I’d wager there are thousands of Shakespeare-equivalents around today. The issue is that Shakespeare was not only talented, he was successful—wildly popular, and able to live off his writing. He was a superstar of theatre. And we can only have a limited amount of superstars, no matter how large the population grows. So if we took only his first few plays (before he got the fame feedback loop and money), and gave them to someone who had, somehow, never heard of Shakespeare, I’d wager they would find many other authors at least as good.
This is a mild point in favour of explanation 1, but it’s not that the number of devoted researchers is limited, it’s that the slots at the top of the research ladder are limited. In this view, any very talented individual who was also a superstar, will produce a huge amount of research. The number of very talented individuals has gone up, but the number of superstar slots has not.
The model implies that if funding and prestige increased, this limitation would be reduced. And I would think we don’t need prestige nearly as much as funding—even if near-top scientists were recruited and paid the way second and third string major league players in most professional sports were paid, we’d see a significant relaxation of the constraint.
Instead, the uniform wage for most professors means that even the very top people benefit from supplementing their pay with consulting, running companies on the side, giving popular lectures for money, etc. - all of which compete for time with their research.
Running companies on the side to commercialize their research ideas might reduce the amount of papers that they output. On the other hand it might very well increase their contribution to sciences a whole.
It seems to me that the number of superstar slots is limited by the number of scientific fields.
If that’s true the best solution would be to stop seeking international recognition for science and publish much more science in languages other then English to allow more fields to develop.
I think that the scientific establishment choose that students t.test with a cutoff at 5% is central for doing science was a very arbitrary decision. If the decision would have been different, then we would have different fields.
From my perspective there seem to be plenty of possible scientific fields that aren’t pursued because they aren’t producing status in the existing international scientific community.
Kinda like if there would civilisational Dunbar Limit? Language barriers sound like an effective means of fracturing, but would still need to be upheld somehow. The population and capital distribution per language might still be a nontrivial problem.
Regardless of any particular test; why do you think non-English-language-based diversification is good?
(asking because “non-English-language-based science” is currently a big problem where I live. “It’s not in English” is basically the same as “it’s not interesting to others”.)
Having all science in English means that certain ontological assumptions that the English language makes get taken to be universal truths when they are particular features of the English language. Words like “be”, “feel” or “imagine” are taken as if they map to something that’s ontological basic when different languages slice up the conceptual space differently. The fact that English uses the “is of identity” and doesn’t use a different word then “to be” to speak about identity leads to a lot of confusion.
Given the present climate of caring more about empirics then ontology there’s also little push to get better at ontology in the current scientific community.
Issues around ontology however weren’t my main issue.
“It’s not in English” is basically the same as “it’s not interesting to others”.
This basically means that all high status research is published in English and also that the system doesn’t work in a way where scientific funding is coupled on the necessity that research gets produced that’s interesting to someone.
This needs a language that’s spoken by enough people and at some point people who use the science in other applications.
Thomas Kuhn has a criteria that a is a field of knowledge where progress happens. That means that the way people change their topics of research is not just by listening to what’s in fashion but by building upon previous work in a way that progresses. What kind of progress happens in the “non-English-language-based science” where you live?
DIY,Kiev style is an article the funding situation of Ukrainian science. It seems that after the fall of the Soviet Union research funding from the government was cut drastically and prestigious science started to depend on foreign money.
When the most prestigious science depends on foreign funding the less prestigious science that’s still done in Ukrainian is likely to be lower quality.
It seems like Ukrainian politicians thought that Ukraine can be independent and that fails in various forms.
Chinese science in Chinese would a lot more likely to be successful then Ukrainian science in Ukrainian.
For what it’s worth, if you’re using GreaterWrong, you can click the Image button in the editor (it’s fourth from the left), and it will automatically insert the appropriate Markdown syntax for an image.
In case this was a technical question, you can insert pictures into comments by using the Markdown syntax: , and gave them to someone who had, somehow, never heard of Shakespeare, I’d wager they would find many other authors at least as good.
