Something about the “science is fragile” argument feels off to me. Perhaps it’s that I’m not really thinking about RCTs; I’m looking at Archimedes, Newton, and Feynman, and going “surely there’s something small that could have been tweaked about culture beforehand to make some of this low-hanging scientific fruit get grabbed earlier by a bunch of decent thinkers, rather than everything needing to wait for lone geniuses”.
I’d propose that there’s a massive qualitative difference between black-box results (like RCTs) and gears-level model-building (like Archimedes, Newton, and Feynman). The latter are where basically all of the big gains are, and it does seem like society is under-invested in building gears-level models. One possible economic reason for the under-investment is that gears-level models have very low depreciation rates, so they pay off over a very long timescale.
One possible economic reason for the under-investment is that gears-level models have very low depreciation rates, so they pay off over a very long timescale.
I would suspect it’s the other way around, that they have very high depreciation rates; we no longer have Feynman’s gears-level models, for example.
I’d propose that there’s a massive qualitative difference between black-box results (like RCTs) and gears-level model-building (like Archimedes, Newton, and Feynman). The latter are where basically all of the big gains are, and it does seem like society is under-invested in building gears-level models. One possible economic reason for the under-investment is that gears-level models have very low depreciation rates, so they pay off over a very long timescale.
I would suspect it’s the other way around, that they have very high depreciation rates; we no longer have Feynman’s gears-level models, for example.