

The Mystery of the Millionaire Metaphysician (2001) - ForHackernews
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2012/02/the_mystery_of_the_millionaire_metaphysician_slate_republishes_one_of_the_greatest_magazine_stories_ever_written_.single.html

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marincounty
Sander's knew no one would read his philosophy if they weren't paid. Nothing
to say. Just reality?

I was honestly expecting the mysterious Philosopher to be an MD. Why? I have
met too many wealthy physicians who later in life take up a serious interest
in Philosophy. My dermatologist in High school would pop my pustules while
quoting his Philosophy. Yes--our family had great union insurance. Well one
day, he looked down at me with his face shield on, and said_______Every time I
think I came up with something new, I would later find out someone beat me to
it.

I gained respect for him that day. I noticed he became humbler in life, and
not so judgmental.

~~~
HarryHirsch
_Every time I think I came up with something new, I would later find out
someone beat me to it._

Happens a lot to scientists who move to a new field. It means that you are not
stupid and that you are not familiar with the literature. But you have to be
familiar with what is being done to be productive.

~~~
Jimmy
My intuition is that this happens more in philosophy than other fields. I, an
amateur, have thought of multiple questions and arguments which I later come
to find have already been explored in the literature. I've seen students in
undergrad classes anticipate moves made by famous philosophers. I hate telling
this to my friends who are pursuing graduate studies in philosophy, but I
think the explanation for this is that philosophy is just easier than more
technical fields like math and physics.

~~~
binxbolling

      I, an amateur, have thought of multiple questions and arguments which I later come to find have already been explored in the literature. I've seen students in undergrad classes anticipate moves made by famous philosophers.

It's bizarre to me that you treat this as an indication of philosophy's
easiness and not its difficulty.

~~~
Jimmy
Why should it indicate difficulty and not easiness? A similar feat would be
completely beyond me in math. Even though I minored in math as an undergrad, I
have almost no understanding of the questions and arguments being discussed in
the professional mathematics literature. I'm never going to stumble across one
of my personal ideas in the Annals of Mathematics. It requires so much
dedicated time and effort to even understand what is being said.

The professional philosophy literature, on the other hand, is much more
accessible. Philosophers treat familiar questions like "Do we have free
will?", "What does it mean to do the right thing?", "What does it mean to know
something?", etc, in a qualitative manner. After a minimal investment to
understand some of the jargon, most philosophy papers are quite readable. It's
the kind of enterprise that a layman might actually be able to make an
intelligent contribution to.

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twic
This is one of those cases where the answer is just another question. Why was
Sanders so passionate about this? What did it mean to him? His brief biography
doesn't really say much:

[http://www.marcsandersfoundation.org/about/founder/](http://www.marcsandersfoundation.org/about/founder/)

And what went unsaid went with him to his grave.

Well, except that his son probably has some idea.

~~~
sukilot
Existential crisis ("what does it all mean?") is one of the most common mental
illnesses of all time. Pascal and Newton had it, and plenty of regular people
do too.

------
Xcelerate
> And then, just like that, it was over. But not before Sanders made an appeal
> to leave his anonymity intact. "Now that you have discovered that I am
> Ammonius," he wrote, "I know that you will think it your job to inform the
> world." He had chosen to remain anonymous, he explained, so that his
> "failure to become a professional philosopher" would not come to light and
> thus tempt professional philosophers to "simply dismiss the idea of
> reviewing my work out of hand because the work was known to be by a devoted
> amateur."

Very interesting. I've always thought that if I were to become good enough in
a certain field to become "famous", then for all of my other passions, I would
go anonymous. I've noticed there's a tendency people have to immediately
disparage the work of someone who is really good at something if that work is
not what they are well known for.

I'm not sure if there's a word or phrase for this phenomenon, but I'm pretty
sure the tendency to disparage "polymath types" is a manifestation of envy and
jealousy; how could one person possibly master two completely different
things? Being great at one thing should be sufficient for _anyone_ ; being
great at two is just unfair.

But the truth doesn't care about fairness. There are plenty of truths in the
world that society is unwilling to acknowledge simply because of their
implications (see Paul Graham's "What you can't say" for a fantastic
exposition of this concept). Many believe that it's improbable for one person
to be good at many different things (as though being "good at things" is
independent for each different thing). I strongly disagree. I think that if
someone has the tools or mindset to become very good at one thing, they are
also very likely to be good at something else as well. That's why I don't like
criticisms that are based on "well he's a physicist; he doesn't know about..."
or "she's only an expert in neuroscience; who cares what she thinks about
such-and-such".

People always want to include the background or history of a person in their
analysis of that person's creations. Instead, I would rather all my work be
evaluated purely on its own merit, without any extraneous knowledge biasing
the reviewer.

~~~
shanusmagnus
I think you're right, but I also have some sympathy for the "dismiss the
amateur" practice which you might come to share if you think of it as an
optimization problem: if the cost of detecting bullshit is high, and the the
cost of being taken in by bullshit is high, then heuristics like "has this
person been validated by an appropriate pedigree" can be a smart solution when
resources are limited. Especially in a field like philosophy, so richly
infused with bullshit already.

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theVirginian
I had a class with Trenton Merricks and I remember him bringing this up. Such
a strange story.

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michael2l
I could see myself doing something equally as silly as this if I had the money
to burn.

~~~
cygnus_a
I was thinking the same thing. It's fun to speculate on your own genius while
attempting to also be humble. Interesting blog post though.

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nl
Nice story.

Interesting to consider if people would regard this as doxxing now.

