Back in 2016 I wrote a Nintil classic, No great technological stagnation where I argued that, as far as we could see from public data, improvements in various technologies do not seem to be slowing down. If I were to rewrite it now I would note that trends in batteries and solar panels have continued, and I would add some new trends like for single cell sequencing (A whole new category that didn't exist until 2009).
There is one problem with my analysis there that I left open,
Are there less 'really innova…
Having a lot of tabs open seems to be so widespread that it has transcended being a Dawkinsian meme (Just a habit that people have and notice, and perhaps gets normalized and spreads) to become a regular meme1 where people are amused at the phenomenon.
This state of affairs is generally not liked by those that suffer from chronic tabitis, citing various reasons like
Makes the computer slow
A crash can make them disappear, losing those bookmarks forever
Their sheer number makes it hard to even read them any…
One of the hottest topics right now in the world of meta-science is using lotteries to fund research. In a nutshell, the rationale is that it's hard to tell who or what will be successful, and it is very costly to try to do so as well. A system that relies on peer review demands of researchers time to write grants and to review them. I have reviewed before the effectiveness of peer review at figuring out "what's good" in the context of grant awards, finding that peer review as currently practiced …
In previous posts I said that the extent to which "Fund people" works will depend on the distribution of scientific talent. Think about the following situation: Imagine that only a handful of scientists at every point in time are able to –if given the time and means–lead revolutions on par with the work of Darwin, Einstein, or Galileo (This is an extreme case admittedly because most of science does not look like this; most of science is more incremental and less memorable). I recently found two au…
In a previous post I reviewed the evidence behind the effectiveness of two awards targeted at promising researchers, funding them more and for longer. The conclusion was that the evidence is not very strong and that the extent to which "Fund people" makes sense depends on other factors that we should also investigate.
Both the HHMI Investigator and NIH Director's Pioneer Award are targeted at scientists that are expected to perform well. The each require applicants to have shown success already. U…
Though I'm right now not employed as a software engineer I have been writing code under various hats for the last few years (As a data scientist, ML engineer, and software engineer). Naturally me being me I have not just done the thing but also reflected about the thing. Questions like what's good software, what does being a good software engineer mean, how should meetings be ran, and so on. Here are some thoughts on that.
Organizational issues
The cost of disagreement
In many cases a disagreement may be ov…