What would John rather have, for the same monetary/effort cost: Another researcher creating a new paradigm (new branches), or another researcher helping him (depth first)?
I think “new approach” vs “existing approach” is the wrong way to look at it. An approach is not the main thing which expertise is supposed to involve, here. Expertise in this context is much more about understanding the relevant problems/constraints. The main preference I have is a new researcher who understands the problems/constraints over one who doesn’t. Among researchers who understand the problems/constraints, I’d rather have one with their own new program than working on an existing program, but that’s useful if-and-only-if they understand the relevant problems and constraints.
The problem with a random-idea-generator is that the exponential majority of the ideas it generates won’t satisfy any known constraints or address any of the known hard barriers, or even a useful relaxation of the known constraints/barriers.
That said, I do buy your argument at the top of the thread that in fact GPT fails to even generate new bad ideas.
Ah, okay yeah that makes sense. The many-paths argument may work, but IFF the researcher/idea is even remotely useful for the problem, which a randomly-generated one won’t. Oops
I think “new approach” vs “existing approach” is the wrong way to look at it. An approach is not the main thing which expertise is supposed to involve, here. Expertise in this context is much more about understanding the relevant problems/constraints. The main preference I have is a new researcher who understands the problems/constraints over one who doesn’t. Among researchers who understand the problems/constraints, I’d rather have one with their own new program than working on an existing program, but that’s useful if-and-only-if they understand the relevant problems and constraints.
The problem with a random-idea-generator is that the exponential majority of the ideas it generates won’t satisfy any known constraints or address any of the known hard barriers, or even a useful relaxation of the known constraints/barriers.
That said, I do buy your argument at the top of the thread that in fact GPT fails to even generate new bad ideas.
Ah, okay yeah that makes sense. The many-paths argument may work, but IFF the researcher/idea is even remotely useful for the problem, which a randomly-generated one won’t. Oops