Re: "Directed" vs "Basic" research

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

At 12:43 PM 2/24/01 -0500, Hugh Haskell wrote:

> ... the direction [of research projects] is best
> chosen by the worker and not by the bosses, or "society" or whatever.

Not bosses?  There is an inconsistency here.  I thought this thread has
been discussing "big science" like the Apollo project or the SSC.

It turns out that big-science projects have bosses!

Bosses are necessary for such projects because you would rather do a good
job on one project than to do a bad job on N projects that never get finished.

Suppose there are W workers.  As the boss, you will start out with at least
N=W (maybe more like N=3W) proposals for what to work on.   You will have
to say "no" to almost all of them.  It's not fun.  The wise boss will, in
collaboration with the workers, try to form a consensus around one of the
proposals, but sometimes you just have to make a decision.

People have used such arrangements for a very long time, presumably even
back when we all slept in trees.  People gravitate to such arrangements
because they find that their productivity is higher than it would be in
lone-wolf mode.