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Replication is trivial once someone else has already shown you how to test the idea. But only if they're right will you be too.
by robg 18y ago
Replication is trivial once someone else has already shown you how to test the idea. But only if they're right will you be too.
- Alex3917 18y agoFiguring out how to test an idea is a "tame" problem, in that the problem has a definitive formulation and stopping rule. Coming up with an entirely new paradigm is, if not exactly a "wicked" problem, some other type of complex problem so difficult and uncommon that we don't even have a vocabulary to describe it. So when I say that coming up with ideas is more difficult than testing them, what I mean is that coming up with an idea belongs to a more difficult class of problem, even if it is occasionally easier to create a specific idea than to test that specific idea.
- robg 18y agoSee, to me, an idea is a mere belief without some test to see it through. Like this argument, for instance...there's no logical conclusion one way or another. We're just stating beliefs back and forth.
- Alex3917 18y agoMost people on Hacker News have this view of the role of science in epistemology. It seems to me that there is something wrong with this, but I can't quite put my finger on it.