I say this to reinforce Paul's statement, "But that's because we know how things turned out." "How things turned out" includes reclassification of what he was working out as belonging to different fields. I suspect that at the time, he didn't consider himself to be moving from one field to another but rather to trying to build upon his previous work.

Good ideas tend to split & bifurcate, until the original term is considered simply common sense and the parts people care about are individual subfields that were trivial when they started. Recall that "industry" used to refer to anything that was mass-produced in a factory, which, back in the 1820s, basically meant textiles. As the general techniques proved their worth, "industry" split into subfields, such that we got the "oil industry" and "steel industry" and "auto industry" and "aviation industry" and so on.

I think a similar process is happening with software, where the "software industry" is bifurcating into embedded software, social software, payment software, etc, much of it in support of an existing industry; "software is eating the world". I suspect that we're in the very early phases of this. In the early history of the industrial revolution, most industries were ways to produce existing goods (clothing, iron, tobacco, energy) dramatically more efficiently, much like how much software today is embedded in old-line industries' line-of-business apps. But starting around 1900, you started getting industries (electricity, aviation, pharmaceuticals) that were largely unrecognizable compared to their substitutes. You're seeing the very beginning of that now with specifically Internet- and cloud-based industries, but it likely has another century to go.

This is the kind of thoughtful comment I come here for - it's given me some ideas to go research on my own.

For a modern viewpoint it might seem like Newton was "hedging his bets" by contributing to several totally different fields, but I don't think it was seen like that at the time. It was all "philosophy".

Other "philosophers" in the early modern period had similar interests. For example Tycho Brahe is remembered as an astronomer with a strong focus on empirical observation, but actually was just as focused on astrology, alchemy and medicine (which was connected to alchemy and astronomy because of the same philosophy).

Newton was a "renaissance man".

Other than hydrogen, some helium, and a very small amount of lithium, all other elements were born of stars, through either normal fusion (helium, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, ...), supernovae (heavier atoms: nickle, iron, ...), and for the heaviest including gold, neutron-star collisions.

No, the models assumed by alchemists weren't right, but the central nugget was pointing in the right direction. And studying the metals does provide insight into the dynamics of stars.

(And yes: on Earth, helium and several other elements are found not formed by stars directly, but through the radioactive decay of heavier elements, though those are of stellar origins.)

No, they just remember people for their contributions rather than their mistakes.

As others have mentioned in the thread, scientists didn't just wake up one day and decide to ignore everything supposedly "unobservable". Science was once intertwined with theology. Over the centuries, the methods we now call science produced results, while other supposed "ways of knowing" did not. Scientific knowledge converges over time, but religion diverges.

It seems also that you have a very caricatured understanding of scientists.

First of all, a claim of the existence of ghosts requires some evidence that cannot be explained by other, simpler means. The principle of parsimony (AKA Occam's Razor) is important because it works. So for our ghosts, we would need residents' observations of sounds, movement, or other unexpected events. They could keep a log of the time and place of every ghostly occurrence, and demonstrate that no other explanation (thermal expansion causing creaking floorboards, drafts moving the curtains, slightly asymmetrical mounting causing pictures to tilt, blood flow through the retina causing spurious visual patterns in the dark, etc.) explains the observations.

Then you bring in the scientists, and all of the observations cease as if by magic. There are still physical explanations. The scientists' movement may be masking subtler sounds. Their presence may have made the house warmer, so the joints are tighter and creak less. The lights may be on more of the time, so visual patterns caused by misfiring neurons aren't seen.

But even if you rule out all possible simpler explanations, you still have a way of fixing the ghost problem -- just sell the house to a family of scientists, or install cameras and microphones to scare the ghosts away.

--

Responding to the comment by clock_tower, that is the sort of platonic notion of "existence" that science avoids because it doesn't yield results. I'd say science doesn't really deal with "existence" in that sense, but "occurrence". So if you ask, "Does decadence occur?" The answer would quite obviously be yes. Using a more pragmatic definition of existence, you could say that any phenomenon you can define "exists", but you are likely to run into the problem of knowing which definition of a word someone is using.

Thus, I think you also may have a caricatured understanding of scientists, caused in part by the "fun-house mirror" effect from mechanically transliterating scientific jargon into a philosophical context.

For more thinking in a similar direction, see Nassim Taleb's excerpt on the Lindy effect (https://medium.com/incerto/an-expert-called-lindy-fdb30f146e...), where he elaborates on the connection between risk and survival of ideas.

Some of my favorite books of all time were Taleb's, but I have to say, his writing is the perfect demonstration of power law. 10℅ of his content is remarkably insightful and the remaining 90℅ is unadulterated bullshit.

The value of contrarians is not in the things they're wrong about, it's in the things they're right about. I'm pretty sure that was also the point of pg's mini essay.

I encountered his ideas (10 years back!) at a time when my default way of thinking was very intuitive instead of systematic and analytical thinking (which many of my high-performing peers had developed over the course of engineering education). Perhaps because of this, I took to his ideas like duck (swan) takes to water. I never acquired a systematic(analytical) thinking approach despite being in academia till mid twenties though I could hack decent academic performances. It was in an engineering profession that I realized the advantage and importance of systematic thinking and tried to consciously develop it.

Strangely, the use of systematic thinking has also actually increased my appreciation of his ideas after a period of wavering doubt. The systematic (analytical) way of thinking is too seductive and it's successes too apparent that it appears far superior to my earlier intuitive way of thinking. However, I am gradually coming to realize that the intuitive way of thinking has a deep logic of it's own which is not visible or may not even be decipherable. It's logic can only be inferred by its effect which ofcourse a critic can also be ascribe to luck!

