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Alan Kay wrote an essay on how large scientific breakthroughs where done [1], further discussed in [2]. The funders and the systems of funding of science are to blame for the deciline, for example they won't fund problem finding anymore. [1] http://www.vpri.org/pdf/Kay_How.pdf [2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j9ZGFaIHegE
If you're really smart, enough to make disruptive scientific discoveries, why bother doing that when you could learn programming and work at a FAANG for $400k, or work in the finance sector and make possibly more? If you stay in science, you'll earn peanuts and not even have any career stability since the academic track is so bad these days.
All these geniuses... people are giving them jobs!
In the early 20 century new ideas in physics and mathematics sparked a revolution and we are slowly unraveling the benefits of it ever since. For 40 years we had evolution in the AI research field, now we have a revolution, I do not know when it will die down but after a while we will just start to build over the ideas we discovered and a long period will pass before we do another jump. Same with psychology, economics, biology...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You make two assumptions: - There are as many revolutionary discoveries with and without patents - Without patents, discoveries would be freely avalaible As far as I know, two (related) arguments are generally made for patents: - Patents create an indirect (by preventing the competition from using your invention) or direct (by licensing it) monetary return to innovation, potentially leading to more innovation - If a…
> There are as many revolutionary discoveries with and without patents I explicitly don't: I mentioned the patent stops others from innovating on top of the patent. The necessity of patents to be public is one I had not considered though, being a force against trade secrets is a good counterpoint. > Whether patents lead to more or less innovation is, as far as I know, contentious. Honestly, I really have trouble acce…
"Take any revolutionary discovery. Compare making it freely available to anyone, or limiting the availability to those holding the patents. [...]"
You take the situation where there _is_ a revolutionary discovery, with or without patents, and then wonder about the effect of patents on the next innovations. In doing that you do not consider that may be a revolutionary discovery with patents, and none without.
I wonder if this is to do with major vs minor breakthrough. Take physics. As I read it, modern fundamental physics is mostly some combination of general relativity and quantum mechanics, which are both early 20th century inventions. They weren't necessarily genius in particular in-depth analysis, rather they were genius new concepts that created a whole new blank canvas to fill in. What did the field look like just b…
I agree, I think we're discounting genius insight as the primary driver of innovation and ground breaking science, and we can't expect genius insight to occur in some predictable time frame or a time frame even within a lifespan. I think perhaps we've also partially lost the meaning of ground breaking research given the constant news articles on "ground breaking science" and the constant overinflation and exaggeratio…
Yes, and we can’t expect it to occur in a socially confined over-structured environment either. Academia has changed a lot since then, with peer review hell, publishing pressure, etc. I mean, are we really pretending to be surprised that a system of incrementalist incentives produces incrementalist results?
I get that in this context "patents" should be seen as the announcement of a new innovation, a surrogate of the innovation itself if you will, but setting that aside for a moment I'm struggling to imagine how patents could ever do anything but slow down disruption. Take any revolutionary discovery. Compare making it freely available to anyone, or limiting the availability to those holding the patents. EDIT: And perha…
The original idea of a patent is that it must reveal the "secrets" behind an invention, in return for a "temporary monopoly". It's supposed to help diffusion of technology by publishing trade secrets, not to "incentivise" research.
I think what is actually happening is that patents are made obtuse/opaque containing little meaningful information. They are then used as playing cards in patent licensing deals between big corporations.
There is no longer any hope for patent clerks to do meaningful inspection of patents to determine if they are legitimate. Instead, it's left to lawyers/attorneys to play something out in court.
I blame the grant funding process. What gets published is what gets funded when written up as a grant proposal. What gets written up as a grant proposal is what is called for by grant funding agencies for their own research initiatives. If you want disruptive science, fund it then. That's all everyone wants to do in science, but the bills need to be payed somehow, so you play the game the funding agencies want you to…
The focus is clearly on "getting the grant". And the grant acts as an entity in itself, as it becomes a line in the CV of scientists, which will help them "get the next grant". The outcome of the grant becomes thus irrelevant. Maybe competition is missing?
It almost seems as a new model would take the world by storm, but it doesnt seem to arise. Even private research often falls for the same pitfalls, like how Deepmind keeps seeking to publish proprietary research in Nature, instead of creating an open ecosystem that will drive reinforcement-learning science forward.
I wonder if this is to do with major vs minor breakthrough. Take physics. As I read it, modern fundamental physics is mostly some combination of general relativity and quantum mechanics, which are both early 20th century inventions. They weren't necessarily genius in particular in-depth analysis, rather they were genius new concepts that created a whole new blank canvas to fill in. What did the field look like just b…
It’s amazing upright apes can figure out the speed of light or postulate and find the Higgs Boson in the first place.
How much physics do we expect the smartest dog in the world to do? What if we 10x’d its lifespan?
At some point either:
1. There is no more physics
2. We build beings that can do physics that we can’t
3. We’re stopped dead in our tracks at the limit of our ability to comprehend things that apes weren’t built to comprehend
I wonder if this is to do with major vs minor breakthrough. Take physics. As I read it, modern fundamental physics is mostly some combination of general relativity and quantum mechanics, which are both early 20th century inventions. They weren't necessarily genius in particular in-depth analysis, rather they were genius new concepts that created a whole new blank canvas to fill in. What did the field look like just b…