Scientific Progress and Political Feedback Loops (with Michael Nielsen)

1. Develop Meta-Methods for Science

To overcome diminishing returns in scientific progress, focus on developing “meta-methods” for generating scientific progress, such as dramatically increasing the rate at which new scientific fields are produced or inventing new intellectual tools. This addresses the underlying causes of stagnation and can lead to scientific acceleration.

2. Diversify Science Funding Approaches

Implement a wide diversity of funding strategies for scientific research, experimenting with different timescales, amounts, and recipient criteria. Allocate small amounts to many varied experiments to gather data and build a theory of effective resource allocation in science.

3. Implement High-Throughput Research

Adopt a “high-throughput” or rapid exploratory approach to research, running many fast studies in quick succession. This allows for iterative learning, quickly discarding non-working ideas, and refining understanding of a phenomenon before designing definitive studies.

4. Plan for Real-World Research Impact

When conducting research, explicitly consider the “mechanism of action” for real-world impact beyond mere publication. Actively identify and engage communities or stakeholders who are ready to consume, use, and apply the research to ensure it translates into tangible change.

5. Prioritize Accelerating Science Funding

Allocate funding to “accelerating science” – research focused on developing tools, statistical methods, or other meta-scientific advancements that improve the speed and quality of other scientific endeavors. This indirectly boosts overall scientific progress by making other science better.

6. Couple Ideas to Institutional Growth

To improve scientific institutions, foster a strong coupling between the quality of organizational ideas and the institution’s growth rate. This allows better models to scale and potentially overtake older, less effective ones, similar to dynamics in the corporate world.

7. Publicize Key Societal Metrics

To improve democratic error correction, tighten political feedback loops by developing and widely publicizing a “score sheet” of key societal metrics (e.g., 30 different variables) annually. This would increase public awareness of national performance and create a shared reality, similar to how water levels in a dam influenced public behavior during a drought.

8. Systematically Monitor Public Sentiment

For effective governance, establish constant, ongoing, random sampling polls that ask a wide range of open-ended questions to systematically monitor public sentiment and identify people’s biggest problems. This provides politicians with robust data to inform decisions and improve citizens’ lives, moving beyond anecdotal feedback.

9. Randomize Research Grant Allocation

Implement randomized grant allocation for research proposals deemed “not completely insane” to increase variance in funded projects. This approach aims to foster a wider range of research and potentially uncover huge breakthroughs that might be overlooked by conventional committee-based selection.

10. Provide Small Exploratory Grants

Introduce grants that are easy to obtain, provide small amounts of money, and are explicitly for exploratory research without the immediate expectation of a published paper. These grants should support initial exploration and idea development to inform larger, more rigorous studies.

11. Empower Young Scientists with Grants

Reform grant systems to make it significantly easier for younger scientists (e.g., 20-year-olds) to become Principal Investigators and receive their first grants. This counters the current trend where older scientists are disproportionately funded, potentially stifling new ideas.

12. Invest in Fundamental Science

Allocate funding to “fundamental science” that explores basic phenomena with broad implications, such as electromagnetism or number theory. While not immediately applicable, these foundational discoveries can lead to unexpected and significant breakthroughs over time.

13. Fund Useful Problem-Solving Science

Allocate funding to “useful science” that directly aims to solve specific, real-world problems, such as curing diseases. This ensures research addresses immediate societal needs and challenges.

14. Bypass Consensus for Breakthrough Funding

Be wary of relying solely on consensus-driven committees for funding decisions, as they tend to suppress high-variance, potentially transformative ideas. Instead, seek mechanisms that allow funding for projects that are controversial or not universally agreed upon, akin to venture capital’s approach to identifying unique opportunities.

15. Explore Para-Academic Research

Consider pursuing research as a “para-academic” outside traditional academic institutions, leveraging modern communication technology. This offers the freedom to pursue unconventional research questions and approaches that might not be recognized or funded within conventional academia.

16. Combine Breadth and Depth Research

Employ both breadth-first (trying many ideas in parallel) and depth-first (iteratively focusing on a phenomenon with successive “flashlights”) strategies in research. This allows for both broad exploration of possibilities and deep understanding of specific phenomena.

17. Rachet Up Research Rigor

Employ a “ratcheting rigor” approach in research, starting with highly exploratory, even “crazy” ideas and progressively increasing the level of rigor and confirmation. This iterative process allows ideas to evolve from speculative to well-established.

18. Teach Hypothesis Generation

Integrate explicit teaching on how to develop hypotheses into PhD programs and scientific training. Rather than treating it as a “magical” process, provide structured guidance and diverse strategies to help students generate useful and testable hypotheses.

19. Publicize Key Impactful Metrics

Identify and consistently publicize single, highly impactful metrics (e.g., life expectancy, water dam levels) to foster a strong shared cultural awareness. This can create a collective sense of responsibility and influence individual behavior in response to critical societal issues.

20. Quantify Societal Problems

Develop and utilize categorization systems to quantify the prevalence of people’s biggest life problems (e.g., loneliness, financial insecurity). This data can provide a clearer picture of societal challenges and guide efforts to improve well-being.

21. Program Alongside Symbolic Math

When doing symbolic mathematics, simultaneously write and run code that calculates the numerical representation of your symbols. This parallel programming and symbolic math approach dramatically reduces error rates by allowing real-time verification of transformations.

22. Leverage Integer Sequence Databases

When simplifying mathematical equations, calculate values at several points and input them into an integer sequence database (e.g., OEIS) to find matching sequences. This can probabilistically predict subsequent values and aid in identifying underlying patterns.

23. Fund Late-Career New Scientists

Create funding mechanisms that make it easier for individuals in their later careers (e.g., 60s) with no prior scientific background to become Principal Investigators. This is an experimental approach to see what different contributions such individuals might make.

24. Challenge Narratives with Data

Actively seek out and understand fundamental facts and statistics (e.g., gun death causes, gun ownership rates) that may contradict common narratives. This critical awareness helps challenge assumptions and fosters a more nuanced understanding of complex issues.

25. Assess Scientific Discovery Quality

To assess the quality of scientific discoveries over time, ask a large number of scientists to compare the relative importance of different Nobel Prize-winning discoveries in a pairwise “tournament” style. This provides a proxy measure for the quality of top discoveries.