What does this mean? More groups working independently on solving a problem will not increase the probability of a solution being found in a given timeframe?
What does this mean? More groups working independently on solving a problem will not increase the probability of a solution being found in a given timeframe?
It means that it won’t do so substantially. If many people are duplicating the same discoveries within a short time span then a field may be experiencing saturation. There’s a related issue which is that in many fields, there’s a limited set of people actually qualified to do research in an area, and so pumping in more money won’t increase the number of people doing research (although it might increase the number of people who assert that their research is connected to the problem at hand). But both forms of saturation have similar end results in practice: the marginal return of throwing in more resources becomes so small that you might as well aim those resources elsewhere.
That sounds pretty sane, but if I look at it from the point of view of “making a longevity breakthrough happen sooner than it otherwise would, over a period of many years”, then too few qualified people is not a show stopping problem, it only means that educating and training people so there are more qualified people in the near future is a good next step.
Lots of people making the same discoveries within a short time span is a much more interesting limit.
What does this mean? More groups working independently on solving a problem will not increase the probability of a solution being found in a given timeframe?
It means that it won’t do so substantially. If many people are duplicating the same discoveries within a short time span then a field may be experiencing saturation. There’s a related issue which is that in many fields, there’s a limited set of people actually qualified to do research in an area, and so pumping in more money won’t increase the number of people doing research (although it might increase the number of people who assert that their research is connected to the problem at hand). But both forms of saturation have similar end results in practice: the marginal return of throwing in more resources becomes so small that you might as well aim those resources elsewhere.
That sounds pretty sane, but if I look at it from the point of view of “making a longevity breakthrough happen sooner than it otherwise would, over a period of many years”, then too few qualified people is not a show stopping problem, it only means that educating and training people so there are more qualified people in the near future is a good next step.
Lots of people making the same discoveries within a short time span is a much more interesting limit.