I enjoyed speaking with @EconTalker about the piece @michael_nielsen and I wrote last year about progress in science: http://www.econtalk.org/patrick-collison-on-innovation-and-scientific-progress/ …. (Article: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/diminishing-returns-science/575665/ ….)
The less comfortable an artist becomes about acknowledging and embracing these "unjustifiable" but essential aspects of artistic practice, the more they tend to recede, leaving behind only formal abstractions which, though more readily "teachable," are relatively sterile.
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Scientific investigation is practiced now almost exclusively by academics whose teaching systematically misleads by concealing their heuristics and inspirations. Students gain mastery of existing knowledge, but remain untutored in the arts of successful groping about in the dark.
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Among the shrewdest observers of this demoralizing and perverse phenomenon was the great Alexander Grothendieck: "Of course, no creative mathematician can afford not to “speculate,” namely, to do more or less daring guesswork as an indispensable source of inspiration. (1/2)
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