Terence Tao on Nostr: The value of a positive technological breakthrough is obvious. Negative results ...

The value of a positive technological breakthrough is obvious. Negative results however are also valuable and important, though in significantly less intuitive fashions. Firstly, they allow for more efficient allocation of resources: with the knowledge of negative results, scarce R&D funding can be allocated away from, say, the design of perpetual motion machines and towards more feasible goals, such as increasing the fuel efficiency of engines (though given the residual uncertainties and the potential payoffs, it is still rational to allow for a very small and lightly funded amount of research activity into proper mathematical and scientific analysis of possible loopholes in the conservation of energy argument). (4/7)