“Timing Technology: Lessons From The Media Lab § Reverse Salients”, Gwern2012-07-12 (neural net, Bitcoin, economics, history, insight porn, sociology of tech, decision theory)⁠:

Technological developments can be foreseen but the knowledge is largely useless because startups are inherently risky and require optimal timing. A more practical approach is to embrace uncertainty, taking a reinforcement learning perspective.

Excerpts from The First Miracle Drugs: How the Sulfa Drugs Transformed Medicine, John Lesch 2006_18ya.

They describe Heinrich Hörlein’s drug development programs & Thomas Edison’s electrical programs as being strategically aimed at opportunities called “reverse salients”, taking necessary steps to solve bottlenecks which hold back the practical application of progress in areas. Such targeted research efforts can have disproprotionate payoffs and lead to sudden breakthroughs as the ‘enemy’s frontline’ collapses.

• Visiting the Media Lab
• To Everything A Season
  • Not To the Swift
  • Go To The Ant, Thou Sluggard
  • But Time And Chance
  • The Wise in Their Craftiness
  • Nor Riches to Men of Understanding
• Surfing Uncertainty
  • Try & Try Again (But Less & Less)
    • Reducing Regret
• See Also
• External Links
• Appendix
  • ARPA and SCI: Surfing AI (Review of Roland & Shiman 2002_22ya)
  • Reverse Salients
  • “Investing in Good Ideas That Look Like Bad Ideas”