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They will, however, remember the Hawkings, the Feynmans, the Einsteins, the Goulds, and the Friedmans.</p>
<p>Why?
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<p>Yes, flair, but also correctness. Correctness is important. You can bet there are a lot of people out there with a lot of "flair", but if you aren't a genius scientist (or something similar), that doesn't mean a whole lot.</p>
<p>On to sakky's monstrous post...</p>
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Ha! Your answer is completely belied by the evidence. After all, look at most successful tech companies out there. Does Microsoft really produce the best PC software out there? That is a highly dubious notion. Does Intel really produce the best microprocessors? Most observers would agree that in the last few years, it has actually been AMD that has been producing the best microprocessors from a technical standpoint. Many tech guys, including myself, believe that Cisco, which is the dominant network router vendor in the world, does not really produce the truly best routers in the world from a technical standpoint, and if you really wanted to buy a truly technically marvelous router, you would go to Juniper.
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<p>This has nothing to do with what I said. I was saying that if you are an employee in a company that is more often wrong than right, but more often than not convinces your superiors that you are right, you will eventually get fired (when the product goes live), while if you are more often right than wrong but your superiors don't believe you, but your code works when the product ships, you'll keep your job.</p>
<p>Further, the issue with your claim is that Microsoft may not produce the "best" operating system--but that's because you may define "best" as "most secure" and/or "most stable" and/or "fastest". If you define "best" as the best option for most consumers (i.e. the one with the best hardware and software developer support, the one that ships by default on most OEM systems, the one that most people are familiar with, the one that has the best professional support), then Microsoft (sadly) does make the best OS. I hate MS as much as the next guy, but I can see why they dominate the market--their product isn't really as bad as most would claim, and for most people, it is in fact better than most alternatives.</p>
<p>If we look at Intel vs. AMD, the issue is that while AMD may be technically superior, it doesn't matter to most consumers or OEM manufacturers. Since it doesn't matter to consumers (the ones the OEMs sell to), they will stick with the "safe" choice--they've used Intel since the original Pentium, they have deals with Intel to get their chips cheaper, so why change? When it became clear and publicized that AMD was better, some offered AMD options, but it didn't really affect the consumer--they would've been fine with an Athlon 64 or a Pentium 4, really (10% isn't a big deal to these people). Those that do care get AMD.</p>
<p>Remember, "technically superior" doesn't mean "right". Sure, the Bugatti Veryon is "technically superior" to the Honda Civic, but that means nothing in the market. "Right" means what the consumer wants, and Microsoft, Intel, and Cisco offer that (I don't want to get into Cisco vs. Juniper, since similar arguments apply).</p>
<p>Anyway, all of this is way off-topic. Yes, I wish Linux were more popular, that AMD had enough money to make 65nm and 45nm fabs, and that corporate-level networking had more competition, but that doesn't have any relevance to what I was saying.</p>
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My friend, you have a very idealistic view of the world. In reality, the truth does not always 'out', and politics plays a huge role in determining who gets fired and who doesn't, who gets promoted and who doesn't. Believe me, there are PLENTY of corporate scientists/engineers who were right, but got fired anyway because they were poor office politicians, and others who were wrong, but got promoted anyway because they were good office politicians. You can even look at it from an academic standpoint. Trust me, the Berkeley EECS department, just like any academic department, is riven with academic politics.</p>
<p>Look, eudean, nobody is saying that being right isn't important in science/engineering. But I think you deeply discount the notion of just how important it is to be smooth and persuasive, in addition to being right. If you're right, and nobody knows it, then you'll get marginalized. Furthermore, even if you're wrong, you can last for quite a long time if you're persuasive and a good office politician.
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<p>I think you're missing my point. Would you agree that a company that releases a buggy product as the result of the poor advising of an engineer would be more likely to go out of business than not? Would you agree that most companies you'd like to work for have been in business for a reasonably long period of time (in the tech world that may mean 3 years)? Then you'd agree that those that product bad or wrong ideas will be less likely to be working at the company you'd be working at.</p>
<p>I recognize the importance of persuasiveness. I just feel that in science/engineering, persuasiveness comes second to correctness. I completely agree that scientists and engineers should be taught persuasiveness more (in fact, all people should be taught persuasiveness), but I feel that when balancing correctness and persuasiveness in these fields, correctness will usually win out over persuasiveness.</p>
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They actually have already been shown to be wrong, or at least inconsistent.
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<p>Interesting post. I think it's rather obvious that by "wrong" we mean significantly wrong, as in it doesn't predict the results of any experiment with any accuracy. Newton was very, very wrong, but his theories are still very useful since they're "good enough" (what the consumer wants, if I had to make an analogy to the above--a simple model that does what I want it to, despite being technically inferior).</p>