Not the person that you asked but I think they’re full of it. Maybe they like to believe that the American government is powerful enough to control beings in possession of technology capable of interstellar travel. I don’t buy it.
Or the cheese is just sliding off their cracker. Happens to many otherwise very bright folks.
I always think about how Ben Carson was one of the most skilled (if not the most skilled) neurosurgeons in the world, so knowledgeable about the human brain and so deft at operating on it that he was able to separate conjoined twins in a then-unprecedented procedure... and is also a creationist who believes that the Egyptian pyramids were biblical grain silos.
Linus Pauling is another example. The only person to ever receive two unshared Nobel prizes, considered one of the top 20 scientists of all time, and he was a huge proponent of megavitamin pseudoscience.
Either you're trolling or your comprehension is just totally off, but to reiterate the original point was that making breakthroughs in sciences often requires "leaps of faith", which are near impossible to do if you're a textbook rationalist.
I didn't make any claims about their domain expertise being cross-domain.
At least we have a point of agreement, that being that: "Either you're trolling or your comprehension is just totally off"
To return to the beginning you arrived here with the statement that
"[Two times] Nobel prize winner and superior[(?)] neurosurgeon criticized as quacks by two internet users"
I pointed out bad paraphrasing, both parties had recognised core skills, both famously championed beliefs that had little to no evidence or support.
Point being neither of "the two internet users" above accused the subjects of being quacks per se .. just that both had definitely publicly veered into quackery.
That's the relevant observation here, a thread about a much lauded elder astrophysicist veering into matters outside off his computational chops, into questions of metallurgy, and not receiving any support from his peers.
TBH I'm a fan of the bulk of Paulings work, quantum chemistry, molecular biology, and his promotion (and Russell's) of nuclear disarmament. I attribute his embrace of megavitamin therapy more to his age and aversion to death.
Carson seems like a talented enough knife man albeit dimmer than many others I know.
You did explicitly state that they both could "stretch their domain expertise 'so far'" which leaves a lot of ambiguity wrt just how far you intended, especially with Pauling who literally had bona fide cross domain credientials (or over lapping credentials in related science fields plus a public voice that lead to his Nobel Peace Prize.)
Minchin, FWiW, is a keenly intelligent comedian and lyricist and frequently mixes in in some on point observations from scientific rationalism, philosophy, logic, et al.
Additionally, I bear you no ill will (I've exercised no votes here) this may all be a case of two people reading past each other.
“Open mindedness” does not mean to “treat all ideas as being on equal grounds”
All it means is to listen. After you listen, if you judge that it’s clearly just some quack trying to Mark Seargant some people (this is clearly what’s happening), then that doesn’t make you “not open minded”.
> . . . Ben Carson was one of the most skilled (if not the most skilled) neurosurgeons in the world . . . and is also a creationist who believes that the Egyptian pyramids were biblical grain silos.
There is something to be said about applying Gell-Mann amnesia more broadly than journalism alone.
In a speech in 2002, Crichton coined the term "Gell-Mann amnesia effect", after physicist Murray Gell-Mann. He used this term to describe the phenomenon of experts believing news articles written on topics outside of their fields of expertise, yet acknowledging that articles written in the same publication within their fields of expertise are error-ridden and full of misunderstanding. . .
According to Wikipedia[1], one of them did survive (but was "profoundly disabled" and "never learned to speak or feed himself") but yeesh, it doesn't seem like a huge success, and their mother regrets electing for the surgery - which makes it seem like the doctors believed they would have survived and lived a reasonably normal life (under the circumstances) without the surgery.
If that's the case, then it seems like a total ethical violation to even offer the surgery. But maybe that isn't so and it's her trauma talking there, I don't really know.
Carson's Wikipedia article [2] mentions several other sets of twins, one operation resulting in a "normal neurological state," 2 resulting in the death of both twins, and another resulting in one dying and the other being "legally blind and [struggling] to walk."
I don't know what to make of all that, but you're right, that is more murky than the narrative I've heard previously.
I know with the Iranian twins who died (adult conjoined sisters), they were advised that it was a super risky procedure but wanted to go through with it anyway. Some of the other twins he's operated on had mixed results (i.e., one twin thrived but the other didn't, or both only lived a few years after being separated), but I think at least a few pairs have done pretty well.
My understanding is that separating craniopagus twins has a pretty high risk of complication/failure, even when you know what you're doing.
Conspiracy theories that require large numbers of public servants working in concert effectively and stealthily, without any leaks or whistleblowers, are presumably created by people who have never worked in the public service.
> Or the cheese is just sliding off their cracker. Happens to many otherwise very bright folks.
IIRC, as your intelligence gets higher, the friction of your cracker lowers.
Won't point out all the double agents for the KGB that infested western spy agencies, (and vice versa) it's more of the same, really, and there's too many names to type. And those are only the ones we know of...
But yep, the NSA is a good counterexample, however also a poor one as they primarily operate in the signals/digital space, where passive monitoring is the default, and where paper trails are far easier to not leave.
As a thought experiment, extrapolate from the NSA to "the Bush administration did 9/11, jet fuel can't melt steel, it was a controlled demolition" conspiracy theory that implicitly requires government agents lining massive skyscrapers with explosives without being noticed, without anyone having a moral crisis, especially no-one in the "crash a plane allegedly filled with American citizens into a building in New York" division.
And you'll quickly see how the NSA's quiet operations in the small don't scale to the level of competent and silent government required for faking a moon landing, or ensuring no-one knows about aliens amongst us etc etc.
Okay, so the final report is correct then thanks to him, but the conclusions aren't?
I dismissed him out of hand, I'll admit.
I'm just really unsure why the idea that heat reduces the strength of steel enough, and that the failure of the columns located in the hottest area of the fire then caused a cascading failure across other columns, is considered less likely than massive conspiracy.
Basically everything protected by any level of security clearance is high school drama antics compared to the distilled existentialism of "aliens exist." That would throw basically all of human history and psychology as we know it right out the window.
I think your last statement actually works against your point. The fact that the government has individuals increases the probability of leaks. Only a true monolith could remain airtight.
Or the cheese is just sliding off their cracker. Happens to many otherwise very bright folks.