Very sound. We don’t know what will work, so we need to try different things – including as many different ways as possible of trying different things. A consensus of the great and good about what will and won’t work will be too often wrong. So prizes are fine, and promises of advanced payment – and also patents. Patents offer encouragement to people to take outside chances. A high proportion of patented ideas don’t work, but one or two pay off big. We need the latter, and we won’t get them if there is no way for recovering investment in them. Diversity is the key. Look at how effective natural selection is!
2 Comments
James Wattam says:
Love the idea of getting economists to fix systems rather than attempting to predict the future.
26th of October, 2012tim says:
Very sound. We don’t know what will work, so we need to try different things – including as many different ways as possible of trying different things. A consensus of the great and good about what will and won’t work will be too often wrong. So prizes are fine, and promises of advanced payment – and also patents. Patents offer encouragement to people to take outside chances. A high proportion of patented ideas don’t work, but one or two pay off big. We need the latter, and we won’t get them if there is no way for recovering investment in them. Diversity is the key. Look at how effective natural selection is!
31st of October, 2012