I wonder if that explains why his first 3 books where so much better than what he has written since....

In addition, It's not too infrequent that you'll find another scientist who wrote about the same thing 30 years earlier, or in Newton's case with Leibniz, concurrent.

Rarely do we take a big view of the species, a creature that has been alive and thinking much longer than us, winding its way through time.

I don't know why he left them out -- I guess he knew it'd be controversial.

https://youtu.be/N7rR8stuQfk?t=8m44s

Anyways, why shouldn't founders/hackers reach for such heights? But if I didn't know Paul Graham's background, I wouldn't assume that's what this essay infers. Rather, the essay doesn't say anything directly about startups.

I'm curious what's scummy about them to you?

I suspect that the personality trait most closely associated with creativity like this is a lack of fear of embarrassment. When someone tells me something I have suggested is wrong I respond by asking questions to understand how they understand the topic so that I can learn from them. When you tell someone who has vested their self image in being right that they are wrong they take it personally and respond dismissively. They fight to have their point of view validated rather than understand a counter point of view. But this makes them unwilling to share partially understood topics because it could expose them to being 'wrong' in public.

Other times people self censor their own thinking. I get so frustrated when someone says "Well I thought that might be a solution to the problem but assumed it would be too expensive." That is an example of someone who had a creative idea, self censored it, and it had to come out through someone else in order to reach the collective consciousness of the group. I try really hard to have people not self censor but it is so ingrained sometimes.

And all of that then feeds back into the genius/hero narrative where the narrative of a person includes only their noteworthy accomplishments and so the perception is that people like that only do noteworthy things, and then they are impossible to live up to.

Dare to ask stupid questions, it could make you the smartest person in the room.

I think there are actually very few people who would take such a risk, even though I think it's a necessary risk if you want to be part of "huge, if true."

I beg to differ - we will never know the number of people who take such risks due to survivorship bias. I have a hunch that a lot of people through the ages took risks that never paid off and they never got famous, instead, they bankrupted themselves, got committed into asylums or lived their days in anonymity. No one writes biographies about them, if they did, no one would want to read them.

> dare to spend years of your life grinding away (in relative isolation) on something that seems crazy, with no guarantee of any success, but full of promise.

If I were to come up with a VC creed, it would probably be very close to this. Distill it down to concise Latin and you got yourself a bona fide VC Firm motto.

It cost me a year (1/90th of my life? 1/75th? 1/50th? less?) to realize this. From what I understand, I'm far from alone -- and basically every career path risks this cost.

Emphasizing this nugget of truth by placing it at the bottom of your post is commendable.

Well darn it, that's how we were taught in engineering school.

I'm not sure which "us" pg is referring to, but the essay gives me the impression that he meant something like "most people" (I could be reading him wrong, but that was my impression). Alchemy is obviously a waste of time -- I won't dispute that, and I suspect that "most people" would agree with that assertion.

Being that pg is an atheist, I would expect him to personally believe that the study of theology is a waste of time. However, even just taking Christian theology into account, given that over 100 million Bibles are sold or given away in the world every year (https://www.reference.com/world-view/many-copies-bible-sold-...), and the Bible continues to be "the most widely distributed and best-selling book in the world.", the "us" for which it is true that the study of theology is "crazy" or a "waste of time" seems to me to be much smaller group of people than the essay seems to imply.

Again, this is just the impression I got from reading the essay. I would be happy to have pg respond and let me know if my impression was incorrect.

(edited to remove unintentional indenting)

Alchemy as well was not so ridiculous as people seem to think. Modern hatred for alchemy seems more like a way of patting ourselves on the back and saying "We're so smart! Good thing we don't believe in that nonsense like those benighted fools hundreds of years ago." But in reality alchemy was a pre-scientific attempt at understanding the world which, if I understand correctly, merged more or less directly into what we no consider science.

It seems to me that the two things PG dismissed completely in his article are in fact the foundations upon which our modern world is largely built. There's more to the world than physics...even if physics is, in a sense, all there is.

As far as I know Newtons theology had absolutely no impact on anybody except himself.

Well, you might believe they did not, but many people in the world believe they did.

If you do not accept the Bible as revelation from God (and I would guess from your response that you do not), then I can see why you would reach that conclusion.

If, however, you do accept the Bible as revelation from God, the book of, well, Revelation :-D is a huge chunk of "privileged information about the end of the world". Granted, dates of events are not given, and a lot of the book is prophecy, so there is figurative language, but there is a lot of information there.

The Bible explicitly refuses to give a date for the end of the world, and proactively voids the claims of any who would.

If anything the Bible anticipates a long patient delay with a purpose:

"They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” ... But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance."

It's characteristic of Paul, see Ephesians 2 for another example.

To come back to your point, if you read the rest of Paul's letter to the Thessalonians, you will find Paul's position (which is in fact Jesus' position) on the matter:

"Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night"

You can't slip a piece of paper between Paul and Jesus. Jesus himself authenticates Paul as one of his apostles.

What does this even mean? Jesus never mentioned Paul, and Jesus and Paul never even met.

According to Luke, in Acts 9:15 he did:

"But the Lord said to him [Ananias], “Go, for he [Paul] is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel."

Apart from that, Peter also understood that Paul had been authenticated by Jesus as his apostle, see 2 Peter 3:

"Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction."

Being an apostle meant that Paul was expressly authorized and enabled to represent the Lord. Hence the saying, "you can't slip a piece of paper..." meaning that one can't try and play one off against the other, as if they hold opposing views. Paul represents Jesus, nothing more, nothing less. Paul is merely a servant, the words are those of Jesus.

^ That is correct, and I never said that it was true because people believed it.

