Debating
On May 3, 1967, in the Kresge Auditorium at MIT, Lettvin debated with Timothy Leary (a licensed psychologist) about the merits and dangers of LSD. Timothy Leary took the position that LSD is a beneficial tool in exploring consciousness and should be utilized as such. Jerome Lettvin took the position that LSD is a dangerous molecule that should not be used.
Lettvin was a regular invitee at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony as "the world's smartest man" to debate extemporaneously against groups of people on their own subjects of expertise.
Read more about this topic: Jerome Lettvin
Famous quotes containing the word debating:
“Scepticism, as I said, is not intellectual only; it is moral also; a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul. A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things. A sad case for him when all that he can manage to believe is something he can button in his pocket, and with one or the other organ eat and digest! Lower than that he will not get.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)