Posted on 05/09/2023 7:27:31 AM PDT by Red Badger
If you want to bring up ego-maniacs, I nominate Carl Sagan. He was bad enough with his TV show “The Cosmos” but I sat through one of his lectures on astrophysics once at Bell Labs in New Jersey. His condescension and sneering smile of derision to his audience was entirely inappropriate behavior on his part,
especially since there were two Nobel Prize winners and numerous patent holders of sophisticated electronic devices in the seats. He was a rabid atheist and in a round table on nuclear disarmament, when challenged by another participant to explain an obvious flaw in his advocacy of complete elimination of nuclear weapons, he completely lost his cool, obviously enraged that some “peasant” would dare to question him.
Nice anecdote, thanks. I certainly consider Carl Sagan one of the great ego-maniacs of science. I talked to a surgeon who cared for him as he came to the end of his life, at Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, NY. Of course I had no idea he was there. I guess he lived in Ithaca until the end of his days.
The story of his talk at Bell Labs comes as no surprise at all, and as you say is especially noteworthy given the remarkable people and accomplishments that were sitting in the audience in front of him.
As I understand it, he was a man of few notable scientific accomplishments (something about the temperature of the atmosphere of Venus, IIRC). His position as a public figure gave him immense fame and prestige. I guess he was a clear speaker and to some extent writer, although I think his books were largely ghost-written. He was photogenic, and looked the part of "a Scientist." I guess his huge ego was a part of his "Famous Scientist" costume.
On the other end of the spectrum was Richard Feynman, who to the best of my knowledge never lorded his immense intelligence and accomplishments over anyone. He liked to talk about physics and enjoy life, and that was pretty much it. I'm sure he had an ego, but it was much more under control than that of the others we've mentioned.
What an experience it must have been to work at Bell Labs back then. Lucky you!
“I suspect that if I were to re-read his Foundation books, I would seem them in a new light. “Guiding” humanity along sounds socialistic to me now.”
Yep. I discovered Asimov when I was a teenager and enamored of centralized world government and social engineering ideas. I read the last of his foundation books when I was in my 20s and had taken a much more libertarian way of thinking and was a lot less enthralled by his vision of the future.
There was a dark side to Feynman. I’ve heard this enough from credible sources that I give it some credence. Apparently, if you were one of his grad students, married and he took a fancy to your wife, and you did want to pass the oral part of your PhD defense. You had to let him partake of your wife’s charms.
That’s really disturbing and disheartening.
I think he got killed making or testing some rocket fuel/oxidizer combo. He was brilliant, yet stone crazy. I notice there's Von Braun bashing in the text.
[Yeah, but science is a much bigger deal than is science fiction.]
Now that he’s dead, I wonder if Sagan is still an atheist.
I have read all Azimov’s Foundation books, not just the original Trilogy, there were prequels and sequels, and not written in chronological order.
I have also read all of Herbert’s Dune series, the originals and the prequels and sequels written by the son and Kevin Anderson.
They are quite similar in their eventual outcomes.
Azimov’s robots were very avuncular, except for the ones on Solaria, but Herbert’s robots were very dangerous and would kill you for no good reason.
But both were guiding humanity along for tens of thousands of years.
Azimov’s robots were developing Galaxia, a galaxy-wide Gaia-like entity where everything, living or inert was connected to each other and could be used as a ‘force’ (is this where Star Wars got its idea?).
Herbert’s robots were trying to eliminate humanity and become the only ‘intelligent’ beings in the universe. Except for one robot, Erasmus, who had his own plans, of creating a universe where humans and robots were co-dependent.................
There is a new cult-like philosophy called Longtermism/Effective Altruism that is similar and very popular among tech tycoons.
It mixes in a lot of words about goodness, but what it boils down to is that they are the smartest and therefore must have absolute power over humanity.
That fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried was one of the disciples. Elon Musk is also involved in these circles.
Here is one article describing it - https://netzpolitik.org/2023/longtermism-an-odd-and-peculiar-ideology/
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