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on the slowed pace of innovation, pulling together several
s from the past 24 hours, plus other related thoughts/references…
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David Chapman Retweeted Ben Southwood
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 …David Chapman added,
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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 brrrRao
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,
Venkatesh brrrRao @vgrI was briefly calling myself an independent researcher: somebody who self-funds spec R&D on their own ideas. In theory it’s something like indie-research : academic research :: blogging/self-publishing : traditional publishing. But the idea doesn’t really work.Show this thread2 replies 2 retweets 20 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @Meaningness @vgr
Is the only solution to build an actual, physical alternative academic institution. Like an IAS but for area X?
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I don’t know! Physically proximity to smart people who you talk to frequently is extremely valuable, but maybe the internet is making that decreasingly necessary. I seem to recall some recent science-of-science of study to that effect, actually, although I can’t remember details.
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Replying to @Meaningness @vgr
idk, for some kind of minor tasks, remote seems fine, for more creative ones (collaborative fleshing out a problem, etc) I still feel the pull of irl.
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