On being able to predictably publish papers as a malign goal, one point is standards of publishability in existing research communities not matching what’s useful to publish for this particular problem (which used to be the case more strongly a few years ago). Aiming to publish for example on LessWrong fixes the issue in that case, though you mostly won’t get research grants for that. (The other point is that some things shouldn’t be published at all.)
In either case, I don’t see discouragement from building on existing work, it’s not building arguments out of nothing when you also read all the things as you come up with your arguments. Experimental grounding is crucial but not always possible, in which case giving up on the problem and doing something else doesn’t help with solving this particular problem, other than as part of the rising tide of basic research that can’t be aimed.
On being able to predictably publish papers as a malign goal, one point is standards of publishability in existing research communities not matching what’s useful to publish for this particular problem (which used to be the case more strongly a few years ago). Aiming to publish for example on LessWrong fixes the issue in that case, though you mostly won’t get research grants for that. (The other point is that some things shouldn’t be published at all.)
In either case, I don’t see discouragement from building on existing work, it’s not building arguments out of nothing when you also read all the things as you come up with your arguments. Experimental grounding is crucial but not always possible, in which case giving up on the problem and doing something else doesn’t help with solving this particular problem, other than as part of the rising tide of basic research that can’t be aimed.