly to evaluate investors.

Iv 15y ago
> nevertheless, there exist religious people who do good science. Considering that 95% of the National Academy of Science is atheist, the correlation is still pretty relevant. Clueless people can be successful investors, luck is always a factor, but someone who supports SOPA probably lacks a certain technical background or ethics.
- estevez 15y ago
  >Considering that 95% of the National Academy of Science is atheist, the correlation is still pretty relevant. Since the Academy elects its own members there might be some bias lurking in that number.
  - Iv 15y ago
    In USA, a scientist is three times more likely to be an atheist than the national average. (It used to be more but ahteism became more prevalent in the last decade).
gnaritas 15y ago
> I've seen the argument: if someone is so clueless about rationality as to be religious, how could they make a good scientist? And the "answer" is: nevertheless, there exist religious people who do good science. And there exists Catholic priests who are pedophiles, that doesn't make Catholicism and pedophilia compatible. Nor are science and religion compatible. Those people just have an ability to tolerate or ignore their own cognitive dissonance because their religious beliefs are so strong.
- philh 15y ago
  > Those people just have an ability to tolerate or ignore their own cognitive dissonance because their religious beliefs are so strong. In other words, one possible answer to the original question is "cognitive dissonance". The point is that it doesn't matter what the answer is; there clearly is an answer.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    "one possible answer to the original question is "cognitive dissonance"" Certainly. And to quote myself: "If that is the case, then the organization is ill. Best to stay away from it, in case it happens to be contagious."
marshray 15y ago
But we're not talking about just any odd collection of investors. As I understand it, Y Combinator specifically relates to Internet-centric business models. SOPA seems wholly destructive to this sector of the economy.
- philh 15y ago
  Nevertheless, it is conceivable that a company could support SOPA while making good investments in the tech industry. Maybe they don't think SOPA will pass, and they want future business dealings with the RIAA. But that's not really the point, which is that whether or not they're good investors, they support something harmful. We're not boycotting them because we think they're bad investors. (If we thought they were bad investors, why did we do business with them in the first place?) We're doing it because they are allied with our enemies and we want to hurt them for that.
  - wpietri 15y ago
    I think it depends on what you mean by "good investor". If you invest in tobacco, land mine manufacturers, and semi-competent toxic waste disposal facilities, you might make a mint. That would make you a good investor in the sense of profitable. However, no entrepreneur in his right mind would take money from people like that, because they wouldn't be good investors in the sense of being supportive of a long-term effort to build a sustainable business in a healthy ecosystem. So I'm with PG on this one. Anybody internet entrepreneur should be very suspicious about money from a SOPA supporter: partner, investor, or acquirerer.
    - fennecfoxen 15y ago
      Minor tangent here that's not relevant to your main point - what exactly is wrong with trying to dispose of toxic waste in a "semi-competent" manner? Lead, mercury, asbestos, and all those other freaky things have got to go somewhere. Shouldn't you be more pissed off at people generating that waste?
      - 15y ago
dcotter 15y ago
The more straightforward argument is the moral one: SOPA is wrong, because it privileges the few over the many. But that's not quite as snappy.
idiot900 15y ago
There are, by definition, no good scientists who allow their religious beliefs to dictate their science. Some religious people are able to separate their personal irrationality from their professional rationality, and that's just fine.
- stingraycharles 15y ago
  By what definition? There are quite a few historical scientists who made great discoveries, who very extremely religious too. Newton comes to mind.
  - Turing_Machine 15y ago
    A more recent example would be this fellow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre
    - LeafStorm 15y ago
      An even more recent example is Francis Collins [1], who directed the Human Genome Project. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins
  - idiot900 15y ago
    There is no place in the scientific method for belief without evidence, which is what faith is; faith forms the basis of religion.
    - camperman 15y ago
      Wrong. In the New Testament, faith means assurance based on a reliable track record. It's the Greek word "pistis" and the two terms - faith and assurance - are used interchangeably.
      - haberman 15y ago
mikeash 15y ago
This is not just a generic religious scientist. It's more analogous to rejecting a young-Earth creationist from a study on evolution. The link here is much more direct than general rationality.
- noblethrasher 15y ago
  Even a young-Earth creationist can theoretically be a good biologist or physicist. This is more analogous to a young-Earth creationist that wants to keep evolution out of science textbooks and lectures.
  - skore 15y ago
