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TheOtherDave comments on Are Interesting Problems Useful? - Less Wrong Discussion

13 Post author: paulfchristiano 01 March 2011 03:59AM

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Comment author: TheOtherDave 01 March 2011 05:33:04PM 4 points [-]

It sounds like a good first step is to develop a reliable way of recognizing in retrospect what was in fact useful, and classifying research projects/publications that way.

Of course, this works better for short-term projects. A fifty-year longitudinal study on heritability of disease risk factors is hard to measure the usefulness of in less than fifty years.

Comment author: jsteinhardt 02 March 2011 04:55:15AM 1 point [-]

It sounds like a good first step is to develop a reliable way of recognizing in retrospect what was in fact useful, and classifying research projects/publications that way.

This seems like a remarkably sound insight to me. I'm not sure why it hasn't been upvoted more.

Comment author: SimonF 02 March 2011 11:30:24AM 0 points [-]

Possible second step: Set up a prediction market.

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