Physicists seems to be able to go off paradigm and explore promising paradigms like string theory etc and still be prestigious.
In the paradigm of the various allowed physical theories really that different in nature? It seems to me like all those physicists basically agree on a method like building the large Hadroon colider to find out things in detail and generally doing a lot of mathematical proofs.
But it might be that I simply don’t know enough about theoretical physics.
I personally care more about biology, medicine, and general decision making and I’m fine with having hole in my knowledge about physics.
Was Metamed born inside LW or apart from it?
I think that depends on how broadly you see LW. It’s wasn’t directly created by online discussion. On the other hand the discussion about Bayesianism on LessWrong was likely very influential for them getting their concept together.
They do change the language around things, but not to improve peoples prediction about the world (at least in a scientific sense). They seek to improve how we interact with the world
GiveWell’s way of evaluating charities improves the ability of the people to make predictions about which charities will produce worthwhile effects in the future.
An idea like “room for funding” allows us to make better predictions about the effects of funding a charity.
GiveWell is a science project in the Kuhnian sense. GiveWell makes progress on getting better at evaluating causes. At least I believe that there’s progress.
If you consider human society as exploring the world of ideas, it makes sense to leave enough information so that people can see where you have been before.
Many startups fail because they are too early. Today I can buy pet food online but that wasn’t a good business model in the DotCom boom.
If somebody would have had the idea of molecular biology in the 1920′s his paradigm would have failed.
Money quote (and part of the reason why I believe the current scientific system is bad at paradigm change);
`It is alarming that so many Nobel Prize recipients have lamented that they would never have survived this current academic environment. What are the implications of this on the discovery of future scientific paradigm shifts and scientific inquiry in general? I asked Professor Brenner to elaborate.
SB: He wouldn’t have survived. Even God wouldn’t get a grant today because somebody on the committee would say, oh those were very interesting experiments (creating the universe), but they’ve never been repeated. And then someone else would say, yes and he did it a long time ago, what’s he done recently? And a third would say, to top it all, he published it all in an un-refereed journal (The Bible).
So you know we now have these performance criteria, which I think are just ridiculous in many ways. But of course this money has to be apportioned, and our administrators love having numbers like impact factors or scores. Singapore is full of them too. Everybody has what are called key performance indicators. But everybody has them. You have to justify them.
I think one of the big things we had in the old LMB, which I don’t think is the case now, was that we never let the committee assess individuals. We never let them; the individuals were our responsibility. We asked them to review the work of the group as a whole. Because if they went down to individuals, they would say, this man is unproductive. He hasn’t published anything for the last five years. So you’ve got to have institutions that can not only allow this, but also protect the people that are engaged on very long term, and to the funders, extremely risky work.`
If you consider human society as exploring the world of ideas, it makes sense to leave enough information so that people can see where you have been before.
Sydney Brenner : I strongly believe that the only way to encourage innovation is to give it to the young. The young have a great advantage in that they are ignorant. Because I think ignorance in science is very important. If you’re like me and you know too much you can’t try new things. I always work in fields of which I’m totally ignorant.
The AirBnB folks didn’t even know of CouchSurfing when they started AirBnB.
Reading a long list about why ideas fail gives you a perspective of how the person who evaluated them considered them failing. It doesn’t give you necessarily a new perspective.
GiveWell’s way of evaluating charities improves the ability of the people to make predictions about which charities will produce worthwhile effects in the future.
I’ll have to think more about this.
I think one of the big things we had in the old LMB, which I don’t think is the case now, was that we never let the committee assess individuals. We never let them; the individuals were our responsibility. We asked them to review the work of the group as a whole. Because if they went down to individuals, they would say, this man is unproductive. He hasn’t published anything for the last five years. So you’ve got to have institutions that can not only allow this, but also protect the people that are engaged on very long term, and to the funders, extremely risky work.`
I agree with this. But I still think science has something that the rationality community currently lacks. A place for people with shared interests to meet. Schelling points for people who might paradigm shift a certain subject. If you can fit your interest into LW or EA, or happen to have people in your area you are okay. Otherwise you are out of luck.
Sydney Brenner : I strongly believe that the only way to encourage innovation is to give it to the young. The young have a great advantage in that they are ignorant. Because I think ignorance in science is very important. If you’re like me and you know too much you can’t try new things. I always work in fields of which I’m totally ignorant.
Reading a long list about why ideas fail gives you a perspective of how the person who evaluated them considered them failing. It doesn’t give you necessarily a new perspective
I don’t think young people should be forced to read everything other people have done before discussing or formulating a hypotheses. But they should be able to explain how their hypothesis differs from things that have gone before if they want large amounts of funding. That should be what literature reviews are about IMO.
The AirBnB folks didn’t even know of CouchSurfing when they started AirBnB.
With companies, the environment is always changing so there is less value in knowing about previous attempts. How many rationalist enterprises fit that mold rather than the scientific one I don’t know.
