Over the vacation, I’ve had some thoughts which have just now bubbled to the surface:

When you call the Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged a great book, please remember that the former was rejected by 12 different publishers before it saw the light of day.

When you use technologies developed around neural nets, think back on how much more developed the field (and consequent applications) would be if scientists did not neglect NNs for a decade because they misunderstood something Marvin Minsky said in his book.

When you speak of elliptical planetary orbits or heliocentricism, remember that your worldview would likely have you excommunicated and/or put to death 400 years ago. In fact, you can regard all of your thoughts that conflicted with anything Aristotle said – and a lot of what Aristotle said was wrong – in the same manner.

When you use technologies derived from genetics – when you speak of heritable traits – when you breed cats – when you are screened for diseases you have a high risk of getting because of family history – recall that evolution is still a contested idea that many would like to suppress.

The computer you view this on? Perhaps five of them would exist in the whole world if pundits had their way. The Internet? It would just be for universities and governments. Jesus himself was killed for expressing an unconventional idea.

So stop for a moment and think: do you take part in this collective? How many ideas have you suppressed? How can you be sure that an idea is “bad”? If you cannot, you lack the knowledge to make a rational decision.