# You need to break rules to create new paradigms If [[Paradigms outline a set of questions and the rules around answering them]], then by definition you need to break some rules to create new paradigms. The more people who are playing the game, the trickier this dynamic becomes. A few people in a community that shares values breaking rules isn’t a big deal. [[Shared values allow you to break rules without breaking the spirit of the rules]]. When tons of people are playing the game, the rules are the only thing that holds them in line so rule breaking is much worse. Normalized rule breaking in large numbers of people leads to waste and other bad things. At the extreme it destroys an institution’s ability to shape how individuals interact, which is the whole point of the institution. [[Institutions shape how individuals interact]]. In research world this creates a conundrum. Pushing the knowledge frontier *requires* new paradigms. [[Technological and scientific paradigms are each based around exploiting a specific phenomenon]] and you need to exploit new phenomena to drive [[Phenomena-based cycles]]. However, [[The number of researchers has exploded]] so we’ve moved into a regime where there are too many researchers with too many different values to normalize rule-breaking. And yet, we need to break rules to get new paradigms. It’s not so simple as “well, just let the best people break rules!” Because it’s impossible to know a-priori who is a correct crackpot and who is an incorrect crackpot. [[Anyone on the knowledge frontier is a bit of a crackpot]]. (See [[odlyzkoDeclineUnfetteredResearch1995]] for more.) This tension may be a big contributor to both [[Einstein would have been stuck in a patent office - failures of paradigm-shifting science]] and [[We have no flying cars - failures of paradigm-shifting engineering]]. To some extent “tech” systematized rule breaking in a discipline by normalizing rule breaking in *other* disciplines. Hence the obsession with “disruption.” Riffing off of tech, perhaps the solution is not to normalize rule breaking but to make it more clear what successful rule breaking looks like and increase the rewards for achieving that success. ### Related * [[brabenScientificFreedomElixir2008]] * [[Metrics can cause paradigm lock-in]] * [[Changing paradigms is hard]] * [[Legible games enable people outside of an institution to control it]] <!-- #evergreen --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/You+need+to+break+rules+to+create+new+paradigms) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/You+need+to+break+rules+to+create+new+paradigms)