Good post Eli, and contrary to some other comments before I think your post is important because this insight is not yet general knowledge. I’ve talked to university physics professors in their fifties who talked of Einstein as if he was superhuman.
I think apart from luck and right time/right place there were some other factors too why Einstein is so popular: he had an air of showmanship about him, which is probably rare in scientists. That was what appealed to the public and made him an interesting figur to report about.
And, probably even more important, his work was about something which everybody could relate to: space and time.
John von Neumann was, IMHO, far more of a genius than Einstein, but he is not very known to the public. Maybe because QM, algorithms, CA and game theory are more difficult to relate to on an emotional level than the “twin paradox”.
Eli,
wonderful post, I agree very much. I have also encountered this—being accused of being overconfident when actually I was talking about things of which I am quite uncertain (strange, isn’t it?).
And the people who “accuse” indeed usually only have one (their favourite) alternative model enshrouded in a language of “mystery, awe, and humbleness”.
I have found out (the hard way) that being a rationalist will force you into fighting an uphill battle even in an academic setting (your post Science isn’t strict enough addresses this problem also).
But I think that it is even worse than people not knowing how to handle uncertainty (well, it probably depends on the audience). A philosophy professor here in Vienna told me about a year ago that “many people already take offense when being presented a reasoned-out/logical argument.”
Maybe you (Eli) are being accused of being overconfident because you speak clearly, you lay down your premises, and look at what is being entailed without getting sidetracked by “common” (but often false) knowledge. You use the method of rationality, and, it seems, there are many who take offense already at this. The strange thing is: the more you try to argue logically (the more you try to show that you are not being “overconfident” but that you have reasoned this through, considered counterarguments etc) the more annoyed some people get.
I have witnessed quite some discussions where it was clear to me that many of the discussants did not know what they where talking about (but stringing together “right-sounding” words), and it seems that a lot of people feel quite comfortable in this wishy-washy atmosphere. Clear speech threatens this cosy milieu.
I have not yet understood why people are at odds with rationality. Maybe it is because they feel the uncertainty inherent in their own knowledge, and they try to guard their favourite theories with “general uncertainty”—they know that under a rational approach, many of their favourite theories would go down the probabilistic drain—so they prefer to keep everything vague.
A rationalist must be prepared to give up his most cherished beliefs, and—excepting those who were born into a rationalist family—all of us who aspire to be rationalists must give up cherished (childhood) beliefs. This causes quite some anxiety.
If someone fears, for whatever reasons (or unreasons), to embark upon this journey of being rational, maybe the easiest cop-out is calling the rationalist “overconfident”.