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Scott Aaronson's avatar

I mean, there’s some of this that’s good and there’s some of it that’s bad. In math and computer science, for example, the very fact that you’re publishing your work on a problem in a journal is supposed to MEAN that you didn’t just have a conversation with your friends about the problem that ended up at the usual inconclusive places, but rather that you used the (often highly demanding and unnatural) methods of formal proof to make definite progress on the problem that everyone else can then rely on. And it’s understandable why we’ve set things up that way. On the other hand, certainly for other fields (philosophy? social sciences?) where the stuff that’s in journals is inherently more speculative or open-ended or can’t be conclusively relied upon *anyway*, I would STRONGLY support encouraging more of the sorts of arguments that the academics in question would make around the dinner table, to appear in the journals as well.

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Thegnskald's avatar

Speaking as a self-described physics crackpot - I personally believe you are broadly correct, and the gradual shrinking of the domains of science to the strictly conventional has strangled everything.

I'd describe the trend as the conversation in the sciences dying, and being replaced with a soulless exchange of results few people besides the person publishing really care about. I think maybe a lot of the problem is that people don't realize that there had been a conversation, that a conversation is possible; they see the point of journals as to convey truth. The idea that they used to publish thought experiments, I would assume, would read as "They used to have low standards for truthiness", evaluated in modern terms. And to those people I would say: It doesn't need to be results! It doesn't need to be true! The point is the conversation that the journals permitted, allowing exchanges of half-formed ideas, so other people might improve upon them, tell them where they were wrong - and maybe take inspiration and see how the idea might be completed. The point wasn't to have a repository of "known good" knowledge, which is how we got known-good knowledge; Goodhearting that process has not improved it, it has broken it.

Think about the replication crisis. Now look at the idea of "journals as a repository of known-good knowledge". Known-good knowledge was an outcome of the -conversation-, not simply the medium by which the conversation occurred; it was the final argument made in favor of a conclusion, and it was tested by virtue of the fact that somebody was arguing -against- it. It wasn't known-good until the argument was concluded; mere inclusion in a journal didn't turn it into known-good knowledge, it was the entire process - the conversation, the debate, the argument.

As somebody with a half-formed idea, if I end up being correct - granted I fully expect I am correct, self-aware crackpot that I am - I intend to insist that the physics my crackpottery gives rise to be titled "Crackpot Physics", in part because I think the institutions need a reminder: The conversation matters, too.

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