> I said it was unavoidable (it is intrinsic to the research process)
No, it isn't. It's intrinsic to our research culture and that's wildly different.
Look, competition gets us things like Microsoft Windows and iOS. Cooperation gets us things like BSD and Linux. Competition gets us the Google Play App store. Cooperation gets us the Debian repository.
> and I said (in various comments) that it's a good thing (i.e. a net positive), including that there's clear historical evidence of this.
Except you don't cite anything.
What about the fact that essentially nobody does repeat experiments because they're all busy racing for original research? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis) What about the fact that people often select studies based on what will attraction attention, rather than what will actually best advance the field. Boring and uninteresting but extremely important research topics get ignored because they don't result in glory for the university or researcher. We're emphasizing the importance of breakthroughs over incremental research while simultaneously not reproducing those studies to confirm their findings!
That is how a culture of competition over cooperation in research and science harms our ability to solve problems and conduct research.
> Look, competition gets us things like Microsoft Windows and iOS. Cooperation gets us things like BSD and Linux. Competition gets us the Google Play App store. Cooperation gets us the Debian repository.
So first, which of those two competitors, BSD and Linux, was the wasted effort, then?
And, using Macs, Windows, and Linux all on a regular basis: based on that example I can't help but be fairly pro-competition. Windows is a far smoother experience to set up than Linux. Photoshop and Lightroom beat the hell out of Gimp/Darktable/Krita/whatever. Office similarly doesn't really have effective competitors. Those things all got good through competitive pressure, having to beat out the alternatives in order to be good enough for people to pay for.
We can't predict the future, what paths will be useful and what ones won't, well enough to scrap it.
Competition has its downsides and has to be corralled, but cooperation can lead to waste just as easily. Groupthink. Missed opportunities. Unexplored areas in the solution space because we guess wrong.
No, it isn't. It's intrinsic to our research culture and that's wildly different.
Look, competition gets us things like Microsoft Windows and iOS. Cooperation gets us things like BSD and Linux. Competition gets us the Google Play App store. Cooperation gets us the Debian repository.
> and I said (in various comments) that it's a good thing (i.e. a net positive), including that there's clear historical evidence of this.
Except you don't cite anything.
What about the fact that essentially nobody does repeat experiments because they're all busy racing for original research? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis) What about the fact that people often select studies based on what will attraction attention, rather than what will actually best advance the field. Boring and uninteresting but extremely important research topics get ignored because they don't result in glory for the university or researcher. We're emphasizing the importance of breakthroughs over incremental research while simultaneously not reproducing those studies to confirm their findings!
That is how a culture of competition over cooperation in research and science harms our ability to solve problems and conduct research.