Of course the same could be said of your statement that "The people who wrote the Bible did not actually have any privileged information about the end of the world." -- it is not true just because you believe it.

Perhaps I should have just said "there are a lot of people in the world that do not agree with that statement", and left it at that.

xD

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_theologians#...

I used to entertain this idea, that you need faith to believe there is no god just as much as you need it to believe there are 1000. Perhaps you do. What does not require faith, however, is observation - at least to the limits to which we can test and trust our observations.

Atheism isn't a belief that there is no god, it's an observation that we don't experience any supernatural forces interacting with this universe.

> naive assumption that we know the limits of knowledge

I think very few people claim to know the limits of knowledge, but that is not the same thing as saying we know nothing. Asimov's essay on the Relativity of Wrong [0] is some of the best reasoning along this line of thought.

[He] went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong.

My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

[0] http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm

I used to entertain this idea, that you need faith to believe there is no god just as much as you need it to believe there are 1000. ..."

"Atheism isn't a belief that there is no god"

^ actually it is: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/atheism?s=t

noun

1. the doctrine or belief that there is no God. 2. disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.

I think perhaps part of the problem is that many people think of "faith" as meaning to "believe in something without any evidence of its viability", or to "believe in something despite evidence to the contrary". Both of those are unnecessarily narrow definitions of faith. Faith simply means believing that some thing or some set of things is true. The belief (regardless of what facts are believed) may be based on evidence, or it may not.

Insisting that "faith" is always believing facts without evidence, or contrary to evidence, is inaccurate. That would be "blind faith", and not all instances of "faith" are "blind faith".

[edit -- missed a comma]

The meaning of words depends on their context. "faith" has specific connotations when used in the context of religion, and the phrase "faith of atheism" attempts to apply these same connotations to atheism, implicitly placing it in the same category as religions and neatly sidestepping the question of whether such a categorization is appropriate.

Whether atheism should be categorized along with religions is a question which should be addressed on its own merits by looking at the characteristics of atheism and religions themselves, rather than looking up a dictionary definition and seeing if the words match.

In that context, I think it is quite appropriate to claim:

> Atheism isn't a belief that there is no god, it's an observation that we don't experience any supernatural forces interacting with this universe.

Regardless of whether or not that is what is written down in the dictionary.

For further reference, see 'Arguing "By Definition" (LessWrong)': http://lesswrong.com/lw/nz/arguing_by_definition/

Insofar, I think that introducing the definition has brought a net positive value to this discussion here.

In a very strict sense of the word, atheism is an assertion that there is no god/supernatural being. It is clear that this assertion is impossible to prove, only possible to prove wrong. For any god you prove does not exist it is trivial to imagine one that does and which can't be disproved in the same way.

This means that simply stating there is no god is not very useful or meaningful. Much more meaningful is to state that even if there is a god, they take no part in our world. This is the interventionist god that Nick Cave does not believe in.

You are correct in pointing out that the word faith can be used to collect beliefs together and give them a name. That is a reasonable interpretation of the parent's use of the term as well. Too often, however, the phrases "faith of atheism" or "faith in science" are used to draw parallels with other faiths, specifically faiths that require "blind faith" as part of their belief system. Take the whole line in context:

> To me such ideas as the naive assumption that we know the limits of knowledge go hand in hand with the faith of atheism.

The thrust of this statement, as I read it, is identical to the one Asimov discusses in that essay:

"If I am the wisest man," said Socrates, "it is because I alone know that I know nothing."

That is, it is impossible to know what you don't know and believing you do is foolish. He continues:

The implication was that I was very foolish because I knew a great deal.

The argument in the parent is that people who believe in atheism are foolish for believing they know the limits of knowledge. My counter argument is that atheists - like most people - don't tend to claim they know the limits of knowledge. Their distinguishing characteristic is that at no point does an explanation come to rest on blind faith. That is why saying "Atheism isn't a belief that there is no god" is a meaningful one.

There are probably other words that could be used instead of atheism to label this belief system that arises when you discard blind faith. No one needs a label for their belief that there isn't a teapot circling the sun in the exact same orbit as the earth, but 6 months the other side. Atheism is a useful word precisely because there is a long seated assumption in the consciousness of mankind that there must be a god.

An atheist disbelieves assertions of the existence of a deity or deities and believes the burden of proof is on those who say there is a god.

An agnostic disbelieves assertions that the existence of a deity or deities has been demonstrated, but also disbelieves assertions that the nonexistence of a deity or deities has been demonstrated.

Specifically, an atheist is not saying that there is no god, just that we don't have proof for any god. A 'Strong Atheist' may go on to affirm that there are no gods at all, but that is not required for atheism.

Based on this, I think I was talking about atheism in the most part, but with a bit of agnosticism thrown in.

[0] http://www.diffen.com/difference/Agnostic_vs_Atheist

This is just a disagreement over definitions.

If you define alchemy as e.g. 'the search for the ability to transmute elements', then sure, nuclear reactions are alchemy. But that's not how the word is generally used. It's used to describe a practice bound up with a bundle of concepts, beliefs, and connotations[0], which mostly disappeared after the 18th century. (That's a useful thing to have a word for -- under a definition of alchemy for which nuclear physics is alchemy, you'd probably want to invent a different word to describe that practice, and then that just introduces unnecessary confusion when talking to people who use the more common set of definitions).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy#Core_concepts

Don't you mean religious studies, more than theology? I think these are pretty different.

But Newton did none of those things. His theology did not influence anybody and was therefore a waste of time, except for the personal gratification he gained from it.

