“What is the most important question in science or meta science we should be seeking to understand at the moment?”
Imo, the question is not “how can we marginally shift academic norms and incentives so the global academic workforce is marginally more effective,” but instead“how can we build an entirely independent system with the correct meta-norms at the outset, allowing knowledge workers to coordinate around more effective norms and incentive structures as they’re discovered, while remaining scalable and attractive[1] enough to compete with academia for talent?”
Even if we manage to marginally reform academia, the distance between “marginal” and “adequate” reform seems insurmountable. And I think returns from precisely aimed research are exponential, such that a minority of precisely aimed researchers achieve good compared to a global workforce mostly compelled to do elaborate rituals of paper pushing. To be clear, this isn’t their fault. It’s the result of a tightly regulated bureaucratic process that’s built up too much design debt to refactor. It’s high time to jump ship.
Huh! I literally browsed this paper of his earlier today, and now I find it on the forum. Weird!
Anyway, Michael Nielsen is great. I especially enjoy his insights on spaced repetition.
Imo, the question is not “how can we marginally shift academic norms and incentives so the global academic workforce is marginally more effective,” but instead “how can we build an entirely independent system with the correct meta-norms at the outset, allowing knowledge workers to coordinate around more effective norms and incentive structures as they’re discovered, while remaining scalable and attractive[1] enough to compete with academia for talent?”
Even if we manage to marginally reform academia, the distance between “marginal” and “adequate” reform seems insurmountable. And I think returns from precisely aimed research are exponential, such that a minority of precisely aimed researchers achieve good compared to a global workforce mostly compelled to do elaborate rituals of paper pushing. To be clear, this isn’t their fault. It’s the result of a tightly regulated bureaucratic process that’s built up too much design debt to refactor. It’s high time to jump ship.
in profit and prestige
Interesting. Start a new institution and org working on this!