E Pur Si Muove

["DAVID FARBER" <dfarber () me com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: the keyboard of geoff goodfellow <geoff () iconia com>
> Date: December 16, 2017 at 2:42:58 AM EST
> To: E-mail Pamphleteer Dave Farber's Interesting People list <ip () listbox com>
> Subject: E Pur Si Muove
>
> Sam Altman: 
> E Pur Si Muove
>
> Earlier this year, I noticed something in China that really surprised me.  I realized I felt more comfortable 
> discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than in San Francisco.  I didn’t feel completely comfortable—this was 
> China, after all—just more comfortable than at home.
>
> That showed me just how bad things have become, and how much things have changed since I first got started here in 
> 2005.
>
> It seems easier to accidentally speak heresies in San Francisco every year.  Debating a controversial idea, even if 
> you 95% agree with the consensus side, seems ill-advised.
>
> This will be very bad for startups in the Bay Area.
>
> Restricting speech leads to restricting ideas and therefore restricted innovation—the most successful societies have 
> generally been the most open ones.  Usually mainstream ideas are right and heterodox ideas are wrong, but the true 
> and unpopular ideas are what drive the world forward.  Also, smart people tend to have an allergic reaction to the 
> restriction of ideas, and I’m now seeing many of the smartest people I know move elsewhere.
>
> It is bad for all of us when people can’t say that the world is a sphere, that evolution is real, or that the sun is 
> at the center of the solar system.
>
> More recently, I’ve seen credible people working on ideas like pharmaceuticals for intelligence augmentation, genetic 
> engineering, and radical life extension leave San Francisco because they found the reaction to their work to be so 
> toxic.  “If people live a lot longer it will be disastrous for the environment, so people working on this must be 
> really unethical” was a memorable quote I heard this year.
>
> To get the really good ideas, we need to tolerate really bad and wacky ideas too.  In addition to the work Newton is 
> best known for, he also studied alchemy (the British authorities banned work on this because they feared the 
> devaluation of gold) and considered himself to be someone specially chosen by the almighty for the task of decoding 
> Biblical scripture.  
>
> You can’t tell which seemingly wacky ideas are going to turn out to be right, and nearly all ideas that turn out to 
> be great breakthroughs start out sounding like terrible ideas.  So if you want a culture that innovates, you can’t 
> have a culture where you allow the concept of heresy—if you allow the concept at all, it tends to spread.  When we 
> move from strenuous debate about ideas to casting the people behind the ideas as heretics, we gradually stop debate 
> on all controversial ideas.
>
> This is uncomfortable, but it’s possible we have to allow people to say disparaging things about gay people if we 
> want them to be able to say novel things about physics. [1] Of course we can and should say that ideas are mistaken, 
> but we can’t just call the person a heretic.  We need to debate the actual idea. 
>
> Political correctness often comes from a good place—I think we should all be willing to make accommodations to treat 
> others well.  But too often it ends up being used as a club for something orthogonal to protecting actual victims.  
> The best ideas are barely possible to express at all, and if you’re constantly thinking about how everything you say 
> might be misinterpreted, you won’t let the best ideas get past the fragment stage.
> [...]
> http://blog.samaltman.com/e-pur-si-muove
>
> -- 
> Geoff.Goodfellow () iconia com
> living as The Truth is True
> http://geoff.livejournal.com  
>
> This message was sent to the list address and trashed, but can be found online.



-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/18849915-ae8fa580
Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=18849915&id_secret=18849915-aa268125
Unsubscribe Now: 
https://www.listbox.com/unsubscribe/?member_id=18849915&id_secret=18849915-32545cb4&post_id=20171216034237:0F618FF6-E23D-11E7-B5B1-F7FC9590EA55
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com