The way Traditional Rationality is designed, it would have been acceptable for me to spend 30 years on my silly idea, so long as I succeeded in falsifying it eventually, and was honest with myself about what my theory predicted, and accepted the disproof when it arrived, et cetera. This is enough to let the Ratchet of Science click forward, but it’s a little harsh on the people who waste 30 years of their lives.
I think this is a case where Eliezer’s nontraditional career path caused him to miss out on some of the traditional guidance that young researchers get. If a graduate student tells their adviser that they want to work on some far-fetched research project like quantum neurology, the adviser will have some questions for their student like “What’s the first step that you can take to conduct research on this?”, “How likely is this to pan out?”, “What publications can you get out of this?”, and “Will this help you get a job?” Most young researchers have a mentor who is trying to help them get started on a successful career, and the mentor will steer them away from unproductive projects which don’t leave them with good answers to these questions.
This careerism has its downsides, but it set a higher standard than mere falsifiability, which helps keep young researchers from wasting their careers pursuing some silly idea. You have to get tenure before you can do that. (The exception is when the whole field has already embraced the silly idea enough to publish articles about it in top journals and allow researchers to make a career out of it.)
This approach has tremendous downsides, because so many researchers are encouraged to focus on projects where it’s easy rather than useful to publish, and a majority of publications are hardly interesting or useful to anyone.
I think this is a case where Eliezer’s nontraditional career path caused him to miss out on some of the traditional guidance that young researchers get. If a graduate student tells their adviser that they want to work on some far-fetched research project like quantum neurology, the adviser will have some questions for their student like “What’s the first step that you can take to conduct research on this?”, “How likely is this to pan out?”, “What publications can you get out of this?”, and “Will this help you get a job?” Most young researchers have a mentor who is trying to help them get started on a successful career, and the mentor will steer them away from unproductive projects which don’t leave them with good answers to these questions.
This careerism has its downsides, but it set a higher standard than mere falsifiability, which helps keep young researchers from wasting their careers pursuing some silly idea. You have to get tenure before you can do that. (The exception is when the whole field has already embraced the silly idea enough to publish articles about it in top journals and allow researchers to make a career out of it.)
This approach has tremendous downsides, because so many researchers are encouraged to focus on projects where it’s easy rather than useful to publish, and a majority of publications are hardly interesting or useful to anyone.