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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 *atchoo* 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,
Venkatesh *atchoo* Rao @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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