I wonder how sure he was of that. - Simon

Wasn't he talking of religion in general, and belief in supernatural in particular? Myself, I am partial to the concept of religion as a self-replicating and very nearly ineradicable thought virus (with some exceptions). - ianf ⌘

ianf -- secularists and atheists are fully capable of holding fixed ideas that are as absurd and destructive as those held by religionists. Marxists, Marxist-Lenininsts, Trotskyites, Stalinists, Maoists, etc. murdered in the neighborhood of 100 million people in the 20th century in the pursuit of utopian fantasies. (See The Black Book of Communism.) - Sean McBride

I have no idea what he was talking about -- it's not important to me. I just liked the quote. I think it applies to everything, including religion, atheism, politics, technology, finance, etc. - Paul Buchheit

I have a fixed idea that friendfeed rocks. :-) - Robert Scoble

Sean - did you see me write that, so you needed to set me straight (again)? Besides, had I elected to engage in this discussion, I'd have pointed out from the start, that your "godless" examples of Communism (and Fascism, I presume) can just as easily be described as new religions. Complete with their own belief dogmas, foundation myths, theology, cathecisms (="A FAQ of religious teaching, especially in Christianity" acc. to <http://www.urbandictionary.com/define...>), bibles, observation and passage rites and liturgy. Add to that despotic obedience and pathological approach to a reigning infallible highest authority, and what is there left that religion-as-a-concept hasn't got? - ianf ⌘

ianf -- these Marxist movements were all explicitly anti-religious, and in many cases targeted religions for destruction (and religionists for death). To describe them as "religious" in any conventional or meaningful sense is to play word games. They were militantly dogmatic in their secularism and anti-religionism, in their fixed anti-religious ideas. - Sean McBride

It seems clear to me that "religious" has two (related) meanings. It's common to describe a technical debate (such as one involving programming languages) as being "religious", but without literally meaning that it's the same as an Christianity or something. - Paul Buchheit

Usually it means that the discussion is over non-falsifiable statements or matters of opinion that won't lead to anything useful. - Bruce Lewis

really good context of the quote can be found here: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26... Selberg was talking about fellow mathematician Louis de Branges, who had a reputation for being consistently wrong. In 1985 de Branges announced he had proved the Bieberbach Conjecture, and nobody paid any attention to it because it was from de Branges. Only, in this case, de Branges happened to be correct. :-) - Karim

i'm not sure if Selberg was saying that de Branges was often wrong because he was seduced by the attractiveness of his own "fixed ideas" -- proofs that de Branges felt were correct when they weren't -- or whether it was a comment on the mathematical community rejecting de Branges' ideas outright because of *their* "fixed idea" that he was a nutcase. :-) either way, the lesson would seem to be, "Don't be so sure of yourself." - Karim

oh and +1 Simon - Karim

Hear, hear (Sean ;-)) - ianf ⌘

Isn't that the truth - RAPatton

Life is a constant work in-progress! - Kris

@Kris: are we sure of that? Like a fixed idea? </resist> - Bill Anderson from twhirl

unless your fixed idea is that we should legalize marijuana, in which case then it's cool. - Thomas Hawk