James Bowery <jabow...@gmail.com> wrote: There is also opposition from many ordinary people and many stupid people >> at places like Wikipedia >> >> > In all of these cases we're dealing with the incentives of social status > more than authority structure. >
I agree. I would say it is ordinary primate behavior, similar to what you see in our cousins the chimpanzees, and in other group hunting predators such as wolves. (I am not denigrating this behavior. I have great respect for other species.) > So how do you identify the Jason(s) most likely to be more concerned with > national security than peer pressure? > I wouldn't know. I have never met 'em. I don't even know who they all are. I know some people who have met with them, and meet with them every year. I get the impression the Jasons are a bunch of washed up old farts who are opposed to everything that wasn't discovered before they turned 30, which was a long time ago. But I could be wrong. I know that one or two of them often pull strings to have cold fusion funding cancelled. It is big mistake to give any scientist over 30 a role in allocating money or making decisions. The way to make progress is get a large pot of money and hand it out to young people, letting them do whatever they please with it. Some of them will waste it. A few may steal it. But most will make far better use of it than an old scientist could. Young people succeed in doing things the older people think are impossible, because the young people have not yet learned where the boundary between possible and impossible likes. Actually, that boundary is imaginary, like a geographical boundary -- a state line, or a property line. No one knows what is possible and what isn't. No one can even imagine. - Jed
