Your, correct, observation on regulatory capture reminded me of this line from Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist:
Each empire was the product of trading wealth and was itself the eventual cause of that wealth’s destruction. Merchants and craftsmen make prosperity; chiefs, priests and thieves fritter it away.
It really is a tragedy that Popper's philosophy is so unknown these day. I myself, despite being subject to three years of philosophy classes in high school, never heard of him till last year, thanks to Brett Hall's work in popularizing David Deutsch's work, who in turn builds upon Popper.
I suspect one reason for Popper being out of the main stream is that, at its core, fallibilism is hard work. One has to come to terms with one's omnipresent ignorance. And the whole point of falsification is that one has to come up with experiments and counterfactuals.
It's much easier to run observation studies, collect the data, and say it "suggests X" and that "more research is needed." As a matter of fact, and I only realize it now, this is the same problem of incentives that you mention in the context of homelessness. When the game is publish or perish, what better way to keep publishing than to never make progress, only make more observations?
I found it pretty incoherent. It is a series of non sequiturs. Like going from the idea of saying what something Iis by saying what it is not to why stuff like cold fusion doesn't get a lot of funding. That's quite a leap
Excellent post, as always, Brian.
Your, correct, observation on regulatory capture reminded me of this line from Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist:
Each empire was the product of trading wealth and was itself the eventual cause of that wealth’s destruction. Merchants and craftsmen make prosperity; chiefs, priests and thieves fritter it away.
It really is a tragedy that Popper's philosophy is so unknown these day. I myself, despite being subject to three years of philosophy classes in high school, never heard of him till last year, thanks to Brett Hall's work in popularizing David Deutsch's work, who in turn builds upon Popper.
I suspect one reason for Popper being out of the main stream is that, at its core, fallibilism is hard work. One has to come to terms with one's omnipresent ignorance. And the whole point of falsification is that one has to come up with experiments and counterfactuals.
It's much easier to run observation studies, collect the data, and say it "suggests X" and that "more research is needed." As a matter of fact, and I only realize it now, this is the same problem of incentives that you mention in the context of homelessness. When the game is publish or perish, what better way to keep publishing than to never make progress, only make more observations?
I found it pretty incoherent. It is a series of non sequiturs. Like going from the idea of saying what something Iis by saying what it is not to why stuff like cold fusion doesn't get a lot of funding. That's quite a leap