Gwern_Branwen comments on The Failures of Eld Science - Less Wrong

33 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 12 May 2008 10:32AM

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Comment author: Gwern_Branwen 11 February 2009 03:04:10PM 1 point [-]

And a quick note to those who think I'm echoing Brennan: I am, here, but my point differs in that I don't think it was a matter of 'training'.

I think if you abducted all the old greats, gave the necessary experimental data, and gave them a few months to produce the new theory before they were dragged out to the shed and shot, then they could do it just as well as these students. It's all about motivation.

It's not a matter of competency at paradigm shifts, if you will; it's accepting that one needs to happen *now* and you are the one who needs to do it. But there's no normal way to convince a scientific community of this; isn't it true that most new paradigms fail to pan out?