michael_nielsen

So much relevant expertise in political science. This would be so much better as a team project that included them.https://twitter.com/GovernorTomWolf/status/962060492175900674 …

Realize my point is not that a mathematician should not be involved. It is that such a politically complex problem requires far more diversity of expertise & polisci expertise is essential (see work of Scott Page on this pt: https://aeon.co/ideas/why-hiring-the-best-people-produces-the-least-creative-results …)

This is a fun article, and there's interesting truth to it. But I wish it engaged seriously with the other viewpoint. Is there ever a good time to turn down a von Neumann for your math-focused venture? Einstein for a physics venture? Etc.

If the answer is just "You get experts whose domain expertise is more appropriate [than Einstein etc] for the particular problem under consideration" then the article becomes true but obvious and uninteresting.

The likelihood that you will get someone who understands the math _and_ the institutional politics _and_ the local specificities of Pennsylvania politics is obviously very low. Genius travels - but nearly always within a specific ambit and with a specific bag of tricks.

So I think you need to integrate very different kinds of expertise if you want to answer these questions. Though I can’t remember how/if you talk about these specific kinds of cognitive crossover in Reinventing Science …

I gave a few very examples - there are some particularly nice ones in Kasparov versus the World where amateurs contributed important ideas that the experts didn't think of.

Yes, I like that example a lot. I do disagree with the sharp division you draw between science and politics in that book (science seems more political to me, and politics at least a little more concerned with search for knowledge than you say, as best as I recall it).