I would be willing to bet that the average hacker is significantly less religious than the average American, if any of the terms in that sentence could be defined and then measured.
That's true. I bet YC is much more atheist than the general population. But I know a religious YC poster who's hesitant to express that kind of idea here; I also bet YC is a bit more religious than it appears.
I think it's also interesting that, up until the past century or so, many well-educated people were also openly religious. To wit, holding religious beliefs does not prevent one from doing excellent academic work... religion does not go hand-in-hand with stupidity or ineptitude.
I think you'd have to say "did not" rather than "does not."
200 years ago many well-educated people owned slaves. That doesn't allow us to conclude much about whether slave ownership and intelligence/education are intrinsically compatible.
I think you'd have to say "does not" rather than "did not."
Don Knuth is Lutheran, and has done some of the most excellent academic work of anyone alive today. Guy Steele holds Christian beliefs of some sort, and his work has been extremely influential in the programming world. Just two examples off the top of my head, but I think enough to keep the verb in the present tense.
We would be remiss to claim that religious beliefs imply academic stupidity. We would also be remiss to claim that lack of religious beliefs imply academic stupidity.
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I would be willing to bet that the average hacker is significantly less religious than the average American, if any of the terms in that sentence could be defined and then measured.
It is well documented that the level of religious intensity is very dramatically inversely proportional to education, as well as IQ and income level.
That's true. I bet YC is much more atheist than the general population. But I know a religious YC poster who's hesitant to express that kind of idea here; I also bet YC is a bit more religious than it appears.
I think it's also interesting that, up until the past century or so, many well-educated people were also openly religious. To wit, holding religious beliefs does not prevent one from doing excellent academic work... religion does not go hand-in-hand with stupidity or ineptitude.
I think you'd have to say "did not" rather than "does not."
200 years ago many well-educated people owned slaves. That doesn't allow us to conclude much about whether slave ownership and intelligence/education are intrinsically compatible.
I think you'd have to say "does not" rather than "did not."
Don Knuth is Lutheran, and has done some of the most excellent academic work of anyone alive today. Guy Steele holds Christian beliefs of some sort, and his work has been extremely influential in the programming world. Just two examples off the top of my head, but I think enough to keep the verb in the present tense.
We would be remiss to claim that religious beliefs imply academic stupidity. We would also be remiss to claim that lack of religious beliefs imply academic stupidity.
Depends on the field. To my knowledge, no religious beliefs conflict with any work being done in computer science. (Maybe some AI or something.)
On the other hand, certain very commonly held beliefs would totally hinder work in biology or possibly physics.