January 2017

Because biographies of famous scientists tend to edit out their mistakes, we underestimate the degree of risk they were willing to take.

And because anything a famous scientist did that wasn't a mistake has probably now become the conventional wisdom, those choices don't seem risky either.

Biographies edit out scientists' mistakes, and their non-mistakes became conventional wisdom, so we underrate how much risk they took.

Biographies edit out scientists' mistakes, and their non-mistakes became conventional wisdom, so we underrate how much risk they took.

Biographies of Newton, for example, understandably focus more on physics than alchemy or theology.

The impression we get is that his unerring judgment led him straight to truths no one else had noticed.

How to explain all the time he spent on alchemy and theology?

Well, smart people are often kind of crazy.

Newton's biographies focus on physics, not alchemy or theology, so his judgment looks unerring. The wasted years we explain away: smart people are often kind of crazy.

Newton's biographies dwell on physics, not alchemy or theology, leaving us to explain his wasted years by deciding smart people are simply crazy.

But maybe there is a simpler explanation.

Maybe the smartness and the craziness were not as separate as we think.

Physics seems to us a promising thing to work on, and alchemy and theology obvious wastes of time.

But that's because we know how things turned out.

In Newton's day the three problems seemed roughly equally promising.

No one knew yet what the payoff would be for inventing what we now call physics; if they had, more people would have been working on it.

And alchemy and theology were still then in the category Marc Andreessen would describe as "huge, if true."

But maybe smartness and craziness weren't so separate. Physics looks promising only because we know how it turned out. In Newton's day all three problems seemed equally promising; alchemy and theology were still, in Marc Andreessen's phrase, "huge, if true."

A simpler explanation: in Newton's day physics, alchemy and theology all looked equally promising, since no one yet knew which bet would pay off.

Newton made three bets.

One of them worked.

But they were all risky.

Newton made three bets. One of them worked. But they were all risky.

Newton made three bets; one worked, but at the time all three were risky.