To say that Newton's theology "did not influence anybody and was therefore a waste of time" is absolutely false. I remember my math teacher mentioning several of his statements and beliefs about the nature of God during lecture.

Despite his intense biblical study and belief in a creating God, Newton observed the distinction between religion and science made by Galileo: “The Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go.” During his presidency of the Royal Society, Newton banned any subject touching religion, even apologetics. He wrote, “We are not to introduce divine revelations into philosophy [science], nor philosophical [scientific] opinions into religion.”

Yet for Newton this distinction was not a divorce, much less a conflict. Although the books of God’s Word and his Works were not to provide the content of each other’s teachings, they were bound together. Newton did not consider one to be sacred and the other secular, nor did Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, or Pascal—all practicing Christians. Only later Enlightenment philosophy produced a model of “warfare” between science and theology.

Newton’s theology profoundly influenced his scientific method, which rejected pure speculation in favor of observations and experiments.

Note I am talking about original theological discoveries made by Newton, not just his beliefs in general, since we are discussing the influence of Newtons theological research. If a viewpoint was also held by Copernicus we can be pretty sure it didn't originate with Newton!

I think it's fair to say that Newton's work on it was a bet that paid off poorly.

I think "us" refers to the readers. Ie the kind of person likely to be reading an essay of his

^ I never said "popularity of belief" in any way implies the correctness of belief. I could find and list many popular beliefs that I am certain are blatantly false.

I merely pointed out that the essay seems (to me) to imply that "most people" in the world discount the study of theology as "crazy" and "a waste of time". The reference to the popularity of the Bible ( as "the most widely distributed and best-selling book in the world." ) was in support of my assertion that the "us" for which it is true that the study of theology is "crazy" or a "waste of time" seems to me to be much smaller group of people than the essay seems to imply.

And I was not addressing whether people think that studying the Bible advances technology/science, but whether people think that studying theology is "crazy" or a "waste of time".

Some of those people become fantastically rich as a result of the one right thing.

Just because someone is wildly successful and right about one non-consensus bet, doesn't mean they aren't wrong about most of their other beliefs.

The occasional out-of-the-mainstream idea is a revolution, but the vast majority are just nutty and wrong.

I think of alchemy as early contact between mysticism and objectivity. People thought mysticism was a valid way to get info about the world. The failure of alchemy proved them wrong and may have partly led to a more skeptical "hypothesize and test" approach from the original "try to confirm religion" approach.

It's pretty interesting that pg describes the possible outcomes of contrarian ideas as either positive for society or merely a waste of time. Even though the pursuit of risky and contrarian ideas can also be hugely harmful for society.

I've lot so much respect for YC wrt Thiel. Trump is such an obvious villain that if you're not against him you're an enabler. I don't care that he's become normalized in the American and Russian press the rest of the world is laughing at the USA and crying inside. We're slowly finding out which people are actually committed to their ideals and which are just interested in being more powerful, even if it comes at the cost of allowing a total maniac to the nuclear throne.

So I respect about a third of American electorate. The third that didn't vote I don't respect. The third that voted for Trump I don't respect.

As for America the country, I respect most of the intelligent people working at the State Department and the CIA that I truly believe are working towards a peaceful more prosperous world, though I admit that their history is much more checkered (waterboarding, etc) than their counterparts in Germany, but they've done good work basically everywhere outside of the Middle East. Tough area to play right though, lobbyists, Israel, Turkey, multiple religious factions, critical market for the economy / national security.

But all their work is jeopardized by this horrible demagogue and enough of America either stayed home or voted for him. A man that bragged about sexual assault and swindled the poor for their student loan money and chanted "lock her up" to crowds of tens of thousands. We're laughing at America in the morning, but we're crying at night.

Peter Thiel isn't like Haber or Einstein, because most of his potentially dangerous ideas are only contrarian in our little bubble. When he challenges democracy, he's on the side of millennia of kings and queens and emperors and chieftains, as well as everyone who has ever said "if I were king for a day..."; when he manages to be the highest profile Trump supporter in the tech world, he is backed by nearly half the voters in America; when he says that a monopoly is exactly what a company should aim for, a great many CEOs and HN readers privately nod. His genuinely contrarian ideas aren't frightening, they're considered laughable, which is why the media mocks him so much for seasteading and "vampirism".

Which makes him totally different from the Member of Parliament for Cambridge, Master of the Mint, intellectual grandfather of the enlightenment, etc.

By the way, Isaac Newton MP did have a somewhat lasting influence on theology: he got to vote in 1688.

For his "weird" behavior, yeah, probably.

For some of his "other" behavior -- his support for Trump, generally; and his (very recent, and very disturbing) attemps to soft-peddle, and normalize sexual violence -- more likely it's because they lack awareness of some basic political history.

Unless that's the only tool of "expression" they have.

I don't think betting the house on a single event is "insane". Businesses make these all-in bets all the time and we're fine with it. Every Hollywood blockbuster is also a billion dollar all-in bet, but nobody bats an eye at that either. Individuals bet a huge percentage of their net worth when they buy a house. Yet when a person invests a large amount of their net worth in a single stock it's suddenly irresponsible? Hogwash.

The way we perceive risk in society is extraordinarily polarized. Some moderately risky behavior is considered normal, and other moderately risky behavior is deemed "insane". I don't think there is any rhyme or reason to it; just a matter of arbitrary cultural norms.

I'm not claiming that all risks by society are judged incorrectly, just that it happens frequently enough that much is to be gained by being really skeptical towards the consensus views on risk.

Lost lives may be merely wasted time if you take a maximally macro view of humanity. That detachment is likely comforting if you can pull it off. Me, personally though... I'm a social human being and I care about - even love - other human beings, and their lives represent far more to me than that.