    Yes, for instance, the believe that the earth is young. As in: 7000 years young. Or put differently: Far too young for evolution to have worked at all. Sorry, but there really is a fundamental problem with being a biologist if your stated belief makes one of the core principles of your field impossible. From what I can tell, most of the young-earth creationists that are biologists mainly work in trying, for decades now, to disprove evolution.
    - noblethrasher 15y ago
      You can look at rational empiricism as a kind of logic game. Given a set of empirical observations and the premise that the laws of the universe are constant everywhere and every-when, what logical inferences can you make about the world? You don't have to necessarily believe the conclusions, but you can still do good science just by trying to play the game well. Now it's hard to me to imagine a mind working that way but I don't see that it's impossible.
spindritf 15y ago
> I've seen the argument: if someone is so clueless about rationality as to be religious, how could they make a good scientist? That's because the underlying assumptions are false. Being religious doesn't require one to be "clueless about rationality" and supporting SOPA doesn't requre the supporter to be clueless about technology -- they may as well hope to benefit from breaking the Internet. As every regulation (the more severe, the better) it will give an advantage to established companies over startups and newcomers, maybe even allow the former to became gate-keepers of the Internet business; DMCA allowed for attempts at censorship (silencing criticism by claiming trademarks), SOPA will take it to a whole new level; supporting SOPA signals loyalty to the entertainment industry; etc.
- jackowayed 15y ago
  Of course, if a company is hell-bent on killing startups, there is also no reason to invite them to Demo Day, even if they understand technology well enough to know how to kill startups.
- bermanoid 15y ago
  Being religious doesn't require one to be "clueless about rationality" Absolutely correct. You don't have to be clueless about rationality to be religious; you can also explicitly reject rationality, even though you understand it. But if you don't reject it, then it's quite difficult to accept any of the Big Three religions and simultaneously convince yourself that you're embracing an evidence-based worldview. That's not to say a few haven't spun up enough cognitive dissonance to manage it, but it's exceedingly difficult and rare. And as a rule, yes - to someone of the current generation, it does cast serious doubt on someone's scientific abilities when it comes to light that they are religious, especially since it's no longer as socially unacceptable to reject religious beliefs.
  - spindritf 15y ago
    > But if you don't reject it, then it's quite difficult to accept any of the Big Three religions and simultaneously convince yourself that you're embracing an evidence-based worldview. Every worldview is based in faith. The very act of considering any evidence requires trust (faith, if you will) in the value of input provided by our senses. There is no and there cannot be any evidence for that value either way. Best we can do is analyze reasons for our beliefs, keep them logical, and consistent with experience. Which, coincidentally, is one of the meanings of the word "rational." > And as a rule, yes - to someone of the current generation, it does cast serious doubt on someone's scientific abilities when it comes to light that they are religious That's normal and OK -- we all hold a (pretty large usually) number of conscious and unconscious prejudices. So much for evidence-based worldview btw.
noblethrasher 15y ago
PG has argued elsewhere that the key to becoming a successful startup is to be good[1]. Since SOPA is bad, organizations that support it are malovelent and so startups cannot succeed if they are beholden to malevolent investors. [1]http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html
aangjie 15y ago
I agree that line of reasoning is not fallacy free. but if you think in terms of probabilities, it may be safe heuristic to make a stance on.. Update: I mean probability of a venture backing a sopa supporter(company/startup) being anti-sopa is very low.. So it's a good heuristic to assume they are sopa supporters instead of innocent(technologically clueless) bystanders.
forgottenpaswrd 15y ago
"I've seen the argument: if someone is so clueless about rationality as to be religious, how could they make a good scientist?" Because the argument itself is a fallacy. Believing that God exist does not make you less rational that believing that God does not exist(witch uses to be the theological affiliation of the people that proclaim the statement). One or the other is a prejudice. If the statement were true the best option should be to be agnostic, to be able to consider both options as true, and try one and then the other. The ancient Greeks used this thinking methodology regularly. They knew that believing our beliefs are true is a trap, everybody believes that their believes are true. Even with wrong believes you could explore options that makes you find a valid solution. Columbus calculations(believes) for getting to Japan were terrible wrong, but it was useful anyway.
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  I hate to drag this into an atheism debate, but agnosticism is simply not the best option. The question of the existence of a supernatural being has a definite answer, and claiming either we don't or can't know is a cop-out. Either you think the evidence points to the existence of a god, or you don't. I can't see an honest appraisal of the evidence leading to an inconclusive decision.
Shorel 15y ago
It makes sense if you stand by your principles. In some cases that's very important.

