The extreme form of that idea is If we could evaluate the quality of scientists, then we could fully computerize research. Since we cannot fully computerize research, we therefore have no ability to evaluate the quality of scientists.
The most valuable thing to do would be to observe what’s going on right now, and the possibilities we haven’t tried (or have abandoned). Insofar as we have credence in the “we know nothing” hypothesis, we should blindly dump money on random scientists. Our credence should never be zero, so this implies that some nonzero amount of random money-dumping is optimal.
The extreme form of that idea is If we could evaluate the quality of scientists, then we could fully computerize research. Since we cannot fully computerize research, we therefore have no ability to evaluate the quality of scientists.
The most valuable thing to do would be to observe what’s going on right now, and the possibilities we haven’t tried (or have abandoned). Insofar as we have credence in the “we know nothing” hypothesis, we should blindly dump money on random scientists. Our credence should never be zero, so this implies that some nonzero amount of random money-dumping is optimal.