Ben Goertzel wrote:
Jim,
I really don't have time for a long debate on the historical
psychology of scientists...
To give some random examples though: Newton, Leibniz and Gauss were
certainly obnoxious, egomaniacal pains in the ass though ... Edward
Teller ... Goethe, whose stubbornness was largely on-the-mark with his
ideas about morphology, but totally off-the-mark with his theory of
color ... Babbage, who likely would have succeeded at building his
difference engine were his personality less thorny ... etc. etc. etc.
etc. etc. ...
...
ben
...
Galileo, Bruno of Nolan, etc.
OTOH, Paracelsus was quite personable. So was, reputedly, Pythagoras.
(No good evidence on Pythagoras, though. Only stories from
supporters.) (Also, consider that the Pythagoreans, possibly including
Pythagoras, had a guy put to death for discovering that sqrt(2) was
irrational. [As with most things from this date, this is more legend
than fact, but is quite probable.])
As a generality, with many exceptions, strongly opinionated persons are
not easy to get along with unless you agree with their opinions. It
appears to be irrelevant whether their opinions are right, wrong, or
undecidable.
-------------------------------------------
agi
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