Here’s a simple metaphor I’ve recently been using in some double-cruxes about intellectual infrastructure and tools, with Eli Tyre, Ozzie Gooen, and Richard Ngo.
Short people can pick blackberries. Tall people can pick both blackberries and bananas. We can give short people lots of training to make them able to pick blackberries faster, but no amount of blackberries can replace a banana if you’re trying to make banana split.
Similarly, making progress in a pre-paradigmatic field might require x number of key insights. But are those insights bananas, which can only be picked by geniuses, whereas ordinary researchers can only get us blackberries?
Or, is this metaphor false, such that having a certain number of non-geniuses + excellent tools, we can actually replicate geniuses?
This has implications for the impact of rationality training and internet intellectual infrastructure, as well as what versions of those endeavours are most promising to focus on.
Blackberries and bananas
Here’s a simple metaphor I’ve recently been using in some double-cruxes about intellectual infrastructure and tools, with Eli Tyre, Ozzie Gooen, and Richard Ngo.
Short people can pick blackberries. Tall people can pick both blackberries and bananas. We can give short people lots of training to make them able to pick blackberries faster, but no amount of blackberries can replace a banana if you’re trying to make banana split.
Similarly, making progress in a pre-paradigmatic field might require x number of key insights. But are those insights bananas, which can only be picked by geniuses, whereas ordinary researchers can only get us blackberries?
Or, is this metaphor false, such that having a certain number of non-geniuses + excellent tools, we can actually replicate geniuses?
This has implications for the impact of rationality training and internet intellectual infrastructure, as well as what versions of those endeavours are most promising to focus on.