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> If you could know the odds or expected payoff in advance, then it wouldn't be cutting-edge science anymore. Not so. For example, it was hypothesized long bef
by jamesaguilar 15y ago
> If you could know the odds or expected payoff in advance, then it wouldn't be cutting-edge science anymore.
Not so. For example, it was hypothesized long before the first human-initiated fission event that the energy from fission would possibly be useful for creating a bomb. The research and physics that went into actually developing the thing was still cutting edge even though predictions had been made about its long term practical applications.
- wtallis 15y agoThey only calculated one side of the equation. What would have been the long-term effect if the Manhattan Project experiments had produced negative results and falsified the quantum mechanical models of the time? You can't just ignore that possibility and still have a valid expectation.
- jamesaguilar 15y agoI don't really understand. My point is that they had some guesses about the possible uses if the experiments bore out. It's a disproof of the claim that you can't make some kind of predictions about these things. Whether the predictions are always correct is a completely different question that I am not trying to answer.
- wtallis 15y agoOften, we do have a fairly good idea what the ramifications will be if an experiment goes a certain way. But we almost never also have a good idea what the ramifications would be if things go the other way. Without knowledge of what the benefit might be if the outcome surprises you, how can you say that the experiment doesn't have enough potential benefit to be worth the time and money? There's no way to place an easy upper bound on the payoff of the less-expected outcome, so your cost-benefit analysis can't simply ignore the possibilities that you consider unlikely.