Look… Consider the hypothetically possible situation that in fact everyone is very far from being on the right track, and everything everyone is doing doesn’t help with the right track and isn’t on track to get on the right track or to help with the right track.
Ok, so I’m telling you that this hypothetically possible situation seems to me like the reality. And then you’re, I don’t know, trying to retreat to some sort of agreeable live-and-let-live stance, or something, where we all just agree that due to model uncertainty and the fact that people have vaguely plausible stories for how their thing might possibly be helpful, everyone should do their own thing and it’s not helpful to try to say that some big swath of research is doomed? If this is what’s happening, then I think that what you in particular are doing here is a bad thing to do here.
Maybe we can have a phone call if you’d like to discuss further.
Maybe we can have a phone call if you’d like to discuss further.
I doubt it’s worth it—I’m not a major funder in this space and don’t expect to become one in the near future, and my impression is that there is no imminent danger of you shutting down research that looks promising to me and unpromising to you. As such, I think the discussion ended up getting into the weeds in a way that probably wasn’t a great use of either of our time, and I doubt spending more time on it would change that.
That said, I appreciated your clarity of thought, and in particular your restatement of how the conversation looked to you. I will probably be stealing that technique.
I mean if we’re going with memes I could equally say
though realistically I think the most common problem in this kind of discussion is
Look… Consider the hypothetically possible situation that in fact everyone is very far from being on the right track, and everything everyone is doing doesn’t help with the right track and isn’t on track to get on the right track or to help with the right track.
Ok, so I’m telling you that this hypothetically possible situation seems to me like the reality. And then you’re, I don’t know, trying to retreat to some sort of agreeable live-and-let-live stance, or something, where we all just agree that due to model uncertainty and the fact that people have vaguely plausible stories for how their thing might possibly be helpful, everyone should do their own thing and it’s not helpful to try to say that some big swath of research is doomed? If this is what’s happening, then I think that what you in particular are doing here is a bad thing to do here.
Maybe we can have a phone call if you’d like to discuss further.
I doubt it’s worth it—I’m not a major funder in this space and don’t expect to become one in the near future, and my impression is that there is no imminent danger of you shutting down research that looks promising to me and unpromising to you. As such, I think the discussion ended up getting into the weeds in a way that probably wasn’t a great use of either of our time, and I doubt spending more time on it would change that.
That said, I appreciated your clarity of thought, and in particular your restatement of how the conversation looked to you. I will probably be stealing that technique.