I think that time capping can sometimes be the right decision but I’m also afraid of people overapplying it in research. I remember how I was writing Is the percentage of vegetarians and vegans in the U.S. increasing? I did a couple of days of research, concluded that veg*ism is trending upwards, and planned to share my findings in a short post. I was hoping to finish it in a week. But when writing it up, I realized that some of the evidence was conflicting. Part of me wanted to ignore it so I could get it over with sooner. But sharing analysis with a wrong conclusion can be harmful. So I dug deeper. The week turned into months. My conclusions became more nuanced. I was thinking that if I changed my opinion or found an important piece of evidence yesterday, it would be foolish to stop thinking and searching for more evidence today because the probability of me changing my opinion again is significant. I think that this is a useful heuristic. If I would’ve time-capped, I would’ve published the wrong conclusion. Maybe someone would’ve later did more research and correct it, but that would’ve required more effort spent on the issue overall, overall research on the topic would be more difficult to comprehend because it would be in multiple places, and some people would hold incorrect opinion despite the new research because they only read my incorrect research.
I think that time capping can sometimes be the right decision but I’m also afraid of people overapplying it in research. I remember how I was writing Is the percentage of vegetarians and vegans in the U.S. increasing? I did a couple of days of research, concluded that veg*ism is trending upwards, and planned to share my findings in a short post. I was hoping to finish it in a week. But when writing it up, I realized that some of the evidence was conflicting. Part of me wanted to ignore it so I could get it over with sooner. But sharing analysis with a wrong conclusion can be harmful. So I dug deeper. The week turned into months. My conclusions became more nuanced. I was thinking that if I changed my opinion or found an important piece of evidence yesterday, it would be foolish to stop thinking and searching for more evidence today because the probability of me changing my opinion again is significant. I think that this is a useful heuristic. If I would’ve time-capped, I would’ve published the wrong conclusion. Maybe someone would’ve later did more research and correct it, but that would’ve required more effort spent on the issue overall, overall research on the topic would be more difficult to comprehend because it would be in multiple places, and some people would hold incorrect opinion despite the new research because they only read my incorrect research.