hndudette2

Putting structure aside for now (although I agree we want an answer to that), I don't see why we even want governments allocating capital to projects like this in the first place when the space is already very competitive with loads of private money. It seems like a classic case of big government doing big government things to justify their own existence.

We both probably agree that parapsychology hasn't demonstrated that psychic phenomenon is real, and yet their various meta-analyses purport to show that it is. The experimental design of the underlying studies is quite good, so it must be publication bias. I couldn't think of a better demonstration as to why preregistration is a critical necessity, even if it is difficult to get going.

All of your questions are very good ones however, and I agree with your conclusion that it isn't going to be a silver bullet.

Who trawls the (now huge) database

Only the authors of the meta-analyses, as part of their lit review. It's simply a criteria for inclusion into meta-analysis.

How do you move from very spotty preregistration to compulsory preregistration?

Eventually, if meta-analyses only look at studies that are preregistered, this would boost citation count for preregistered studies and therefore incent scientists to preregister since their careers are tied to citation count. How to arrive at this end state is a bit of a chicken and egg problem and requires a cultural shift, so it'll be very difficult. But once the end state is arrived at it should be sticky without needing to be compulsory, since career incentives are aligned.

How do you handle work on the margins of registerability?

Preregistration is mostly helpful for research questions that are amenable to statistical meta-analysis, i.e. those questions where the hypotheses tested across papers are sufficiently similar so the quantitative results can be statistically combined and statistical significance & clinical significance can be evaluated. I think preregistration is mostly needed for these questions, although it's probably helpful elsewhere too.

Regarding the replication crisis, can I ask why we don't yet have a central body to which scientists report their intended experimental design, sample size and research hypothesis before the experiment begins? Then we can eliminate publication bias due to null results not being published which is a big part of the replication crisis. The meta-analyses only survey those studies that reported this ahead of time and the scope of possible publication bias can be quantified.

Agree that applies for the majority of people, but for others it's purely a status competition beyond what they currently have which they've decided to engage in.

It's the distinctness and uniqueness of those examples, as well as that they're surrounded by trees/nature, that make them so beautiful. Brutalism as intentional art, not as an unintended byproduct of cost-saving or simply not caring.

The depressing nature of a lot of brutalist architecture (especially that created by governments) is the uniformity, homogeneity and the mass-produced faux-utilitarian feeling it evokes, as if the inhabitants are all interchangeable peons with no individual spirit. It's a reminder of the depressing local conditions that lead to that architecture coming into being in the first place.

https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/jan/13/brut...

I think Adam's approach is mostly lacking deliberation, it's only after the fact that the synergy is realized but it's hard to intentionally engineer it.

I can definitely see the validity in the other school of thought though; i.e. that we should deliberately seek out synergistic talent verticals. I know this is Conor Mcgregor's approach, he's very much systems over goals (in Adam's vein, and explicitly so) but is deliberate about the specific talent stack he's working towards. Ironically it is all done towards a specific goal (to be the best fighter) although the path towards that goal is underspecified.

Here's a very common talent stack here on HN that works pretty well: math + CS + data science + one domain (e.g. finance or biology).

Scott Adams has a way of thinking about this that he casts as "Systems vs Goals", where he advocates developing a talent stack of skills that work well together towards unspecified, undefined future goals. He says his talent stack is comedian+cartoonist, he's not amazing at either individual skill but he's one of the best at the combination which allowed him to create Dilbert.

I got value from this way of thinking but I also think specific goals are necessary (e.g. as a startup founder targeting a specific market, product or vision) and that there are some domains that demand you to be the best in a single talent vertical due to a winner take all tendency (e.g. athelete, musician, professional gambler - although in any of these we can still distinguish systems & talent stacks from goals).

EU's stated objectives go far beyond just facilitating free trade, with most of their budget allocated to unrelated projects and goals. To the extent that the EU does facilitate free trade, which is indeed one of its goals, I have no objection, but I believe we can do away with a huge amount of big government/globalist excess and just go for an explicit multilateral FTA with as little bureaucratic overhead as necessary to enact such a treaty. That would look distinctly different to the extant EU.