I like the idea of this leading the parade analogy, but I feel there are two concepts here, leading the parade in terms of a powerless figurehead, and a distinct idea. One I more science, the other more politics.
Whether or not your research has counterfactual impact depends not just on what you do, but also on what everyone else in the world does. If there are 100 problems to work on, ranked in “interesting-ness” from top to bottom and you are one of 100 researchers, how do you maximise your counterfactual impact? Obviously not by working on the biggest problems, the “most interesting” problem will probably have 5 other people doing it. (The game-theory thing where “If we all go for the blonde” https://plus.maths.org/content/if-we-all-go-blonde).
The theory does tell us that if we happen to know problem X is way more interesting than most people give it credit for we should prioritise that, but that’s not much of an insight.
I think “leading the parade” has a much more interesting application to politics. Imagine the leader of a political party—depending on the leader, and the party, the party leader might have genuine, power to change the party’s policies or political aims, but (usually?) the party already has its “thing” and the leader can only adjust within that. Donald Trump is an example of someone who clearly has real power to change the sorts of things the Republicans stand for, because he already has. In contrast, most party leaders just do what that party would do anyway. That seems like a really important thing to know. Imagine the prime minister has some policy that you really don’t like, you manage to get a meeting with them and explain why the policy is bad. Then, in a weird moment of perfect honesty, they look you in the eye and say “yeah, on a personal level I completely agree this policy is bad. But my party are behind this, and its happening with or without my backing. Why are you even talking to me, I am just the prime minister, I lead this party but I don’t control it.”
(Unrelated, but a few years ago I published a paper that I really thought was like, some crazy thing that would only be seen by someone with my weird perspective on the issue—proper counterfactual impact. It only took 2 years for someone else to independently come up with the same idea (and the same figures!) and put up a preprint of their own.)
I like the idea of this leading the parade analogy, but I feel there are two concepts here, leading the parade in terms of a powerless figurehead, and a distinct idea. One I more science, the other more politics.
Whether or not your research has counterfactual impact depends not just on what you do, but also on what everyone else in the world does. If there are 100 problems to work on, ranked in “interesting-ness” from top to bottom and you are one of 100 researchers, how do you maximise your counterfactual impact? Obviously not by working on the biggest problems, the “most interesting” problem will probably have 5 other people doing it. (The game-theory thing where “If we all go for the blonde” https://plus.maths.org/content/if-we-all-go-blonde ).
The theory does tell us that if we happen to know problem X is way more interesting than most people give it credit for we should prioritise that, but that’s not much of an insight.
I think “leading the parade” has a much more interesting application to politics. Imagine the leader of a political party—depending on the leader, and the party, the party leader might have genuine, power to change the party’s policies or political aims, but (usually?) the party already has its “thing” and the leader can only adjust within that. Donald Trump is an example of someone who clearly has real power to change the sorts of things the Republicans stand for, because he already has. In contrast, most party leaders just do what that party would do anyway. That seems like a really important thing to know. Imagine the prime minister has some policy that you really don’t like, you manage to get a meeting with them and explain why the policy is bad. Then, in a weird moment of perfect honesty, they look you in the eye and say “yeah, on a personal level I completely agree this policy is bad. But my party are behind this, and its happening with or without my backing. Why are you even talking to me, I am just the prime minister, I lead this party but I don’t control it.”
(Unrelated, but a few years ago I published a paper that I really thought was like, some crazy thing that would only be seen by someone with my weird perspective on the issue—proper counterfactual impact. It only took 2 years for someone else to independently come up with the same idea (and the same figures!) and put up a preprint of their own.)