I recommend this new paper about slowing innovation from @bswud & @tylercowen, from which I’ll extract what might (or might not) be a relatively minor point overall:https://twitter.com/bswud/status/1196338882821984257 …
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The paper points to a major concern of my corner of the internet: that it’s gotten much harder to do good work in STEM because the pragmatic circumstances of researchers are much less conducive. There’s a long list of factors, each pretty dire, and in sum maybe catastrophic.pic.twitter.com/4rbvisV89l
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The function of research universities used to be to provide a support structure within which individuals could spend substantially their your time doing some mixture of teaching and research. They’re no long really even pretending to do that.
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David Chapman Retweeted David Chapman
Ah, hmm, while looking for an old tweet of mine on this topic, I discovered a 2017 thread that made most of the same points I’m about to tweet today! Both draw on an unfinished blog post that apparently I ought to polish up and publish for reference…https://twitter.com/Meaningness/status/843950702187560960 …
David Chapman added,
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Some types of cognitive work, which may be critical for innovative breakthroughs, are apparently *impossible* except under highly specialized circumstances that are mostly no longer available. This *might* explain why we’re continuing to make progress in “normal science” only.
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David Chapman Retweeted David Chapman
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@michael_nielsen and I discussed this yesterday in a tweet thread that unfortunately forked so it's a bit hard to point to, but here's one pointer into it:https://twitter.com/Meaningness/status/1196125642342858753 …David Chapman added,
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David Chapman Retweeted Venkatesh Rao
Some outstanding researchers recognize the problem and go independent, hoping that it’s easier to do serious thinking outside an institutional context than within one. In this
@vgr explains some of the reasons that mostly doesn’t work:https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1195789557465153536 …David Chapman added,
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David Chapman Retweeted Venkatesh Rao
We urgently need alternative mechanisms/institutions for research support. This
from @vgr crunches some numbers: what would that cost? Answer: surprisingly little, in the scale of things.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1195937380210921472 …David Chapman added,
Venkatesh Rao @vgrThinking about my thread this morning on why independent research is hard, and what it would take to make it possible, and whether it’s within the reach of private investors who ALL complain endlessly about how they have far too much capital and don’t know where to put it. https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1195789557465153536 …Show this thread2 replies 4 retweets 18 likesShow this thread -
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@vgr’s
also covers many of the issues that come up in discussions of alt-research funding and institutions. This is a common, live discussion among people I talk with often. There’s growing momentum and consensus in the conversation, but will it lead to action?3 replies 0 retweets 8 likesShow this thread -
I suspect the central challenge here is to find alternative mechanisms for selecting what research/researchers to fund. How do grantors know their money is being well-spent? Who makes those decisions? Is there a way to do this that doesn’t just replicate the existing pathologies?
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Addressing this would do a lot of good!!! My hunch is that the macro science “slowdown” is caused mostly by something else, though: a lack of *tools* that scale to the complexity of biology and intelligence, and a lack of ARPA-level big focused projects to make & apply them.
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Replying to @AdamMarblestone @Meaningness
In 20th century there was a surprising alignment of theories and tools to test and inspire them. Big Bang->telescopes. Replicating molecule->X-Ray diffraction. Computing->Vacuum tube/transistor. All huge efforts to build.
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Replying to @AdamMarblestone @Meaningness
For bio and brain+mind, we’ve lacked tools that scale to say, test in a real common sense physical social world a model of how a mind develops. Or to map an entire brain. Or perturb one type of cell in real time in an intact organism.
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