One other thing that worries me is, unless we can precisely diagnose what is causing academia to be unable to take the “outsider steps”, it seems dangerous to make ourselves more like academia. What if that causes us to lose that ability ourselves?
Seems that academic motivations can be “value”, e.g discovering something of utility or “momentum”, sort of like a beauty contest, more applicable in abstract areas where utility is not obvious. Possible third is immediate enjoyment which probably contributed to millennia of number theory before it became useful.
Doing novel non-incremental things for non-value (like valuing AI safety) reasons is likely to be difficult until enough acceptability is built up for momentum type motivations. (which also suggests trying to explicitly build up momentum as an intervention)
Seems that academic motivations can be “value”, e.g discovering something of utility or “momentum”, sort of like a beauty contest, more applicable in abstract areas where utility is not obvious. Possible third is immediate enjoyment which probably contributed to millennia of number theory before it became useful.
Doing novel non-incremental things for non-value (like valuing AI safety) reasons is likely to be difficult until enough acceptability is built up for momentum type motivations. (which also suggests trying to explicitly build up momentum as an intervention)
Did you mean “likely to be difficult”?
thanks, fixed!