The study of God and religious ideas is equivalent to the study of human nature and the significance of existence itself. This is true regardless of which belief system you care to study.

Even avoiding deep concepts usually not found in this forum, religion remains at the heart of the greatest human conflicts of the present day, and is critically central to any understanding of the largest cultural forces in the world. Yeah, what a waste of time!

The Bible itself has always claimed to be "written by humans", moved by God according to his interactions in history, speaking his words according to the authority given them.

The Bible itself has also been against false prophets (those claiming to speak for God), insisting that every word should be tested according to what came to pass.

For example, take the book of Isaiah. It claims for itself to be written by a human, Isaiah the son of Amoz during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. We know now it was written circa 700 years before Christ. Isaiah speaks about the suffering and rising of the Christ (see Isaiah 53 for an accessible example).

Now the question is, does that not match what we know of Jesus of Nazareth, and do the words of Isaiah not also authenticate Jesus of Nazareth?

And when Isaiah speaks about Cyrus the Great of Persia, many years before his time, does that not match what we know of Cyrus? And was Cyrus himself (according to first-century Jewish Roman historian Josephus) not amazed when he read Isaiah's words concerning himself? Or should we force the book of Isaiah to be post-dated so as to sit more comfortably with a naturalist philosophy?

According to textual criticism (the branch of research where you apply source criticism to the biblical texts the same way you would for any other historical source), the book called Isiah is a compilation of texts written by three different authors at different points in time - before, during and after the exile.

The prophecy in Isiah 53 talks about a guy who was incredibly ugly and despised by everyone, who was killed disgracefully, and who never uttered a word. This probably matches numerous unfortunate souls before and after, but clearly not Jesus, since he was actually revered by his followers and did utter quite a lot of words, even during his execution. In other words, the passage disproves that Jesus could be the Messiah - unless you apply a healthy dose of cognitive dissonance.

You reduce the passage to being about "a guy who was incredibly ugly" whereas the context (see Isaiah 52) indicates someone beaten horrifically, "his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness".

Your caricature neglects to mention and skirts around the key details of the passage:

The suffering servant is the kingly representative of his people, appointed by God, who, though innocent, will bear the punishment of his people's sins on their behalf. He will be smitten by God and they will mock him for it. He will be rejected, suffer and die, but he will rise, and make many to be accounted righteous.

The substitutionary atonement is clearly repeated many times in Isaiah 53:

"Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted."

"But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed."

"We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all."

"For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished."

"He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth."

"Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand."

"After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities."

"For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

If we extract the "factual" statements about the figure in the prophecy, you will see it does not match what we know about Jesus. All the matches are theological construction after the fact to make the pieces fit. And you have to ignore or gloss over the parts that does not fit: "He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth".

No, I was just quoting from Isaiah there. That's Isaiah speaking many years before Jesus, describing and requiring the Christ to be a Suffering Servant.

Not many ancient historians would contest that Jesus was a historical person, or have any reason to question that he died the way he did. Nor would they contest the public life of John the Baptist or Pilate or Herod for that matter, or that the New Testament documents contain eye witness testimony, as well as incidental historical detail in the form of taken-for-granted shared understanding of historical events in the minds of those who were then alive and able to contest and examine the facts. Many of those who witnessed to Jesus suffered for their convictions, and faced tremendous pressure and incentive to quit.

"And you have to ignore or gloss over the parts that does not fit: 'He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth.'"

Have you read the remarkable account of Jesus before Pilate?

At the end of the day, you must decide for yourself.

You are correct most historians assume a historical Jesus did exist. Just as they assume Mohammad and Gautama Buddha existed.

With respect, "God" is just a term referring to a being that has supreme powers that humans imagine to be the best of the best - and different people define these powers and other attributes differently. So even if you are an atheist, the study of Gods can still be an interesting reflection of people and society!

It's the difference between studying Tolkien universe as art and tracing its influences on culture etc on one hand, and searching for Silmarils on the other.

You can of course argue the underlying hermetic philosophy was BS - but it was and is no better or worse than theology.

See Paul of Tarsus (a former persecutor of some of the first Christians) writing to the Corinthians circa 55 AD:

"And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead."

See Luke the physician writing to Theopilus:

"Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught."

One merit of theology is the study of religious traditions and whether or not they should continue or be discouraged for various reasons, as an example.

Not only scientific pursuits have merit. I'm not sure if that's what you were trying to imply with your combination of statements, but it's possible to infer that from your choice of words.

I think we can all agree that that was a waste of time. (hindsight is a wonderful thing).

Relevant smbc: http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2007-12-27

Edit: People are downvoting this, but I genuinely want to know how "theology is the study of supernatural things" and "theology does not rely on belief in the supernatural" are not in complete contradiction.

  "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost
   almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the
   game winning shot and missed."

Did they all become like Michael Jordan?

Failure may be on the path to success, but failure does not guarantee success.

"FLOSS .. is better for the same reason that science is better than alchemy. Back before we had science we had alchemy, a lot like science except alchemists never told anyone else what they thought they'd learned and so they were prey to the most common human frailty which is self deception, which is how how alchemists discovered in the hardest way possible that you shouldn't drink mercury, and when alchemists started telling each other what they thought they'd learned, and subjecting themselves to adversarial peer review, and they started publishing their source they turned something base into something noble, they turned superstition into science and created the enlightenment, and FLOSS is everywhere because it continues the enlightenment tradition."

Source: [1:40 to 2:20] http://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon/oscon-tx/public/content...

The most you might lose is the support of friends and family if your dreams aren't fully realized. Which can be a lot, but that is why the people who have the most to lose don't try startups.

