On further reflection it occurs to me that research done over the last 50 or so years has also been extremely valuable at increasing rationality. Thanks to the work of Kahneman, Tversky, Ariely, Pearl, Zadeh, and others there are things we know today about cognitive biases and rationality that no one knew in 1963. So original research in certain fields also has the potential to be both scalable and useful.
On further reflection it occurs to me that research done over the last 50 or so years has also been extremely valuable at increasing rationality. Thanks to the work of Kahneman, Tversky, Ariely, Pearl, Zadeh, and others there are things we know today about cognitive biases and rationality that no one knew in 1963. So original research in certain fields also has the potential to be both scalable and useful.