Eliezer Yudkowsky
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
If you all just looked at how he actually did it instead of falling to your knees and worshipping him, maybe then you'd be able to do it too.
Maybe I'm mistaken or extrapolating too far, but I kind of suspect that Barber once tried to explain to people how you move further along Einstein's direction to get timeless physics, and they sniffed scornfully and said, Oh, you think you're Einstein, do you?
John Baez's Crackpot Index, Item 18.
10 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to Einstein, or claim that special or general relativity are fundamentally misguided without good evidence.
30 points for suggesting that Einstein, in his later years, was groping his way towards the ideas you now advocate.
Barber never bothers to compare himself to Einstein, of course, nor does he ever appeal to Einstein in support of timeless physics.
I mention these items on the crackpot index by way of showing how many people compare themselves to Einstein and what society generally thinks of them.
The crackpot sees Einstein as something magical, so they can compare themselves to Einstein by way of praising themselves as magical.
They think Einstein had superpowers, and they think they have superpowers, hence the comparison.
But it is just the other side of the same coin to think that Einstein is sacred and the crackpot is not sacred.
Therefore, they have committed blasphemy in comparing themselves to Einstein.
Suppose a bright young physicist says, I admire Einstein's work, but personally, I hope to do better.
If someone is shocked and says, what?
You haven't accomplished anything remotely like what Einstein did.
What makes you think you're smarter than him?
then they are the other side of the crackpot's coin.
The underlying problem is conflating social status and research potential.
Einstein has extremely high social status because of his record of accomplishments, because of how he did it, and because he's the physicist whose name even the general public remembers, who brought honor to science itself.
And we tend to mix up fame with other quantities.