
Dealing with Critics
Date: Tuesday, April 05, 2005 @ 22:15:54 UTC Topic: Testimonials
In HSG group, john_e_barchak writes: We have seen this before, but it may be time to see it again. In 1993
(five years before his death), Ed Jaynes published 'A Backward Look to the Future' in Physics and Probability, -- http://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/backward.look.pdf The following is from that paper:
"Dealing with Critics
Looking back over the past forty years, I can see that the greatest mistake I made was to listen to the advice of people who were opposed to my efforts.
Just at the peak of my powers, I lost several irreplaceable years because I allowed myself to become discouraged by the constant stream of criticism from the Establishment, that descended upon everything I did. I have never (except in the past few years) had the slightest encouragement from others to pursue my work; the drive to do it had to come entirely from within me. The result was that my contributions to probability theory were delayed by about a decade, and my potential contributions to electrodynamics (whatever they might have been) are probably lost forever.
But I can now see that all of this criticism was based on misunderstanding or ideology. My perceived sin was not in my logic or mathematics; it was that I did not subscribe to the dogmas emanating from Copenhagen and Rothamsted. Yet I submit that breaking those dogmas was the necessary prerequisite to making any further progress in quantum theory and probability theory. If not in my way, then necessarily in some other."
All the best
John B.
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