If startups are not risky enough to be irrational to get involved, are you saying then the big companies are acting irrationally when not getting involved?

That's of course a dual view. But it seems to me that the big corporation is more likely the one that calculates the correct expected ROI than the startup in the unknown space..

The point is that if you go through a decent period [2] of running a start-up you will acquire experience and skills that will make you much more attractive for hire compared to yourself without that experience. What's more, the quality of this real world experience will most likely far surpass anything you would gain in a classic university in the same amount of time [3].

--

[1] Depending on how literal we want to be with these word games, there are some tricks that can be done with the "you want" part of the phrase to adjust how much it applies.

[2] Let's say 6 months full-time minimum.

[3] There's no way to give a universal estimate here for everyone. However for people who are capable of self-teaching, the startup experience can be orders of magnitude more useful than university time.

Newton's studies were motivated by his dislike of farming and need to revenge a bully. He got time for his most productive work because plague closed the University for two years.

----

[1]: if you are not familiar with these terms, look up definitions, because they don't mean what you think they mean.

If you agree, then how can you say both act rationally?

Why wouldn't rational people who have labor to offer, instead of joining a startup, go work for a big company? The pay is usually better I hear.

Addendum: I am sure you can explain the difference in behavior by invoking "preferences" or "utility" (which is actually meaningless in humans, cf. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13276760, but that aside) of monetary rewards; however, that doesn't explain why there is the difference in the first place. If some entities are rational, they should perceive the world the same way and thus have the same preferences.

>If some entities are rational, they should perceive the world the same way and thus have the same preferences.

This is incorrect. Rational economic behavior is sequence of choices that gives the optimal level utility for the actor. Utility function is given and outside rationality.

Different people have different capabilities and resources available to them. Even if they had different utility functions they would behave differently for the reasons I described above.

Why should there be only 1 optimal way to play this game?

Example of a game with 2 optimal ways to play - tossing a coin and betting on head or tail.

Now it may be possible to evaluate the utility of engaging in a start-up and so act rationally in entering in to such an endeavour but I'd warrant that's not how it [ever] happens. Instead it's far more realistic to assume it follows the lottery model: that people's sense of hope, or wishful thinking, makes them choose to play [at lottery, or startups] despite the analysis indicating an alternate choice is most logical. We humans are not creatures of logic.

So even if those guys in the garage act irrationally as individuals, someone has to take those risks, otherwise the society as a whole would be out-competed.

And that's why some people have evolved (not me :-)) to take more risks, at the personal expense.

There is no rational reason for you to live, you can - and hopefully do - want to, but that's not rationality. That's irrational humanity, or based on irrational axioms.

But, yes, history has a survivorship bias. But that's literally one of the oldest observations made. It's often said, "History is written by the victors." What PG is saying is just another version of that age-old observation.

This essay has a great core insight, and I get you don't need more words to say it, but I still miss the longer ones

I found the book super interesting in terms of explaining how innovations happen and how we talk about them in retrospect. Although it is about science, I think a lot of the thinking would apply to programming innovations too. And unlike most blog posts, there is actually some serious sociological research behind it :-).

So yes, in modern times, theology and alchemy has the same scientific value: none

You're limiting knowledge to the hard sciences.

That kind of thinking is not scientific, but merely Scientism.

You're also ruling out many scientific domains, e.g. history which operates according to the historical method.

Theology (in the original Christian sense of the word) stands on the historical method. It's interested primarily in those historical events from which we can learn about God. If Jesus is not historical, if God has not acted in history, then there's nothing to know about God, and there's no such thing as Theology.

But that is different to the "observe", "measure", rinse-and-repeat methodology which is commonly understood as the scientific method.

The methods by which one studies physics and history are different, but history is no less scientific, and it falls within the sciences, as does theology since it depends on the historical method.

Theology cannot argue or learn anything about God for which there is no historical basis.

I have nothing against theology as a hobby or religious pursuit, but at some point we have to say "the well is dry" and admit that there is no grounds for spending public funds on it. Specifically: the only payback we can expect lies in the student's personal religious experience.

His theological conclusions would have been considered heresy. The penalty for heresy was the loss of all property and status and, sometimes, death.

He was indeed taking a serious risk in studying these things.

Except it was three:

- Optics

- Gravitation and mechanics

- Mathematics

There are many scientists out there who spend a lifetime on theories that turn out to be bogus, but calling it a bet is entirely missing the point.

Maybe he's referring to the bets Newton (somewhat implicitly) made by dedicating time to physics/science as well as alchemy and theology.

These are not really bets, it's all what Newton was, a man's passion, life and legacy.

These people live for research. They can work on anything (because interests them) and no matter if it has earth shattering consequences or small breaks they can still be happy during the process, so calling it risky or dangerous is laughable.

I was completely unprepared for what was my primary reaction: that DaVinci just documented every idea in his head, and that some of them just happened to pan out. But for some reason, we credit him for the small percentage of ideas that just happened to work, and ignore all the wrong ideas. To me, he didn't seem like a genius, he seemed very much like a broken clock that just happened to be right twice a day.

There's a certain survivor bias in these sorts of discussions, where we identify great contributors as taking huge risks, and so forth and so on. This is true, but we also maybe tend to give them too much credit because we ignore all their failures. We tell ourselves that's why perseverence is so important, but then turn around and make fun of people or even become angry at them for wasting our time when so many things don't turn out. The difference between perseverence and shotgun approaches to pursuing knowledge seems arbitrary to me lots of times.

If you followed every one of DaVinci's ideas, for example, you'd be screwed, because he was so wrong about so many things. Today, he'd probably be seen as a crackpot because it would be so difficult to know when his idea was right and when it was wrong. The value of his ideas lies as much in his audience, the people who realized what of his ideas was correct, as much as, if not more, than in DaVinci himself.

