When Feymann draw his diagrams for which he later won the nobel price he wasn’t doing it because he believed it to be the optimal way to solve issues in quantum physics. Instead he was simply curious where drawing his diagrams will lead.
I don’t believe that only the best hypothesis should be considered. After Thomas Kuhn when a new scientific paradigm begins it doesn’t offer the best hypothesis to solve most problems.
Many large discoveries are the result of investigating interesting mechanisms before you have any good idea of the problems that they will solve. It’s good to have slack that allows researchers to solve problems that they didn’t set out to solve at the beginning.
Modern grant making is likely optimizing too much for a researcher focusing all his energy on solving a very narrow problem.
A while ago we had an LW discussion where a person asked for how to best determine the probability of a woman reacting positively when he asks her out for a date. Other people thought that this was ricidulous and not the best approach to getting good at dating.
It’s likely true that it’s not the optimal strategy. On the other hand, I think it’s still a very valuable learning exercise to write down probabilities for events like that.
Thanks for this. This is a much larger project than I expected. So I’m changing the schedule. I have no idea when I’ll finish, buy I want to finish.
I have a preliminary first draft of the paper available.
The first draft is very incomplete, so I’m not posting it here as its own post yet. If you want to get the sense of what I’m doing though, you should read it: current version of paper.
I already said that I don’t believe in the core assumptions you are making that it’s a good idea to try to go for an optimal research strategy.
As far as being serious about this, what’s with prior art? It’s likely that some economist has asked himself already the question of how to model scientific research. You could search for the prior art and argue why you deviate at certain points and what your motivation for the deviation is.
When Feymann draw his diagrams for which he later won the nobel price he wasn’t doing it because he believed it to be the optimal way to solve issues in quantum physics. Instead he was simply curious where drawing his diagrams will lead.
I don’t believe that only the best hypothesis should be considered. After Thomas Kuhn when a new scientific paradigm begins it doesn’t offer the best hypothesis to solve most problems.
Many large discoveries are the result of investigating interesting mechanisms before you have any good idea of the problems that they will solve. It’s good to have slack that allows researchers to solve problems that they didn’t set out to solve at the beginning.
Modern grant making is likely optimizing too much for a researcher focusing all his energy on solving a very narrow problem.
A while ago we had an LW discussion where a person asked for how to best determine the probability of a woman reacting positively when he asks her out for a date. Other people thought that this was ricidulous and not the best approach to getting good at dating.
It’s likely true that it’s not the optimal strategy. On the other hand, I think it’s still a very valuable learning exercise to write down probabilities for events like that.
Thanks for this. This is a much larger project than I expected. So I’m changing the schedule. I have no idea when I’ll finish, buy I want to finish.
I have a preliminary first draft of the paper available.
The first draft is very incomplete, so I’m not posting it here as its own post yet. If you want to get the sense of what I’m doing though, you should read it: current version of paper.
Please review, criticise and make suggestions.
I already said that I don’t believe in the core assumptions you are making that it’s a good idea to try to go for an optimal research strategy.
As far as being serious about this, what’s with prior art? It’s likely that some economist has asked himself already the question of how to model scientific research. You could search for the prior art and argue why you deviate at certain points and what your motivation for the deviation is.
Do you mean “deviate” (as opposed to to “derivate”)?
Yes, I corrected the typo.