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by pydry 171 days ago
The thing I find interesting is that there is trillions of dollars in valuations hinging upon this question and yet the appetite to spend a little bit of money to repeat this study and then release the results publicly is apparently very low.

It reminds me of global warming where on one side of the debate there some scientists with very little money running experiments and on the other side there were some ridiculously wealthy corporations publicly poking holes in those experiments but who secretly knew they were valid since the 1960s.

1 comments

Yeah, it's kind of a Bayesian probability thing, where the impressiveness of either outcome depends on what we expected to happen by default.

1. There are bajillions of dollars in incentives for a study declaring "Insane Improvements", so we should expect a bunch to finish being funded, launched, and released... Yet we don't see many.

2. There is comparatively no money (and little fame) behind a study saying "This Is Hot Air", so even a few seem significant.