I think this is right. A couple of follow-on points:
There’s a funding problem if this is an important route to progress. If good work is illegible for years, it’s hard to decide who to fund, and hard to argue for people to fund it. I don’t have a proposed solution, but I wanted to note this large problem.
Einstein did his pre-paradigmatic work largely alone. Better collaboration might’ve sped it up.
LessWrong allows people to share their thoughts prior to having publishable journal articles and get at least a few people to engage.
This makes the difficult pre-paradigmatic thinking a group effort instead of a solo effort. This could speed up progress dramatically.
This post and the resulting comments and discussions is an example of the community collectively doing much of the work you describe: traversing levels, practicing good epistemics, and remaining confused.
Having conversations with other LWers (on calls, by DM, or in extended comment threads) is tremendously useful for me. I could produce those same thoughts and critiques, but it would take me longer to arrive at all of those different viewpoints of the issue. I mention this to encourage others to do it. Communication takes time and some additional effort (asking people to talk), but it’s often well worth it. Talking to people who are interested in and knowledgeable on the same topics can be an enormous speedup in doing difficult pre-paradigmatic thinking.
LessWrong isn’t perfect, but it’s a vast improvement on the collaboration tools and communities that have been available to scientists in other fields. We should take advantage of it.
I think this is right. A couple of follow-on points:
There’s a funding problem if this is an important route to progress. If good work is illegible for years, it’s hard to decide who to fund, and hard to argue for people to fund it. I don’t have a proposed solution, but I wanted to note this large problem.
Einstein did his pre-paradigmatic work largely alone. Better collaboration might’ve sped it up.
LessWrong allows people to share their thoughts prior to having publishable journal articles and get at least a few people to engage.
This makes the difficult pre-paradigmatic thinking a group effort instead of a solo effort. This could speed up progress dramatically.
This post and the resulting comments and discussions is an example of the community collectively doing much of the work you describe: traversing levels, practicing good epistemics, and remaining confused.
Having conversations with other LWers (on calls, by DM, or in extended comment threads) is tremendously useful for me. I could produce those same thoughts and critiques, but it would take me longer to arrive at all of those different viewpoints of the issue. I mention this to encourage others to do it. Communication takes time and some additional effort (asking people to talk), but it’s often well worth it. Talking to people who are interested in and knowledgeable on the same topics can be an enormous speedup in doing difficult pre-paradigmatic thinking.
LessWrong isn’t perfect, but it’s a vast improvement on the collaboration tools and communities that have been available to scientists in other fields. We should take advantage of it.