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Comment by moldbug | Hacker News Reader

Basically - any single chaotic factor outside the narrowly defined boundaries you have mentioned, will bork your entire system.

Sure. If you're stupid. Science isn't for the stupid. There is a common if implicit belief that systematic methods will allow the dull, or worse the dishonest, to advance the frontiers of knowledge. No - the rules of science need to be made for those both brilliant and honest. Everyone else has plenty of other games they can play.

Aristotle had a nice word for the intellectual quality it takes to learn from sample sizes of 1:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phronesis

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> There is a common if implicit belief that systematic methods will allow the dull, or worse the dishonest, to advance the frontiers of knowledge.

Ok, I'm taken aback by that - people actually think that people who are dull and dishonest become scientists? I mean I can understand that they become - frauds -. But scientists? Well maybe not in my country, but perhaps where you live.

Anyway thats just plain daft - the smartest become scientists.

>No - the rules of science need to be made for those both brilliant and honest. Everyone else has plenty of other games they can play.

Well, aren't the rules of science the scientific method? Which anyone can use?

I'm afraid the problem is that my standards of both intelligence and honesty are much higher than yours.

Our society has far too many scientists churning out what Kuhn called "normal science." Look at all the scientists in the '70s and '80s who performed fantastic feats of normal science to sequence some gene or other. Science and society in 2012 are precisely as advanced as they'd be if all these researchers had been driving cabs.

Well, aren't the rules of science the scientific method? Which anyone can use?

Anyone can use a paintbrush, too. Not everyone can paint a Picasso.

> I'm afraid...

Oh I sincerely doubt that...

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