I guess I've grown really disillusioned with advancements in science, because so much of it involves a sort of mythmaking that seems fairy-tale to me. To me, the reality seems more distributed, involving small contributions, gradually changing over time, with a lot of randomness involved.

I don't mean to come across as saying we shouldn't encourage experimentation and tinkering, or that it shouldn't be valued. In fact, I'd argue the opposite. But at the same time something seems off about our incentive structures--the way we give credit seems off.

Think of it this way: we do science because at some level, what's correct and what's not is an empirical idea. You could have 10 very reasonable explanations and 9 of them will be wrong "just because." In many cases, being intelligent has nothing to do with why the 9 are wrong, otherwise all we'd need would be philosophy and math. So why do we pretend that the 1 person who was correct was correct because they are a genius? It seems like you can't have geniuses and a need for science at the same time.

Re: DaVinci, do you think it's possible that he knew most of his ideas were bad? I write down every product idea I have, but I know that maybe 1 in 10 would actually be used by people and maybe 1 in 10 of the useful ones would be good investments of my time to work on. I think that writing down all the bad ideas helps me think of good ideas though.

Re: Scientific geniuses are admired too much, I think you're right. The Media totally picks out the success stories because that's what interests people. Then The Media is incentivized to make these successful scientists seem really smart, also because that's what interests people. Sam Altman has talked about a similar thing. When you meet the Brian Chesky's and Mark Zuckerbergs today, you see brilliant, confident entrepreneurs that seem like geniuses that must have some special DNA. However, the reality is that 10 years ago these people seemed totally regular, just struggling entrepreneurs like so many others. Though they are clever and hard working, it's not like they're made of a different thing than everyone else.

> He was not a very careful person as a mathematician. He made a lot of mistakes. But he made mistakes in a good direction. I tried to imitate him. But I’ve realized that it’s very difficult to make good mistakes.

I bet if you compared DaVinci's mistakes to the mistakes of your average Renaissance thinker you'd find a striking difference in calliber (and breadth).

In the era Newton came from you would have to be wealthy to be able to afford other interests beyond surviving. So a lot of the big leaps were made by those from rich families or those lucky enough to have some sort of wealthy backer.

Plus certain things like education, family, kids are attached to specific timelines in a typical life. Health and the ability to do things are also attached to timelines. When you take a risk you could be putting all of those on line.

The ability to expend time with no certainty of returns is a luxury only those from a wealthy background have. And naturally they will be more successfuly as there are more efforts from people of those backgrounds.

Interestingly, this is the second time in the past 24 hours I've encountered the idea of comparing a VC (Marc's reference) with another class of high achievers. (previous one, a comparison with entrepreneurs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13371813)

Furthermore, you don't need to make a breakthrough in everything to satisfy your desire for knowledge. Even more so for Newton, which was known by his seclusion and introversion.

Theology is nothing but a study of the implications of the historical events concerning Jesus of Nazareth, those events themselves being subject to the historical method.

Either I am missing something, or pg is essentially implying some or all of the following:

1. The person of Jesus Christ did not exist in history.

2. There is insufficient information concerning him.

3. Studying the historical person of Jesus Christ according to the historical method is akin to, or of similar value to, the study of alchemy, i.e. a waste of time.

I seriously doubt whether any historian interested in ancient history would make such claims.

It's pretty ignorant and reckless coming from pg.

In any case, whether a creator exist or not, it is still a waste of time to search in the Bible for information about his plans for the future, like Newton did.

If you are going to argue it wasn't a waste of time, you have to point out what useful information Newton discovered in his studies of the Bible.

Theology on the other hand is the study of God and the Bible from a religious rather then historical angle. So it is a completely different subject.

Therefore, before Theology, one must first establish the historicity and details of those events according to the historical method and textual criticism (without any bias or presuppositions from naturalist philosophy). Theology then takes it from there. And really Theology is nothing more than a study of what is already there in the Bible, for the Bible is a record not just of the events themselves, but also the meaning of those events. It provides the facts and the rubric for interpreting those facts. "Theologians" never invent or bring anything to the table, which God has not already made clear.

That is a religious viewpoint, a leap of faith. From a rational perspective, there is no reason to think God put anything special in the Bible. The Bible is a collection of texts about things people have believed, but there is no reason to think God had a hand in it anymore than in say the Quran or the Edda.

> "That is a religious viewpoint, a leap of faith"

No, it reflects an understanding of the scientific method, which makes no claim to have any tools or ability to study the supernatural. Or do you disagree as to the limits and scope of science? Science is limited to the study of the natural world, which includes the study of history (according to the historical method).

"From a rational perspective, there is no reason to think God put anything special in the Bible."

By logic, that is false. If, the supernatural (should it exist) wished to break into the natural world by working events and leaving information which humans could study and understand and be sure of in terms of history, then so be it, but you have no rational ability to challenge that right. Or have you already disallowed the possibility of the supernatural or precluded any ability on its part? As Paul said to Agrippa in his defence, "why would any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?"

You do however, have the scientific ability to study history, to see if such events have not in fact taken place. History is the study of events, regardless of the "probability" of such events. Only a frequentist would hold that an event cannot happen because they themselves deem it unlikely. To the historian, events either happened or they did not.

Finally, as a corollary, it follows that there is also no scientific ability to disprove anything supernatural (as much as some naturalists would love to do), merely to prove it, and then only on the basis of its interaction with the natural world which can be studied by science. Carl Sagan would tell you the same thing.

