Thanks for the link! Very interesting. I read the post that started the thing off, which was very good. How are they doing? A major problem must be the “who gets the credit thing”, or? It seems to me that fear of theft of ideas is a major impediment to progress in science.
I agree that the academica should be more collective and cooperative. People do of course cooperate—e.g. they comment on other people’s stuff on seminars, etc. - but often it is done in a quite unsystematic way. Public forums with an adequate incentive structure seems to me to be a good way of getting around this problem.
Regarding differences in capability: in my own field, philosophy, the difference in capability between researchers is just vast. Perhaps other fields are different but I doubt it. If what I am sketching concerning what you term “super-scientists and journyemen” could “evolve organically” from blog/public fora systems I’d be happy. I don’t really have a take whether that is realistic at this point (perhaps I will tomorrow...).
Regarding smart people: my point was that it is probably best for science and society if they concentrate on what they do best—create great ideas—and do that on the highest possible pace. The best thing would be if they realized that themselves. Perhaps that’s what Yudkowsky and other bloggers have done. Those who haven’t, or have but won’t act on that (perhaps they’re not sufficiently altrustic) needs to be given incentives to do so, if we wish to maximize scientific progress.
I’m open for the possiblity that monetary rewards or titles aren’t the best incentives (but that, e.g. peer respect is) but all-in-all I think that we do need to make use of such incentives at present.
A major problem must be the “who gets the credit thing”, or?
I think the credit goes to the project, and the project lists its contributors. It seems like this is done mostly (or completely) for free, like open source software, which necessitates some other source of funding (like what happens with open source software). People in the project are fairly good at figuring out how various people helped (as is the case in open source), but the further you are from the details the blurrier it gets, and most people probably overestimate their contribution by a significant amount.
If what I am sketching concerning what you term “super-scientists and journyemen” could “evolve organically” from blog/public fora systems I’d be happy.
Thanks for the link! Very interesting. I read the post that started the thing off, which was very good. How are they doing? A major problem must be the “who gets the credit thing”, or? It seems to me that fear of theft of ideas is a major impediment to progress in science.
I agree that the academica should be more collective and cooperative. People do of course cooperate—e.g. they comment on other people’s stuff on seminars, etc. - but often it is done in a quite unsystematic way. Public forums with an adequate incentive structure seems to me to be a good way of getting around this problem.
Regarding differences in capability: in my own field, philosophy, the difference in capability between researchers is just vast. Perhaps other fields are different but I doubt it. If what I am sketching concerning what you term “super-scientists and journyemen” could “evolve organically” from blog/public fora systems I’d be happy. I don’t really have a take whether that is realistic at this point (perhaps I will tomorrow...).
Regarding smart people: my point was that it is probably best for science and society if they concentrate on what they do best—create great ideas—and do that on the highest possible pace. The best thing would be if they realized that themselves. Perhaps that’s what Yudkowsky and other bloggers have done. Those who haven’t, or have but won’t act on that (perhaps they’re not sufficiently altrustic) needs to be given incentives to do so, if we wish to maximize scientific progress.
I’m open for the possiblity that monetary rewards or titles aren’t the best incentives (but that, e.g. peer respect is) but all-in-all I think that we do need to make use of such incentives at present.
I think the credit goes to the project, and the project lists its contributors. It seems like this is done mostly (or completely) for free, like open source software, which necessitates some other source of funding (like what happens with open source software). People in the project are fairly good at figuring out how various people helped (as is the case in open source), but the further you are from the details the blurrier it gets, and most people probably overestimate their contribution by a significant amount.
Well, one recent example of this here might be RobbBB’s Building Phenomenological Bridges, specifically this comment.
I see...but are they publishing lots of stuff, solving lots of problem, etc?
Thanks for the links. From the second:
“The aim is to write up open problems in Friendly AI using as little Eliezer-time as possible. It seems to be working so far.”
Well that seems to be exactly what I am talking about. People here don’t seem to like it, though, which surprises me a bit.