by philh 15y ago

Iv 15y ago

> nevertheless, there exist religious people who do good science. Considering that 95% of the National Academy of Science is atheist, the correlation is still pretty relevant. Clueless people can be successful investors, luck is always a factor, but someone who supports SOPA probably lacks a certain technical background or ethics.

estevez 15y ago
>Considering that 95% of the National Academy of Science is atheist, the correlation is still pretty relevant. Since the Academy elects its own members there might be some bias lurking in that number.
- Iv 15y ago
  In USA, a scientist is three times more likely to be an atheist than the national average. (It used to be more but ahteism became more prevalent in the last decade).

gnaritas 15y ago

> I've seen the argument: if someone is so clueless about rationality as to be religious, how could they make a good scientist? And the "answer" is: nevertheless, there exist religious people who do good science. And there exists Catholic priests who are pedophiles, that doesn't make Catholicism and pedophilia compatible. Nor are science and religion compatible. Those people just have an ability to tolerate or ignore their own cognitive dissonance because their religious beliefs are so strong.

philh 15y ago
> Those people just have an ability to tolerate or ignore their own cognitive dissonance because their religious beliefs are so strong. In other words, one possible answer to the original question is "cognitive dissonance". The point is that it doesn't matter what the answer is; there clearly is an answer.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  "one possible answer to the original question is "cognitive dissonance"" Certainly. And to quote myself: "If that is the case, then the organization is ill. Best to stay away from it, in case it happens to be contagious."

marshray 15y ago

But we're not talking about just any odd collection of investors. As I understand it, Y Combinator specifically relates to Internet-centric business models. SOPA seems wholly destructive to this sector of the economy.

philh 15y ago
Nevertheless, it is conceivable that a company could support SOPA while making good investments in the tech industry. Maybe they don't think SOPA will pass, and they want future business dealings with the RIAA. But that's not really the point, which is that whether or not they're good investors, they support something harmful. We're not boycotting them because we think they're bad investors. (If we thought they were bad investors, why did we do business with them in the first place?) We're doing it because they are allied with our enemies and we want to hurt them for that.
- wpietri 15y ago
  I think it depends on what you mean by "good investor". If you invest in tobacco, land mine manufacturers, and semi-competent toxic waste disposal facilities, you might make a mint. That would make you a good investor in the sense of profitable. However, no entrepreneur in his right mind would take money from people like that, because they wouldn't be good investors in the sense of being supportive of a long-term effort to build a sustainable business in a healthy ecosystem. So I'm with PG on this one. Anybody internet entrepreneur should be very suspicious about money from a SOPA supporter: partner, investor, or acquirerer.
  - fennecfoxen 15y ago
    Minor tangent here that's not relevant to your main point - what exactly is wrong with trying to dispose of toxic waste in a "semi-competent" manner? Lead, mercury, asbestos, and all those other freaky things have got to go somewhere. Shouldn't you be more pissed off at people generating that waste?
    - 15y ago

dcotter 15y ago

The more straightforward argument is the moral one: SOPA is wrong, because it privileges the few over the many. But that's not quite as snappy.

idiot900 15y ago

There are, by definition, no good scientists who allow their religious beliefs to dictate their science. Some religious people are able to separate their personal irrationality from their professional rationality, and that's just fine.

stingraycharles 15y ago
By what definition? There are quite a few historical scientists who made great discoveries, who very extremely religious too. Newton comes to mind.
- Turing_Machine 15y ago
  A more recent example would be this fellow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre
  - LeafStorm 15y ago
    An even more recent example is Francis Collins [1], who directed the Human Genome Project. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins
- idiot900 15y ago
  There is no place in the scientific method for belief without evidence, which is what faith is; faith forms the basis of religion.
  - camperman 15y ago
    Wrong. In the New Testament, faith means assurance based on a reliable track record. It's the Greek word "pistis" and the two terms - faith and assurance - are used interchangeably.
    - haberman 15y ago

mikeash 15y ago

This is not just a generic religious scientist. It's more analogous to rejecting a young-Earth creationist from a study on evolution. The link here is much more direct than general rationality.

