Planck's Principle

Scientific change doesn’t happen because because people change their mind, but because the next generation of scientists have different views.

This is similar to startups and larger companies. As new people come in, they bring in new ideas and change happens (both good and bad).

Links to this note

• Inter-Generational Partnership

  Long term work on inter-generational problems (e.g. climate change) requires inter-generational partnership. Fostering these relationships is difficult because thinking long term is undervalued compared to solving short term problems and those in positions of power tend to be from the previous generation (Planck’s principle) which tends to favor themselves (i.e. in-group favoritism).

• Experience Is an Illusion of System Completeness

  We tend to think of experience in a given role is obviously good–it provides pattern matching and intuitions built up on lived events. If you consider experience as a process of formalization (i.e. formal system) of a given profession, then Godel incompleteness means there will always be more unproven yet true axioms in the field.