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hairyfigment comments on Negative and Positive Selection - Less Wrong
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I agree with most of it, though the point about academia is a bit contrived.
True, there is a lot of negative selection before you get a cushy job the usual way, but you can certainly bypass quite a few obstacles if you are exceptionally good. For example, solve any of the open problems in math or physics, post a preprint on arxiv.org (well, you may need someone to vouch for you, but that's not really an issue) and you are all set.
Unfortunately, I cannot recall a single discovery in physics in the last half a century that was not made by someone who jumped through the usual hoops. I have met, however, an occasional person who learned grad school-level stuff on their own, but they did not manage to go any farther. My suspicion is therefore that all that negative selection in science, while annoying, does not do a lot of harm compared to potential alternatives. While it filters out some good people, it probably does not reject the very best, otherwise we would see an occasional example of someone making a significant discovery outside academia.
If you still mean physics: why this confidence about the existence of low-hanging fruit? My grad student friend had to go to the LHC to work on (I think) his thesis. I assume they don't let people in off the street.
If you mean academia in general: have you forgotten where you are? ^_^
Maybe there is some misunderstanding here. I'm sure there is plenty of low-hanging fruit still undiscovered. But you have to first get to that hard-to-reach orchard where it grows.
Indeed they don't, though I'm not sure how it is related to my point that negative selection is not a total disaster.
Where am I?
On Less Wrong, which has an anti-academia bias.
If so, this is rather irrational, given that probably every high-profile/high-status contributor to this forum, with the notable exception of EY, either works in academia or is being/has been trained in academia.
It isn't so. It's more a relative thing---"not quite as extremely biased towards academia as the average group of this level of intellectual orientation can be expected to be".
Luke has minimal official academic training too. Mind you he is more academic in practice than most people (probably most academics too, come to think of it.)
If so, then we're actually more rational right? Because we're not biased against academia as most people are, and aren't biased toward academia as most academics are.
Why do you call it a bias? Maybe it's being less wrong than others who have a pro-academia bias.
What would look different if it were? (Aside from, say, the reduced chance of someone finding the Higgs.)
Then I would expect that once in a while some filtered out genius discovers something really exciting, against all odds, as I mentioned already.