# People are incentivized to work on nodes higher up the tech tree People are incentivized to work on nodes higher in the tree because they have a higher probability of success, that success happens more quickly on average. These two assertions are just the contrapositive* of [[Nodes deeper in the tech tree take more time and work to unlock]]. If you needed more incentive to work on leaf nodes than the fact that you are more likely to win and that victory will come relatively quickly, there are two other points: * [[There is a higher probability of accidentally unlocking a closely related node on the tech tree]] * [[Interfacing between closer neighbors on the tech tree is easier than between nodes that are farther apart]] How does this play out in the real world? * [[Asymmetric career risk]] encourages people to both work on and support low-risk work regardless of outcome and therefore pushes more support to the leaves of the tree. * [[Systems must take performance hits to get out of local optima]]. Getting out of local optima requires people to move *away* from leaves and build back up again, so the same forces that incentivize working on higher-up nodes *disincentivize* the moves necessary to get out of a local optima. * Because [[Graduate students are the labor in academic science and engineering]], the majority of people working in academia want to spend time on problems they can make meaningful movement on in a few years. The need to work on problems with relatively short time-horizons makes leafier nodes more appealing. * Almost by definition there is more “low hanging fruit” and the ends of the branches ( [[Fast moving fields have lots of unconnected nodes]] .) [[Academics are incentivized to do peer-reviewed publishable work]] and a big part of peer-reviewed publishable work is “novelty” ([[The word ‘novel’ is used as an idea bludgeon in academia]].) Novelty is less about importance than newness, so peer-review pushes people towards leaves. Additionally, there are rewards to working in hot, fast moving areas which tend to correlate with unconnected, leafy areas. ### References * [[bhattacharyaStagnationScientificIncentives2020]] [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/People+are+incentivized+to+work+on+nodes+higher+up+the+tech+tree) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/People+are+incentivized+to+work+on+nodes+higher+up+the+tech+tree)