Randy Pausch Quotes
Respect authority while questioning it.
This is a modern summary of the philosophy of Benedict Spinoza who developed the modern philosophical foundation of science and scientific thinking. When the authorities are clerics and religious leaders, their authority gets undermined which is why the Jews, Christians, and Muslims all excommunicated Spinoza. For the scientists, they themselves are to be rejected as determiners of knowledge and truth so they tend to do poorly in political disputes because the good scientists would never assert a belief that the politicians should listen to them just because they are great scientists and they “know.” It is the ideologues and junk scientists who are sure of their testimony and can advise with certainty. See linked quote(s).
Alvarez was one of the key physicists who developed the atom bomb and was the scientist selected to accompany the plane bombing Hiroshima. There was considerable friction in the Manhattan Project development of the bomb between the scientists and the military.
Randolph Frederick Pausch was an American educator, a professor of computer science, human–computer interaction, and design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