noblethrasher 15y ago
Even a young-Earth creationist can theoretically be a good biologist or physicist. This is more analogous to a young-Earth creationist that wants to keep evolution out of science textbooks and lectures.
- skore 15y ago
  Yes, for instance, the believe that the earth is young. As in: 7000 years young. Or put differently: Far too young for evolution to have worked at all. Sorry, but there really is a fundamental problem with being a biologist if your stated belief makes one of the core principles of your field impossible. From what I can tell, most of the young-earth creationists that are biologists mainly work in trying, for decades now, to disprove evolution.
  - noblethrasher 15y ago
    You can look at rational empiricism as a kind of logic game. Given a set of empirical observations and the premise that the laws of the universe are constant everywhere and every-when, what logical inferences can you make about the world? You don't have to necessarily believe the conclusions, but you can still do good science just by trying to play the game well. Now it's hard to me to imagine a mind working that way but I don't see that it's impossible.

spindritf 15y ago

> I've seen the argument: if someone is so clueless about rationality as to be religious, how could they make a good scientist? That's because the underlying assumptions are false. Being religious doesn't require one to be "clueless about rationality" and supporting SOPA doesn't requre the supporter to be clueless about technology -- they may as well hope to benefit from breaking the Internet. As every regulation (the more severe, the better) it will give an advantage to established companies over startups and newcomers, maybe even allow the former to became gate-keepers of the Internet business; DMCA allowed for attempts at censorship (silencing criticism by claiming trademarks), SOPA will take it to a whole new level; supporting SOPA signals loyalty to the entertainment industry; etc.

jackowayed 15y ago
Of course, if a company is hell-bent on killing startups, there is also no reason to invite them to Demo Day, even if they understand technology well enough to know how to kill startups.
bermanoid 15y ago
Being religious doesn't require one to be "clueless about rationality" Absolutely correct. You don't have to be clueless about rationality to be religious; you can also explicitly reject rationality, even though you understand it. But if you don't reject it, then it's quite difficult to accept any of the Big Three religions and simultaneously convince yourself that you're embracing an evidence-based worldview. That's not to say a few haven't spun up enough cognitive dissonance to manage it, but it's exceedingly difficult and rare. And as a rule, yes - to someone of the current generation, it does cast serious doubt on someone's scientific abilities when it comes to light that they are religious, especially since it's no longer as socially unacceptable to reject religious beliefs.
- spindritf 15y ago
  > But if you don't reject it, then it's quite difficult to accept any of the Big Three religions and simultaneously convince yourself that you're embracing an evidence-based worldview. Every worldview is based in faith. The very act of considering any evidence requires trust (faith, if you will) in the value of input provided by our senses. There is no and there cannot be any evidence for that value either way. Best we can do is analyze reasons for our beliefs, keep them logical, and consistent with experience. Which, coincidentally, is one of the meanings of the word "rational." > And as a rule, yes - to someone of the current generation, it does cast serious doubt on someone's scientific abilities when it comes to light that they are religious That's normal and OK -- we all hold a (pretty large usually) number of conscious and unconscious prejudices. So much for evidence-based worldview btw.

noblethrasher 15y ago

PG has argued elsewhere that the key to becoming a successful startup is to be good[1]. Since SOPA is bad, organizations that support it are malovelent and so startups cannot succeed if they are beholden to malevolent investors. [1]http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html

aangjie 15y ago

I agree that line of reasoning is not fallacy free. but if you think in terms of probabilities, it may be safe heuristic to make a stance on.. Update: I mean probability of a venture backing a sopa supporter(company/startup) being anti-sopa is very low.. So it's a good heuristic to assume they are sopa supporters instead of innocent(technologically clueless) bystanders.

forgottenpaswrd 15y ago

"I've seen the argument: if someone is so clueless about rationality as to be religious, how could they make a good scientist?" Because the argument itself is a fallacy. Believing that God exist does not make you less rational that believing that God does not exist(witch uses to be the theological affiliation of the people that proclaim the statement). One or the other is a prejudice. If the statement were true the best option should be to be agnostic, to be able to consider both options as true, and try one and then the other. The ancient Greeks used this thinking methodology regularly. They knew that believing our beliefs are true is a trap, everybody believes that their believes are true. Even with wrong believes you could explore options that makes you find a valid solution. Columbus calculations(believes) for getting to Japan were terrible wrong, but it was useful anyway.

redthrowaway 15y ago
I hate to drag this into an atheism debate, but agnosticism is simply not the best option. The question of the existence of a supernatural being has a definite answer, and claiming either we don't or can't know is a cop-out. Either you think the evidence points to the existence of a god, or you don't. I can't see an honest appraisal of the evidence leading to an inconclusive decision.

Shorel 15y ago

It makes sense if you stand by your principles. In some cases that's very important.