Comment by Frost1x | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Frost1x | Hacker News Reader

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My anecdata from the US agrees. The best part is when funding agencies require proposal reviewers to actually send their critiques back on research proposals. I've read through many reviewers replies to proposals designed for specifically set risky/novel research funding and the responses are sometimes so conservatively comical without a truly valid argument you can't help but laugh.

I've also worked at research organizations specifically touted as being highly independent with freedom to explore novel paths and the story is basically the same. Ultimately, someone somewhere holds the purse strings and conservatism kicks in. You at minimum need to spin your research to fit popular trend keyword language or make it apply to these areas.

Financial structures ultimately dictate the lack of support for novelty. Basically, novel research has freedom only when it's independently funded, which limits the scale of most novel research. No one wants to take risk, they want to market taking high risk while taking low risk and selling mediocrity. I think the fundamental underlying issue we have across multiple societies is that we no longer proportionately reward risk anymore and that's why people seek low risk everywhere. Taking high risk often has limited opportunity for reward, even if you are successful, so why bother? You'll net more success taking low risks and only fools take high risk.

I've thought for a long time that this is why you see so much innovation during wartime. War overrides conservatism and gets risky things funded.

The same can apply to war-like scenarios. A lot of novel biological research got funded during COVID. We should expect to see a burst in advancement in biomedical technology as it bears fruit over the next 5-10 years.

The core problem is probably that conservatism makes the most sense at the individual level for most people. Even if you had a casino whose net payout was positive, it still may not make sense individually to gamble. If individual rewards are sporadic and concentrated on a power law distribution then statistically most players will lose.

An obvious solution is a less power-law type distribution, which tends toward some kind of socialism, but that has its own problems. Nobody's figured out yet how to provide a productive channel in a socialist system for humans' totally normal drives to compete and maximize individual outcome. Trying to suppress it doesn't work; it's like trying to totally suppress sexuality. Extreme socialist societies (e.g. Soviet Communism) often evolve into totalitarian mafia states because if there is no positive outlet for those urges they drive people into crime. Eventually you get a meritocracy concentrated in crime and the mob takes over everything.

"Nobody's figured out yet how to provide a productive channel in a socialist system for humans' totally normal drives to compete and maximize individual outcome."

Nobody has figured out how to maximize individual outcome, or provide a channel for such pursuit. Period. Socialism has nothing to do with it. People are crap at managing more than a few dozen other people, even for the best managers who have ever lived. And the systems we have in place since agriculture took over are trying to manage many, many more people.

Most people in more developed countries live in partially socialist systems. This doesn't prevent them from getting private sector jobs, creating companies, and otherwise trying to pursue the maximization of their individual outcomes.

Or fake crime. Solving real crime is too hard. Why not fake it.

I have a hunch that this conservatism problem is why ADHD genes / traits remain so prevalent. The percentage of populations with it is around 5% and remarkably consistent across drastically different cultures.

The reason is that those with ADHD are often physiologically incapable of not pursuing an interest. Often those interest lie in novel areas. It’s unfortunate for those with the traits, but a net benefit for society.

So there’s a game theory equilibrium wherein successful societies will retain a certain percentage of those genes or become too conservative.

Traits that are not beneficial to the individual will die out, the kind of group selection this process would require is implausible at best.

I would assume that the kind of personality your are referring to is adaptive for the individual as well, especially the mild variants.

> Traits that are not beneficial to the individual will die out

Not necessarily, examples from several species where males get eaten after mating would seem to counter that. In some the males try to escape if possible to mate again.

> the kind of group selection this process would require is implausible at best.

There can certainly be group theory optimums that are less beneficial for individuals but beneficial enough to the whole group that traits bad for an individual will persist. I’d say bees dying after stinging an intruder would be an example. Well or even the hive principle where only the queen reproduces.

Still I would agree that the mild variations of adhd traits can be beneficial to some individuals. At least enough to largely eliminate the traits despite being largely maladaptive in non-nomadic societies given that we’re not hive creatures. One example I’ve read was a paper that showed increased offspring in individuals with adhd traits in nomadic tribes in Africa, with decreased reproductive rates in adjacent non-nomadic tribes.

Our modern society is odd in that it’s not like either traditional society. ADHD traits can be very beneficial for individuals in technology careers requiring creativity while simultaneously being painful due to society being largely optimized for non-adhd neurotypes.

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