Re: how to judge creative ideas

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

Rick Tarara wrote:
> The problem is how do you separate the Wrights from the fools?

Exactly.

> JD seems to
> put his faith in whether or not they have a practical application in mind,
> which works well for engineering but not so well for basic science.

So what guidelines should be applied to basic science...
 ... No guidelines at all?

> His
> dismissal of the Hubble and Apollo will probably not resonate real well with
> this group, but of course he is entitled to his opinion.

1) I'm not alone in my evaluation of those projects.

2) Not all valid reasons are scientific reasons.  There
were understandable political reasons for the Apollo
project, which were clearly articulated at the time.  I
have never seen anything approaching a valid reason for
doing it because of the science.

3) "Science" should not be invoked as the explanation for
a project that cannot be explained in rational terms.  That
is the opposite of what "science" ought to mean.

> The question
> remains, how _should_ a society decide what basic science to fund.

Yes.

> Of course one can always cite examples of 'damned fools' but
> suffering fools is the price that must be paid in order to maximize the
> opportunities for real discovery--IMO.

1) There needs to be a certain amount of averaging, as
I mentioned in a previous note and also added to
  http://www.monmouth.com/~jsd/physics/projectology.htm#sec-averaging

2) But averaging doesn't give you a license to be a fool.

3) We are talking about shades of gray here. People who can
only think in terms of black versus white will get it wrong
every time. That is, we are talking about judgement here.
You can find examples of bad judgement, such as the ``experts''
who scoffed at the Wright brothers. But that doesn't mean
we should react to occasional instances of bad judgement
by never having any judgement at all.