I appreciate your points, and I don’t think I see significant points of disagreement. But in terms of emphasis, it seems concerning to be putting effort into (what seems like) rationalizing not updating that a given approach doesn’t have a hope of working. (Or maybe more accurately, that a given approach won’t lead to a sufficient understanding that we could know it would work, which (with further argument) implies that it will not work.) Like, I guess I want to amplify your point
> But I think it’s also quite important for people to remember that they’re insufficient, and that they don’t suffice to solve the whole problem on their own.
and say further that one’s stance to the benefit of working on things with clearer metrics of success, would hopefully include continuously noticing everyone else’s stance to that situation. If a given unit of effort can only be directed towards marginal things, then we could ask (for example): What would it look like to make cumulative marginal progress towards, say, improving our ability to propose better approaches, rather than marginal progress on approaches that we know won’t resolve the key issues?
I appreciate your points, and I don’t think I see significant points of disagreement. But in terms of emphasis, it seems concerning to be putting effort into (what seems like) rationalizing not updating that a given approach doesn’t have a hope of working. (Or maybe more accurately, that a given approach won’t lead to a sufficient understanding that we could know it would work, which (with further argument) implies that it will not work.) Like, I guess I want to amplify your point
> But I think it’s also quite important for people to remember that they’re insufficient, and that they don’t suffice to solve the whole problem on their own.
and say further that one’s stance to the benefit of working on things with clearer metrics of success, would hopefully include continuously noticing everyone else’s stance to that situation. If a given unit of effort can only be directed towards marginal things, then we could ask (for example): What would it look like to make cumulative marginal progress towards, say, improving our ability to propose better approaches, rather than marginal progress on approaches that we know won’t resolve the key issues?