First, this is an excellent post, both in terms of the content proper, and also because I deeply appreciate transcriptions of interesting podcasts / videos / etc. (which I never listen to or watch).
Second, this:
… no individual researcher is incentivised to do anything but publish the next new idea, and so nobody does the replications either.
… is entirely consistent with my own (limited, but instructive) experiences in academia / research (in the field of HCI—where just 3% of all papers are replications, and where ‘novel’ is a sine qua non of publishability).
Is the framing about the main place an intellectual can have outsized impact correct? That is, is the marginal researcher who does synthesis of existing knowledge in fact the most valuable, or is it some other kind of researcher?
In my opinion, and in the field(s) with which I am familiar: yes, this framing is entirely correct. Synthesis is tremendously valuable, and there is far too little of it, and that fact is unlikely to change anytime within academia itself. Systematizing, synthesizing, replicating, etc., absolutely is the royal road to outsized impact.
Thanks! I realise now that it appears I’ve taken credit for someone else’s work—as you can see in the link at the top, the folks at 80,000 Hours actually transcribe their own podcasts.
(That said, I did sit and listen to this whole section with the transcript, and fixed a number of small errors.)
First, this is an excellent post, both in terms of the content proper, and also because I deeply appreciate transcriptions of interesting podcasts / videos / etc. (which I never listen to or watch).
Second, this:
… is entirely consistent with my own (limited, but instructive) experiences in academia / research (in the field of HCI—where just 3% of all papers are replications, and where ‘novel’ is a sine qua non of publishability).
In my opinion, and in the field(s) with which I am familiar: yes, this framing is entirely correct. Synthesis is tremendously valuable, and there is far too little of it, and that fact is unlikely to change anytime within academia itself. Systematizing, synthesizing, replicating, etc., absolutely is the royal road to outsized impact.
Thanks! I realise now that it appears I’ve taken credit for someone else’s work—as you can see in the link at the top, the folks at 80,000 Hours actually transcribe their own podcasts.
(That said, I did sit and listen to this whole section with the transcript, and fixed a number of small errors.)