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Comment by hiimkeks | Hacker News Reader

A bit of a nitpick, but...

> The system that derives truth from experiments - the actual scientific system...

Yes!

> ... is the competitive dynamic between scientists who are trying to tarnish each others' legacies and bolster their own.

Hm. To some degree, sure, that is one dynamic, but (a) this leads to/presupposes a truckload of perverse incentives and (b) this is not inherent in the system if we rearrange incentives

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Do you have an idea for a better one? It is pretty darn close to natural selection, which while ugly, does produce surprisingly good results in many domains.

Of course the implementation is far from perfect. For example, the interaction between impact factor and grant funding produces pressure toward ideological conformity and excessive analytical “creativity”. But the underlying principle of competitive scrutiny is probably a desirable one.

> Do you have an idea for a better one? It is pretty darn close to natural selection, which while ugly, does produce surprisingly good results in many domains.

Cooperation is also an extremely fit behavior in natural selection.

Not by itself it’s not. The “selection” part of natural selection is inherently competitive, even if some things cooperate as a competitive strategy. Obviously scientists can and do cooperate within the broader framework of competition.

How do you eliminate the personal incentive to have found a meaningful result? I don’t think that can be changed without redesigning the human psyche.

I think the desire to do something meaningful can easily exist outside of a "competitive dynamic", which was the thing that felt off for me.

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