What areas of science are you thinking of? I think the discussion varies dramatically.
I think allowing less legibility would help make science less plodding, and allow it to move in larger steps. But there’s also a question of what direction it’s plodding. The problem I saw with psych and neurosci was that it tended to plod in nearly random, not very useful directions.
And what definition of “smart”? I’m afraid that by a common definition, smart people tend to do dumb research, in that they’ll do galaxy brained projects that are interesting but unlikely to pay off. This is how you get new science, but not useful science.
In cognitive psychology and neuroscience, I want to see money given to people who are both creative and practical. They will do new science that is also useful.
In psychology and neuroscience, scientists pick the grantees, and they tend to give money to those whose research they understand. This produces an effect where research keeps following one direction that became popular long ago. I think a different method of granting would work better, but the particular method matters a lot.
Thinking about it a little more, having a mix of personality types involved would probably be useful. I always appreciated the contributions of the rare philospher who actually learned enough to join a discussion about psych or neurosci research.
I think the most important application of meta science theory is alignment research.
What areas of science are you thinking of? I think the discussion varies dramatically.
I think allowing less legibility would help make science less plodding, and allow it to move in larger steps. But there’s also a question of what direction it’s plodding. The problem I saw with psych and neurosci was that it tended to plod in nearly random, not very useful directions.
And what definition of “smart”? I’m afraid that by a common definition, smart people tend to do dumb research, in that they’ll do galaxy brained projects that are interesting but unlikely to pay off. This is how you get new science, but not useful science.
In cognitive psychology and neuroscience, I want to see money given to people who are both creative and practical. They will do new science that is also useful.
In psychology and neuroscience, scientists pick the grantees, and they tend to give money to those whose research they understand. This produces an effect where research keeps following one direction that became popular long ago. I think a different method of granting would work better, but the particular method matters a lot.
Thinking about it a little more, having a mix of personality types involved would probably be useful. I always appreciated the contributions of the rare philospher who actually learned enough to join a discussion about psych or neurosci research.
I think the most important application of meta science theory is alignment research.