[extropy-chat] Bone for the Extropian Wolves

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Mike Lorrey wrote:
> 
> They work because pure rationality embodied in scientific logic is a
> constrained set by which to view the world. As Natasha, myself, Ramez,
> and others have posted on occasion, the history books are littered by
> the pronouncements by the best scientific minds that this or that was
> impossible, only to be proven wrong by those whose want, drive, NEED,
> for something to be true, to become real, was so great that they
> ignored the best scientific information and made reality so.

Oh, now that's just plain untrue.

Do you think the Wright Brothers ignored physics?  What distinguished the 
Wright Brothers from their competitors was that the Wright Brothers were 
competent physicists, did calculations from first principles, tested their 
designs experimentally, invented new measuring instruments (such as the 
wind tunnel), discovered an error in an established scientific constant 
(the coefficient of air pressure) when their calculations failed to match 
experiment, and, finally, flew.

The Wright Brothers won because they understood how to employ abstract 
physics in the service of flight, not because they were plucky or defiant 
or driven.  As for the folks building desperation device after desperation 
device, hoping against hope it would soar, they are the comical idiots you 
see in that famous movie of would-be flying machines, with the giant 
umbrella and so on.

As for those "scientific" minds who declared heavier-than-air flight 
impossible, they didn't run the numbers.  Science doesn't work for eminent 
scientists, or people with doctorates.  Science works for people who work 
the numbers.  The Wright Brothers worked the numbers.  The people saying 
flight was impossible didn't.  Hence the triumph of human ingenuity.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence