[breuleux]

Why do we need idols, though?

If there was no narrative, no idols, no celebrities, would people be less motivated to do science? Why do we need to lie to ourselves so?

> If you're already deeply interested in computer science, of course the detailed narrative recognizing dozens of brilliant early computer scientists is richer. Of course!

Personally I'm mostly uninterested in who did what, but maybe that's just me. It seems obvious to me that nearly every scientific discovery could have been done equally well by millions of people, it's just a matter of who had the resources to be educated, who decided to research the problem, who managed to snipe the answer first, and who had the right connections to get it acknowledged. They're still great achievements, for sure, but they're not the markers of exceptional genius we want to think they are, not for Turing or Einstein, but not for anyone at all, really.

[netcan]

>>They're not the markers of exceptional genius we want to think they are, not for Turing or Einstein, but not for anyone at all, really.

The point isn't to prove that they're special. The point is that something special happened and these people are designated symbols for that... and they're kind of selected for being good at this. We're not doing this for them, they're dead. The celebrity of Einstein is a deification of his relativity theories. We need idols for our symbolic world, to work without them in the real one.

[breuleux]

But what purpose do these idols or symbols serve, exactly? I'm speaking as someone who doesn't care who came up with relativity and doesn't care whether there is a founding person of computer science or not let alone who that would be, and would like to know what others see. Is it an inspiration thing? A motivation thing?

[bentonite]

I'd say its a bit of both inspiration and motivation. That said, I think the main motivators for these kinds of idols/heroes are to craft ethical or normative stories for how people should (or shouldn't) behave as well as to assist with teaching people theories and concepts.

Learning about why correlation doesn't equal causation (and spurrious correlations) is more impactful if you also learn about Wakefield's sins at the same time. He's a villian.

Archimedes and the bathtub is a great story - and I learned it in elementary school and still remember it and the lessons it teaches. We like to associate people with events and they help for learning and retaining information.

[PartiallyTyped]

Not necessarily a motivational thing, but events such as these become widespread and allows for easier dissemination of information.

It's easy to see then that such events allow for the eventual "recruitment" of other scientists, and in showing society that "science is working" and "solves important problems".

Both of which serve to enrich the scientific world with new researchers and funding to keep the engine running.

[slibhb]

> Why do we need idols, though?

Because we're flesh and blood, i.e. utterly irrational.

> If there was no narrative, no idols, no celebrities, would people be less motivated to do science? Why do we need to lie to ourselves so?

Yes, definitely, a huge amount of what motivates scientists is desire for fame, being considered a genius, Nobel prizes, scientific immortality, and so on. It is entirely unrealistic to imagine that we can stop being like this, it's almost a religious belief, akin to thinking that, one day, people can live without sin.

> Personally I'm mostly uninterested in who did what, but maybe that's just me. It seems obvious to me that nearly every scientific discovery could have been done equally well by millions of people, it's just a matter of who had the resources to be educated, who decided to research the problem, who managed to snipe the answer first, and who had the right connections to get it acknowledged. They're still great achievements, for sure, but they're not the markers of exceptional genius we want to think they are, not for Turing or Einstein, but not for anyone at all, really.

This may be an accurate description of your personality, in which you're one in a million, or it may be that you're ignorant about the things that actually drive you. The vast majority of people are driven by some kind of desire for fame, recognition, status, upvotes, and so on.

Suggesting that Turing and Einstein were not "exceptional geniuses" is bizarre. Even in proper context, they were exceptional geniuses, just among other, lesser-known, exceptional geniuses. If we take your view seriously, we remove all human agency and uniqueness, we remove the idea of an "achievement" and we can only give credit to luck, the historical process, and various contingent circumstances. Even if your view is accurate, people simply cannot live that way. Creating narratives is part of what makes us human and narratives need protagonists (idols, heroes, whatever).

[mangodrunk]

>Yes, definitely, a huge amount of what motivates scientists is desire for fame, being considered a genius, Nobel prizes, scientific immortality, and so on

That might do more harm than good. Once someone wins a Nobel, their productivity tends to decrease. Fighting over credit can be really toxic (see Newton vs Leibniz which probably stunted the development of calculus) and lead to less collaboration and knowledge sharing.

It may be unrealistic to think we can be different, but at least seeing that it's problematic should be unrelated to that. It's unrealistic to think crime will stop, but we should at least try to minimize it.

[breuleux]

> This may be an accurate description of your personality, in which you're one in a million, or it may be that you're ignorant about the things that actually drive you. The vast majority of people are driven by some kind of desire for fame, recognition, status, upvotes, and so on.

Or it might be that people who are driven by fame and recognition are more likely to become famous than those who aren't, which skews our idea of what motivates people. Given how emphatic society is about fame and money as markers of success, I feel people tend to be mistaken in the other direction: many people think they are, or should be driven by fame or money even when it simply contradicts their personality.

Even if it was indeed the case that most people are motivated by fame, I think those who aren't are more like 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 than 1 in a million. It might be 1 in a million in actually famous people, but not in the population at large.

> Even in proper context, they were exceptional geniuses, just among other, lesser-known, exceptional geniuses.

If I am correct that millions of people had the capability, that would place "exceptional genius" at 1 in 1000, or 1 in 10000. I think that's a reasonable ballpark.

> If we take your view seriously, we remove all human agency and uniqueness, we remove the idea of an "achievement" and we can only give credit to luck, the historical process, and various contingent circumstances.

Whether we acknowledge exceptional geniuses or not, it remains the case that 99.99% of people are not exceptional geniuses. Are you saying these people don't have agency, or that they aren't unique? I think we all have agency, we're all unique, and we all have achievements. Some achievements are more impactful than others, some achievements are more impressive than others, but these are not necessarily the same, and neither is necessarily remembered, because what matters most is not the person or the achievement, but how the story fits in the narrative. In any case, you don't need to care about that narrative to care about or acknowledge agency, uniqueness or achievement.

[reedf1]

Idolatry seems like an emergent property of human collective consciousness. You can try to ignore it (it's been tried), downplay it (also been tried), and ban it (and again).