Sometimes I do wonder if I ought to be peddling rationality in Japan instead of the United States—but Japan is not preeminent over the United States scientifically, despite their more studious students. The Japanese don’t rule the world today, though in the 1980s it was widely suspected that they would (hence the Japanese asset bubble). Why not?
In the West, there is a saying: “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.”
In Japan, the corresponding saying runs: “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.”
This is hardly an original observation on my part: but entrepreneurship, risk-taking, leaving the herd, are still advantages the West has over the East. And since Japanese scientists are not yet preeminent over American ones, this would seem to count for at least as much as desperate efforts.
The Japanese don’t rule the world today, though in the 1980s it was widely suspected that they would
True, however, they didn’t blow up their entire financial system and in turn that, seemingly, of the entire planet.
Maybe you and I do math differently, but based on population, Japan is cleaning America’s clock, assuming patents are a reasonable indicator of innovation.
Any reasonable person, even watching the mainstream media news, could hardly come to any other conclusion than America has backed itself into a corner. It’s pretty simple math.
Make no mistake, I understand your point, that America is more dynamic and all that, but as it is, they have set things up almost perfectly to destroy themselves (financially), and the entire world if they get away with it. Perhaps if America had adopted a little more of the “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down” philosophy, we wouldn’t be in this predicament.
It is an indicator that you would hope would show correlation.
Unfortunately, there are people who will just patent every single idea they have regardless of merit. Still, since some level of uniqueness and practicality is required for a patent, the people who can make the most patentable ideas can probably also generate useful additions to the model of rationality the fastest.
On the other hand, since Eliezer is trying to spread rationality, it makes sense to target the largest population that can benefit, using Japanese would drastically reduce the number who can read his works. Even if you could show that the Japanese were on average slightly more rational to begin with, you would end up with less people who learned all he could teach them.
Yes, agreed on both counts. Though, I think there are also other big issues with using patents as an indicator of innovation:
Whether or not you should get a patent for a given innovation is a cultural and situational issue. For example, an Open Source software developer is unlikely to seek a patent for their work, as is a university researcher who is hoping to publish their results. Using patents as an indicator might be messed up by the two cultures having different emphases on styles and methods of innovation.
A patent contains a variable amount of innovation: depending on how you want to package it, a given idea might be encapsulated in one big patent or in ten small ones. So, using patents as an indicator might be messed up by the two cultures tending to, for whatever practical or sociological or economic reason, group up or split up their patent applications.
Finally, this would be the easiest thing to research, but I’m not sure if the US patent office and the Japanese patent office use the same thresholds for minimum innovation, de facto.
Yeah, all three of those points make using patents to judge Innovation almost useless. Until you compare the cultural differences and patent requirements more, it still counts as weak evidence though.
Sometimes I do wonder if I ought to be peddling rationality in Japan instead of the United States—but Japan is not preeminent over the United States scientifically, despite their more studious students. The Japanese don’t rule the world today, though in the 1980s it was widely suspected that they would (hence the Japanese asset bubble). Why not? In the West, there is a saying: “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” In Japan, the corresponding saying runs: “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.” This is hardly an original observation on my part: but entrepreneurship, risk-taking, leaving the herd, are still advantages the West has over the East. And since Japanese scientists are not yet preeminent over American ones, this would seem to count for at least as much as desperate efforts.
Maybe you and I do math differently, but based on population, Japan is cleaning America’s clock, assuming patents are a reasonable indicator of innovation.
Any reasonable person, even watching the mainstream media news, could hardly come to any other conclusion than America has backed itself into a corner. It’s pretty simple math.
Make no mistake, I understand your point, that America is more dynamic and all that, but as it is, they have set things up almost perfectly to destroy themselves (financially), and the entire world if they get away with it. Perhaps if America had adopted a little more of the “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down” philosophy, we wouldn’t be in this predicament.
Ye hairy tentacled gods but why would anyone assume that?
It is an indicator that you would hope would show correlation. Unfortunately, there are people who will just patent every single idea they have regardless of merit. Still, since some level of uniqueness and practicality is required for a patent, the people who can make the most patentable ideas can probably also generate useful additions to the model of rationality the fastest.
On the other hand, since Eliezer is trying to spread rationality, it makes sense to target the largest population that can benefit, using Japanese would drastically reduce the number who can read his works. Even if you could show that the Japanese were on average slightly more rational to begin with, you would end up with less people who learned all he could teach them.
Yes, agreed on both counts. Though, I think there are also other big issues with using patents as an indicator of innovation:
Whether or not you should get a patent for a given innovation is a cultural and situational issue. For example, an Open Source software developer is unlikely to seek a patent for their work, as is a university researcher who is hoping to publish their results. Using patents as an indicator might be messed up by the two cultures having different emphases on styles and methods of innovation.
A patent contains a variable amount of innovation: depending on how you want to package it, a given idea might be encapsulated in one big patent or in ten small ones. So, using patents as an indicator might be messed up by the two cultures tending to, for whatever practical or sociological or economic reason, group up or split up their patent applications.
Finally, this would be the easiest thing to research, but I’m not sure if the US patent office and the Japanese patent office use the same thresholds for minimum innovation, de facto.
Yeah, all three of those points make using patents to judge Innovation almost useless. Until you compare the cultural differences and patent requirements more, it still counts as weak evidence though.