> There are various levels of epistemic nihilism one can go, culminating into the "We can't ever know who or what will be successful" so we should fund everyone equally, maximally equalizing funding. I don't agree with this, and will discuss scientific egalitarianism and lotteries in the next part
I enjoyed this a lot. Lots of stimulating ideas and a refreshingly robust way of thinking.
But... being in the "IDK" camp, and being a self hating empiricist, I smarted a little at the "nihilism" quip. I'm absolutely not against these kinds of pursuits though. If I held the pursestrings, I'd give this man (or woman.. who wrote this?) a go.
I just don't think we can get far beyond "lets give this a try" in our knowledge/prediction of what will work here. We're talking about how to fund, and therefore organize, science. There almost certainly isn't one way, and results will likely be different in different between, fields and such.
Game theory also plays a role. Funding methods are legible, and legible criteria (such as citations) quickly become game fodder. The best defence against this might be to throw out criteria regularly. One of the reasons I'm game for what the author suggests is that the "co-funding" model where private interests provide 50% of the cash to prove merit is extremely played out. There was a rationale there too. I'm sure you could support it with "n-hypothesis" and such. That breaks down though, a new rationale emerges. Ideally, whatever mechanism is used tries to consciously avoid citation-seo or somesuch.
I think there are elephants in the room, when it comes to funding systems. We are, almost by definition, constructing a social system... a society almost. One where livelihood, success, prestige and such are at stake. These can't be taken for granted. A concept like "tenure" invents a type of person... a tenured professor. I think we should be thinking and defining these these problems in such terms. "Lets invent X" where X is a type of institution, title, station etc.
Not to mention, the scientific method is itself a culmination of a type of epistemic nihilism. I'm not sure why you'd abandon it at the funding level—in this context, having epistemic values is just called "bias".
Certainly, I'd hope the phrase "We can't ever know who or what will be successful" is a trivially true phrase for a trained scientist. If not, they better read some damn Hume and justify their semantics.
I enjoyed this a lot. Lots of stimulating ideas and a refreshingly robust way of thinking.
But... being in the "IDK" camp, and being a self hating empiricist, I smarted a little at the "nihilism" quip. I'm absolutely not against these kinds of pursuits though. If I held the pursestrings, I'd give this man (or woman.. who wrote this?) a go.
I just don't think we can get far beyond "lets give this a try" in our knowledge/prediction of what will work here. We're talking about how to fund, and therefore organize, science. There almost certainly isn't one way, and results will likely be different in different between, fields and such.
Game theory also plays a role. Funding methods are legible, and legible criteria (such as citations) quickly become game fodder. The best defence against this might be to throw out criteria regularly. One of the reasons I'm game for what the author suggests is that the "co-funding" model where private interests provide 50% of the cash to prove merit is extremely played out. There was a rationale there too. I'm sure you could support it with "n-hypothesis" and such. That breaks down though, a new rationale emerges. Ideally, whatever mechanism is used tries to consciously avoid citation-seo or somesuch.
I think there are elephants in the room, when it comes to funding systems. We are, almost by definition, constructing a social system... a society almost. One where livelihood, success, prestige and such are at stake. These can't be taken for granted. A concept like "tenure" invents a type of person... a tenured professor. I think we should be thinking and defining these these problems in such terms. "Lets invent X" where X is a type of institution, title, station etc.