I’d add that Polanyi worried about the question of the integrity of the fabric of scientific knowledge. That is, he asked what was the ultimate source of a geologist’s or a layperson’s confidence that the state of the art knowledge in say — x-ray crystallography — had integrity. His concern was that, in science there was nothing analogous to the function of arbitrating prices in markets and between markets to ‘keep people honest’ in their valuations.
His answer was what he called his ’theory of overlapping neighbourhoods”. It was “held by a multitude of individuals” connected in a fiduciary network, “each of whom endorses the other’s opinion at second hand, by relying on the consensual chains which link him to all the others through a sequence of overlapping neighborhoods”. Polanyi would have appreciated businessman Charlie Munger’s claim that “the highest form a civilization can reach is a seamless web of deserved trust”.
We can apply an analogous process of relying more on those with a good record of shorter term prediction in making longer term predictions.
Section 6 of this report discusses the way in which one might ‘bootstrap’ longer-term vision by using shorter term forecasting performance as one criterion for determining longer-term forecasting prowess — together with deliberation on determining shorter run expectations that can be used to test the progress of longer term projects.
Though I don’t think he’s cited (his contribution is in noting the need for such a thing rather than identifying it — because that is pretty obvious), this builds on Polanyi’s overlapping neighbourhoods idea.
Thanks Jason, I don’t think you’ve understood what I was trying to get at.