On the other hand, sometimes people end up walking right through what the established experts thought to be a wall. The rise of deep learning from a stagnant backwater in 2010 to a dominant paradigm today (crushing the old benchmarks in basically all of the most well-studied fields) is one such case.
In any particular case, it’s best to expect progress to take much, much longer than the Inside View indicates. But at the same time, there’s some part of the research world where a major rapid shift is about to happen.
On the other hand, sometimes people end up walking right through what the established experts thought to be a wall. The rise of deep learning from a stagnant backwater in 2010 to a dominant paradigm today (crushing the old benchmarks in basically all of the most well-studied fields) is one such case.
In any particular case, it’s best to expect progress to take much, much longer than the Inside View indicates. But at the same time, there’s some part of the research world where a major rapid shift is about to happen.