This is a mild point in favour of explanation 1, but it’s not that the number of devoted researchers is limited, it’s that the slots at the top of the research ladder are limited. In this view, any very talented individual who was also a superstar, will produce a huge amount of research. The number of very talented individuals has gone up, but the number of superstar slots has not.
The model implies that if funding and prestige increased, this limitation would be reduced. And I would think we don’t need prestige nearly as much as funding—even if near-top scientists were recruited and paid the way second and third string major league players in most professional sports were paid, we’d see a significant relaxation of the constraint.
Instead, the uniform wage for most professors means that even the very top people benefit from supplementing their pay with consulting, running companies on the side, giving popular lectures for money, etc. - all of which compete for time with their research.
Running companies on the side to commercialize their research ideas might reduce the amount of papers that they output. On the other hand it might very well increase their contribution to sciences a whole.
It seems to me that the number of superstar slots is limited by the number of scientific fields.
If that’s true the best solution would be to stop seeking international recognition for science and publish much more science in languages other then English to allow more fields to develop.
Why do you think it will lead to new fields, rather than to a Babylon of overlapping terminologies?
I think that the scientific establishment choose that students t.test with a cutoff at 5% is central for doing science was a very arbitrary decision. If the decision would have been different, then we would have different fields.
From my perspective there seem to be plenty of possible scientific fields that aren’t pursued because they aren’t producing status in the existing international scientific community.
Kinda like if there would civilisational Dunbar Limit? Language barriers sound like an effective means of fracturing, but would still need to be upheld somehow. The population and capital distribution per language might still be a nontrivial problem.
Regardless of any particular test; why do you think non-English-language-based diversification is good?
(asking because “non-English-language-based science” is currently a big problem where I live. “It’s not in English” is basically the same as “it’s not interesting to others”.)
Having all science in English means that certain ontological assumptions that the English language makes get taken to be universal truths when they are particular features of the English language. Words like “be”, “feel” or “imagine” are taken as if they map to something that’s ontological basic when different languages slice up the conceptual space differently. The fact that English uses the “is of identity” and doesn’t use a different word then “to be” to speak about identity leads to a lot of confusion.
Given the present climate of caring more about empirics then ontology there’s also little push to get better at ontology in the current scientific community.
Issues around ontology however weren’t my main issue.
This basically means that all high status research is published in English and also that the system doesn’t work in a way where scientific funding is coupled on the necessity that research gets produced that’s interesting to someone.
This needs a language that’s spoken by enough people and at some point people who use the science in other applications.
Thomas Kuhn has a criteria that a is a field of knowledge where progress happens. That means that the way people change their topics of research is not just by listening to what’s in fashion but by building upon previous work in a way that progresses. What kind of progress happens in the “non-English-language-based science” where you live?
Alright, if I meet that Markdown Syntax in a dark alley, we will have to talk. Have a link, instead.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=760692444279924&set=a.140441189638389&type=3&theater
DIY,Kiev style is an article the funding situation of Ukrainian science. It seems that after the fall of the Soviet Union research funding from the government was cut drastically and prestigious science started to depend on foreign money.
When the most prestigious science depends on foreign funding the less prestigious science that’s still done in Ukrainian is likely to be lower quality.
It seems like Ukrainian politicians thought that Ukraine can be independent and that fails in various forms.
Chinese science in Chinese would a lot more likely to be successful then Ukrainian science in Ukrainian.
Let’s not infer what the politicians thought, we have a rather different image of it here.
I’d like to read about Chinese science done in Chinese; I think it would be a great thing to know more about.
Is there a way to insert a picture? I think a graph will be more informative.
For what it’s worth, if you’re using GreaterWrong, you can click the Image button in the editor (it’s fourth from the left), and it will automatically insert the appropriate Markdown syntax for an image.
In case this was a technical question, you can insert pictures into comments by using the Markdown syntax:
![image description](image-url <closing parenthesis>