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I agree, factually, with almost all the content of this article, although I find its tone a little grating. There's a joke online - "nobody speaks more confide

I agree, factually, with almost all the content of this article, although I find its tone a little grating. There's a joke online - "nobody speaks more confidently than a 15 year old who has smoked weed twice explaining how to smoke weed to a 15 year old who hasn't smoked weed before" - nobody writes an angrier blog post than someone who has watched two YouTube videos about a subject. Doing the work to improve society is boring and slow. It's talking to people in the community. It's local politics. It's generational shifts. It's a warm smile to the older person in the store, in the hospital, as we try to move the needle ever so slightly in the right direction.

TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
There's a default assumption that progress is inevitably slow, but I don't think it's obvious that it has to remain that way. I think it's worth challenging our assumptions and really trying to dig in and figure out why certain processes are slow, and if it's possible to do anything to improve upon them. Lately I've been asking researchers why progress in their field seems so slow from the outside, and if they could explain what kinds of barriers prevent them for going faster. From what I've learned so far, the barriers are usually institutional and political, they're rarely slowed down by technical reasons.
- bawolff 3y ago
  Perhaps that is selection bias? Perhaps the science people just like to blame the non-science people for the problems. Blaming the other side is one of the most fundamentally human things to do.