With companies, the environment is always changing so there is less value in knowing about previous attempts. How many rationalist enterprises fit that mold rather than the scientific one I don’t know.
In science the available tools are also always changing. Molecular biology couldn’t have been done fifty years earlier.
Paradigm change is quite often due to new tools that allow new ways of doing research.
If you can fit your interest into LW or EA, or happen to have people in your area you are okay.
I don’t think the goal of providing places to meet for every possible interest is valuable. You can’t discuss every kind of question at a university either. The kind of questions that GiveWell investigates aren’t traditional academic questions.
I think the domain of questions that can be ask in LW and EA is quite broad.
When it comes to places to meet events like the European Community Weekend are good. EA Global also exists for getting people to meet.
The Accelerator Project might create a more permanent place for people to go and find people to do projects with.
In the paradigm of the various allowed physical theories really that different in nature? It seems to me like all those physicists basically agree on a method like building the large Hadroon colider to find out things in detail and generally doing a lot of mathematical proofs.
But it might be that I simply don’t know enough about theoretical physics.
I personally care more about biology, medicine, and general decision making and I’m fine with having hole in my knowledge about physics.
I think that depends on how broadly you see LW. It’s wasn’t directly created by online discussion. On the other hand the discussion about Bayesianism on LessWrong was likely very influential for them getting their concept together.
GiveWell’s way of evaluating charities improves the ability of the people to make predictions about which charities will produce worthwhile effects in the future.
An idea like “room for funding” allows us to make better predictions about the effects of funding a charity.
GiveWell is a science project in the Kuhnian sense. GiveWell makes progress on getting better at evaluating causes. At least I believe that there’s progress.
Many startups fail because they are too early. Today I can buy pet food online but that wasn’t a good business model in the DotCom boom. If somebody would have had the idea of molecular biology in the 1920′s his paradigm would have failed.
http://kingsreview.co.uk/articles/how-academia-and-publishing-are-destroying-scientific-innovation-a-conversation-with-sydney-brenner/ is worth reading for the dawn of molecular biology. Sydney Brenner was one of the people who brought that paradigm to life.
Money quote (and part of the reason why I believe the current scientific system is bad at paradigm change); `It is alarming that so many Nobel Prize recipients have lamented that they would never have survived this current academic environment. What are the implications of this on the discovery of future scientific paradigm shifts and scientific inquiry in general? I asked Professor Brenner to elaborate.
SB: He wouldn’t have survived. Even God wouldn’t get a grant today because somebody on the committee would say, oh those were very interesting experiments (creating the universe), but they’ve never been repeated. And then someone else would say, yes and he did it a long time ago, what’s he done recently? And a third would say, to top it all, he published it all in an un-refereed journal (The Bible).
So you know we now have these performance criteria, which I think are just ridiculous in many ways. But of course this money has to be apportioned, and our administrators love having numbers like impact factors or scores. Singapore is full of them too. Everybody has what are called key performance indicators. But everybody has them. You have to justify them.
I think one of the big things we had in the old LMB, which I don’t think is the case now, was that we never let the committee assess individuals. We never let them; the individuals were our responsibility. We asked them to review the work of the group as a whole. Because if they went down to individuals, they would say, this man is unproductive. He hasn’t published anything for the last five years. So you’ve got to have institutions that can not only allow this, but also protect the people that are engaged on very long term, and to the funders, extremely risky work.`
Sydney Brenner :
I strongly believe that the only way to encourage innovation is to give it to the young. The young have a great advantage in that they are ignorant. Because I think ignorance in science is very important. If you’re like me and you know too much you can’t try new things. I always work in fields of which I’m totally ignorant.
The AirBnB folks didn’t even know of CouchSurfing when they started AirBnB.
Reading a long list about why ideas fail gives you a perspective of how the person who evaluated them considered them failing. It doesn’t give you necessarily a new perspective.
I’ll have to think more about this.
I agree with this. But I still think science has something that the rationality community currently lacks. A place for people with shared interests to meet. Schelling points for people who might paradigm shift a certain subject. If you can fit your interest into LW or EA, or happen to have people in your area you are okay. Otherwise you are out of luck.
I don’t think young people should be forced to read everything other people have done before discussing or formulating a hypotheses. But they should be able to explain how their hypothesis differs from things that have gone before if they want large amounts of funding. That should be what literature reviews are about IMO.
With companies, the environment is always changing so there is less value in knowing about previous attempts. How many rationalist enterprises fit that mold rather than the scientific one I don’t know.
In science the available tools are also always changing. Molecular biology couldn’t have been done fifty years earlier. Paradigm change is quite often due to new tools that allow new ways of doing research.
I don’t think the goal of providing places to meet for every possible interest is valuable. You can’t discuss every kind of question at a university either. The kind of questions that GiveWell investigates aren’t traditional academic questions.
I think the domain of questions that can be ask in LW and EA is quite broad.
When it comes to places to meet events like the European Community Weekend are good. EA Global also exists for getting people to meet.
The Accelerator Project might create a more permanent place for people to go and find people to do projects with.