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Comment by BeetleB | Hacker News Reader

I think it is reasonable to question their competency. I think we all do it to an extent with coworkers.

The mistake is concluding it based on this type of scant information.

You treat it like any other unknown. You investigate deeper. If you work with the person for a while, you'll know his reasoning abilities far better than the information you gleaned from that hat.

>If someone walked in with a young earth creationist hat I would similarly question their ability to think critically (and have a hard time not just categorizing them as stupid).

And yet I've worked with a young earth creationist who was the best coder in his team (the rest of whom were not creationists). From my general experiences in life, his example is not much of an outlier.

Science Nobel laureates have believed in stupid things, as did many well known mathematicians of the past. Given that, why would you question his abilities?

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why would you question his abilities?

Biblical literalists have no regard for empirical evidence.

You mention scientists having stupid beliefs. Scientists develop evidence-based explanations of phenomena through experimentation using available tools. Our tools are obviously imperfect; thus, imperfect observations are made and imperfect explanations can form as a result.

Biblical literalists, on the other hand, don't even try to ensure that their beliefs are supported by empirical evidence.

People have argued that this behavior of biblical literalists is limited to issues relating to their religious beliefs only, so as long as their professional responsibilities don't encompass issues relating to their religious beliefs, there's no problem.

Unfortunately, the beliefs of biblical literalists encompass a wide range of issues. If I run a renewable energy company, do I really want to take a chance by hiring a biblical literalist who might now, or someday, believe that his unsubstantiated god wants humans to use fossil fuels[1] or that climate change isn't real because his unsubstantiated god promised to not flood the Earth[2]? No, thanks, I think I'll pass.

[1] http://dailysignal.com/2017/10/20/trumps-epa-chief-charts-ne...

[2] https://www.politico.com/story/2010/11/shimkus-cites-genesis...

So you're saying that you would reject otherwise qualified candidates based on their religion (a protected class in the U.S.), which is illegal?

And how would you figure out if someone was a biblical literalist or a garden variety Christian or an athiest anyway, unless it’s somehow relevant to work?

It’s not illegal for me to reject non-Flying Spaghetti Monsterarians on the basis of their religion. It is unconstitutional for the govmint to do so.

Actually if you’re hiring - religion is a protected class and it is illegal for you to discriminate based on it.

I was under the misapprehension that candidate meant political candidate and not job candidate. My mistake.

>Scientists develop evidence-based explanations of phenomena through experimentation using available tools.

In matters of their expertise. I'm guessing your fellow coworker is not a biologist.

If you think most scientists apply this to all their beliefs, then I think you should spend more time amongst them. Virtually every physicist I worked with in a top 10 school had some stupid belief that was easily invalidated with a few days of research. For me to judge their analytical abilities based on silly beliefs they have would be saying more about my abilities than theirs.

I think that's fair and it's important to dig deeper.

People in the past did believe stupid things, but it's also a mixture of what information was available to them at the time to reason about. Some ideas that may have been the best option at the time should be discarded today given that we know more. I'd think if you brought those people from the past to today they may discard some of their ideas (though changing your mind is hard).

It's not that a creationist can't be a good programmer - people seem to be able to apply their reasoning abilities selectively and I've met smart religious people that jump through crazy hoops to justify why they're religious. It is a data point against them though and it would reduce my impression of their intelligence.

> I'd think if you brought those people from the past to today they may discard some of their ideas (though changing your mind is hard).

Possible, but unlikely for any beliefs they hold dear. And thinking that other people stick to crazy beliefs because they are less smart than you is a great way to end up with a lot of crazy beliefs yourself. After all, why would you ever question them? You're too smart to believe something crazy!

"Science progresses one funeral at a time." -- Max Planck

I don't think people stick to crazy beliefs because they're not as smart as I am - I think sticking to old/comfortable beliefs is a problem in general with how our minds work and something you have to fight against basically all the time, it's the default behavior.

Part of the way of doing that is trying to evaluate what evidence is available and update how you think accordingly. It's when people refuse to do this that it's a problem (or worse when they think they're doing it, but really they're just trying to come up with 'evidence' for what they already believe to be true).

It should be a struggle towards whatever is true - not trying to prove what you already believe to be true.

I think it's sad that so much time and effort is spent spinning in circles when we could make so much more progress if we were collectively able to fix these issues with how we think.

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