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0 pointsPeterisP4y ago0 comments

I'd argue that even in the horrific example of the Great Leap Forward, Mao and those who went with him mostly succeeded with their personal goals and ensured all kinds of long-term benefits to themselves granted by a higher social status in the party, while those who went against him and had better plans failed in all their goals, often starting with the primary goal of immediate survival. In this scenario having the better plan was not useful, and trying to execute it was not rational as it only hurt your interests.

Using your example of Galileo, his effectiveness in propagating his science was severely limited by a scientifically irrelevant feud with church officials. Had he been more politically savvy, he would have been able to avoid tying the scientific issues with the personal conflict, and would not have provoked the church into this conflict - IMHO what we have in historical evidence indicates that it was perfectly plausible for him to get the church to support his position, which would have supported both his personal interests and the general progress of science, but he failed at that due to his personal qualities w.r.t. social aspects.

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kragen4y ago

Often that does happen in the short term, although in this particular case, it led to Mao losing control of the Party for six years and arguably delayed Mainland China's economic boom by 20 years. Certainly many of the people who tried to resist the Great Leap Forward died as a result, but so did many of the people who most enthusiastically practiced it.

I don't think a Galileo who spent much of his time acquiring political savvy and currying allies would have been able to make the progress he did make. Such a Galileo might have simply decided not to believe what he saw through the telescope, or to keep quiet about it. The Church had already burned Giordano Bruno at the stake for possessing the writings of Erasmus, and there are many other such stories: Bach was imprisoned for refusing to resign from his Kapellmeister post; Swartz committed suicide to escape imprisonment for downloading too many academic papers; Turing committed suicide to escape persecution for being openly gay; Newton lived to a ripe old age but certainly had a life full of interpersonal conflict; Champollion deciphered the hieroglyphs while awaiting trial for treason.

Fundamentally, rationality is insubordinate, and social graces frequently demand dishonesty, so that those who most love the truth are never those who get along best with others.

And those are my heroes, not Donald Trump or Mao Zedong.

There's a better-written essay on this topic at https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-....

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