The problem for some is that they are hampered by naturalist philosophy (as opposed to science) or frequentism, or their lifestyle or worldview, or what others think of them. As Jesus himself said to the religious Pharisees who opposed him: "How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?"

History shows us many accounts of the supernatural, but we cannot believe them all, since they are contradictory. E.g. Paul claiming he saw Jesus in a vision, Mohammad claiming God told him that Jesus was not killed, legends that Alexander was the son of Zeus and so on. At least some of these accounts of the supernatural must be unreliable. It is purely an act of faith to decide to believe some and not others, since there is no scientific way to validate the claims.

Sure, as with all knowledge, it's up to you to use your discernment, objectively.

"It is purely an act of faith to decide to believe some and not others, since there is no scientific way to validate the claims."

The New Testament documents, at least, contain the plain and often awkward testimony of people who walked with Jesus. The validity of their claims can be investigated according to the historical method, and the textual reliability of the documents themselves can be investigated according to textual criticism, as you know. Above all, this testimony centers chiefly on public, verifiable events (the intersection of Jesus' life with public figures such as John the Baptist and Herod, the trial of Jesus by Pilate, the death of Jesus, the burial of Jesus in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb, the resurrection of Jesus according to eye witnesses, the immediate explosion of the persecuted 1st century church from this point onwards). That is different from "he said/she said".

Further, the faith referred to in these documents is never a blind faith, as people often impute. Rather, it is a faith in a God who is unseen (obviously), founded on a bedrock surety of things heard and seen (eye-witness testimony). The word faith simply means "trust". The question is, are the witnesses reliable? Is their testimony "trustworthy"? Do you trust Paul of Tarsus, a student of Gamaliel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamaliel) and later a converted persecutor? Do you trust his farewell to the Ephesians in Acts 20:13-38? Do you trust Peter, a middle-class fisherman with hired hands? Do you trust John, brother of James, son of Zebedee? Do you trust James, Jesus' half-brother, leader of the early 1st century Jerusalem church?

More than this, the striking thing with the person of Jesus is that he has contemporary witnesses pointing back to him, but he also has the whole weight of the Old Testament documents pointing forward to him centuries in advance, the very purpose for which they exist.

And then you have Jesus' own polarizing words, the genius of his parables, his transcendent teaching ("But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you", "So give back to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's"), his own testimony to his Father, and his own testimony to his death and resurrection. Do you trust Jesus or was he a fraud? Do you trust Jesus or was he mad? As an honest observer, his life and his own words allow for not much more choice.

We exercise faith/trust in the laws of physics on a day to day basis, and faith in the knowledge of the past or present, in terms of people we know existed or exist. We never meet them but we can know them through people who did. In the New Testament documents, it's the same principle as you come face to face with Jesus "the Christ".

Clearly the Gospels are not 100% trustworthy (since they contain contradictions), so unless you want to reject everything, you have to make some kind of effort to discern the believable parts from the legends. For example in the Mark, the oldest version, Jesus does not talk a lot about himself, and there is no reason to consider him anymore than a human preacher. In John the myth have grow to the level that he more of less proclaims himself a God. This clearly illustrates how the story Jesus the preacher over a few decades turns into Jesus Christ the Son of God (or even God himself).

However, this was just one example. I think the article could be greatly improved by giving, like, 50 examples (in an abbreviated form, like "Newton: physics, alchemy, theology"). With one example it's sorta easy to think, "eh that might just be an exception". With 50 example, it's easy to think, "wow, look at all of that; the core idea definitely does seem to be true".

[1] https://stratechery.com/2017/the-ten-year-anniversary-of-the...

Risky? What is the definition of risk? What was the downside to Newton making these 'bets'? What was the risk of Andressen deciding in college to think that what he did was the right way to go? And importantly (and my point) wouldn't the exact same action by a tenured professor be more of a risk?

Let's take the risk that Donald Trump took vs. Hillary Clinton. Trump is hated by many now and would be regardless of whether he won or lost the election (in many ways decimated his brand). The same is not true for Hillary even though she did take a reputation hit it's nowhere near what Trump (with his rhetoric) took. So same thing "run for President" different people different levels of risk.

"Maybe the smartness and the craziness were not as separate as we think."

This seems kind of obvious to me. Yes, creative and driven people are interested in lots of strange things. Yes, genius often means the ability to take ideas or discoveries from apparently widely different areas and tie them together to form new understandings.

"Newton made three bets. One of them worked."

This makes no sense. Of course his physics was a success. But how could anyone judge the theological pursuits of an individual to be a success or a failure?

And if the pursuit was a failure, then doesn't that negate the earlier implication that his studying theology ("crazy") was in some ways associated with his success in physics ("genius")?

The reality is that genius minds are intellectually fearless. Newton was into alchemy and fringe theology. Edison tried to build a machine to contact the dead. Many of the great minds of the 60s who at least envisioned everything you're using now were into all kinds of "crazy" stuff: parapsychology, psychedelic consciousness expansion, shamanism, etc.

Was some of that stuff silly? Sure. Was some or even most of it a dead end? Sure. But that's not the point. The point is that great minds fear no idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSolPNn0G7M

If you think alchemy might have promise, go and study it! You'll be taking a risk, but it might just change the world (and put you in the history books).

In physics he had a lower[2] benefit but much higher probability of progress.

  1. Plus he went a little mad from chemical fumes.
  2. Really.  Imagine[3] making a real breakthrough in alchemy or theology!
  3. I can't imagine it and you almost certainly can't either.

Newton is an exception as well. While his biographers down-play his failures, he is also credited (at least in High School Physics) with things that were the work of dozens or even hundreds of scientists - or giants you might say.