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If your ideas are only valuable when other people believe them, then if everyone else died of some plague that you happened to be immune to, it would suddenly b
by pg 18y ago
If your ideas are only valuable when other people believe them, then if everyone else died of some plague that you happened to be immune to, it would suddenly be impossible to have good ideas. That doesn't seem right.
- robg 18y agoIf this happened to Newton or Einstein it wouldn't matter how good their ideas were. They'd starve because their ideas would be worthless. It takes a community to make use of good ideas, not just validate them. In the former you get the latter. Sure, sometimes a community has to be shaken free of their assumptions. But I'm not sure it's ever apparent by virtue of the strength of a lonely idea. It takes some powerful proof of concept. That's the apparatus. To put it another way, in merely writing an idea down it may exist all by itself in some Platonic ideal. Not surprisingly, the Greek philosophers often left it to others to validate (or invalidate) what they produced. Running tests wasn't truly valued. I'd argue those ideas that have stuck with us the longest are those that engendered the greatest utility. Then there's Heraclitus.
- aswanson 18y agoAs well as the undercelebrated Epicurus: http://secweb.infidels.org/?kiosk=articles&id=362 http://secweb.infidels.org/?kiosk=articles&id=362
- newsycaccount 18y agoA stopped clock is right twice a day.