Re:Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture
by SkyBelow on Tuesday February 11, 2025 @08:31AM
(#43012513)
Best for an individual or for society?
Consider a simplified example. There is some area of scientific research. Working within the framework gives you a 1 in 4 chance of making some minor improvement. Working outside the framework gives you a 1 in a million chance to create a great leap in knowledge.
For any single individual, the best choice is the former. The latter is a gamble that most people will lose, wasting their lives chasing crazy theories.
For society, you want a split. You need some doing the second option to have the eventual amazing discovery, but you also need to progress the current understanding further.
If we introduce a chance for the minor progress to lead to the same major advancement, it becomes a bit more simple for society to calculate the best allocation of researchers, but for any single person, the best option still remains to dedicate themselves to the small advancement.
Consider a simplified example. There is some area of scientific research. Working within the framework gives you a 1 in 4 chance of making some minor improvement. Working outside the framework gives you a 1 in a million chance to create a great leap in knowledge.
For any single individual, the best choice is the former. The latter is a gamble that most people will lose, wasting their lives chasing crazy theories.
For society, you want a split. You need some doing the second option to have the eventual amazing discovery, but you also need to progress the current understanding further.
If we introduce a chance for the minor progress to lead to the same major advancement, it becomes a bit more simple for society to calculate the best allocation of researchers, but for any single person, the best option still remains to dedicate themselves to the small advancement.