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Eli Tyre's avatar

> You might think their added freedom would result in amateurs contributing proportionally more to intellectual progress, but in fact they contribute less.

Is this true? A lot of the fundamental breakthroughs in (eg) Physics and Chemistry were found by amateurs.

This might be because those breakthroughs took place in an earlier era when the relevant institutions were less developed.

Which I think is broadly correct. By the time there are big, official institutions working in an area good methodology for that domain has been figured out (if not, you wouldn't be able to have an institution, because you wouldn't be able to assess who's work was good). And once that condition obtains, rigor wins out.

But amateurs are the only people who can win in the domains that are so new as to not have robust methodologies.

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RobinHanson's avatar

In many areas the main resource to get data is time. In those areas, amateurs still make less progress, even proportional to the time they spend.

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