1 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2021
    1. Scale, inevitably leads to power-law distributed outcomes, leading to the inevitable concentration of talent and resources among a few investigators pursuing a few lines of inquiry, and their pale second-rate imitators. Through this mechanism science at scale reinforces (and in fact, under sufficient political capture imposes) consensus, further annihilating the possibility of the necessary revolutionary synthesis of ideas.

      The solution to any sort of global leaderboard thing - like Mendeley most read or most cited - is to break it up into local communities - most read among your friends or most cited within only the outer leaves of the topic tree.