José Luis Ricón
Writes Nintil, long researched essays on metascience, biology, economics and whatever he has decided to read the literature on.
José Luis Ricón did not write this page. ppll compiled it from their own words, each linked to the source. Is this you? · Report a mistake
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What they believe
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How science works can be reasoned about in advance, because the activity has invariants that do not change over time.
If we know the invariants of the problem at hand we can make assertions about the best way to solve that problem now and in the future.
nintil.comSaid 17 Mar 2022This on korrents
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Pre-grant peer review predicts which research will have impact substantially better than chance does.
I have reviewed before the effectiveness of peer review at figuring out "what's good" in the context of grant awards, finding that peer review as currently practiced does substantially better than chance at predicting future impact, especially for the most impactful of the papers; but at the same time is is far from perfect, leaving plenty of variance unexplained.
nintil.comSaid 20 Jan 2021This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 8 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
How science works can be reasoned about in advance, because the activity has invariants that do not change over time.
If we know the invariants of the problem at hand we can make assertions about the best way to solve that problem now and in the future.
Metascience: invariants and evidence Said 17 Mar 2022
Pre-grant peer review predicts which research will have impact substantially better than chance does.
I have reviewed before the effectiveness of peer review at figuring out "what's good" in the context of grant awards, finding that peer review as currently practiced does substantially better than chance at predicting future impact, especially for the most impactful of the papers; but at the same time is is far from perfect, leaving plenty of variance unexplained.
Fund people, not projects IV: Scientific egalitarianism and lotteries Said 20 Jan 2021
Reviewers can tell the obviously good from the obviously bad, but there is a messy middle where they cannot tell at all.
The way I see this is that reviewers can identify what's obviously not great and what is obviously great (Perhaps identifying the latter is easier than the former). But there is a "messy middle" where it is unclear what to fund.
Fund people, not projects IV: Scientific egalitarianism and lotteries Said 20 Jan 2021
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The cost of grant peer review is dominated by the time researchers spend writing applications, not by the reviewing itself.
The cost of peer review is largely dominated by applying for grants, not peer reviewing.
Fund people, not projects IV: Scientific egalitarianism and lotteries Said 20 Jan 2021
Good scientists can be shortlisted from their publication record, leaving human reviewers only the job of choosing among them.
This is a fortunate conclusion, because it means that it's possible to use bibliometrics to select a candidate set of sufficiently good scientists, and then use human reviewers to select among them.
Fund people, not projects II: Does pre-grant peer review work? Said 8 Jan 2021
Every scientific field eventually exhausts itself: progress within a paradigm follows an S-curve and then runs out.
A given field or paradigm will yield a sigmoid-like pattern and eventually it will be exhausted.
Science — The Ending and Endless Frontier(s) Said 20 Jun 2020
The stock of useful scientific knowledge is bounded rather than endless.
I admit I lean towards the bounded view because the former sounds overly optimistic.
Science — The Ending and Endless Frontier(s) Said 20 Jun 2020
What limits science is how it is funded and organised, not how much money it gets.
I'm of the view, though this would take another post to explain, that the problems that science suffers have more to do with how science is done (funded, organized, produced) rather than how much money is gets, in general.
Fixing science (Part 1) Said 23 Jun 2019
What is a korrent?
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Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 1 thing — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Liked Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World
In succeeding at explaining what sort of things to look for when finding top talent, the book also succeeds as an example of the fundamental importance of tacit knowledge in making these decisions.
nintil.com 7 Feb 2022
What others say about Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World →
Where they publish
Blog Nintil His essays, each a long read through a literature. Has a feed.
Recent
- Changes in my experience after 2 years of meditation practice 27 Oct 2026 I started to meditate around 2 years ago. Since then, and particularly within this past year, there are a number of changes in my day to day experience that seemed worth documenting for future reference and hopefully as…
- Therapy is like dating: how to know if it's working 17 Sept 2026 If you have an injury or feel very ill most people don't bother thinking which specific hospital to visit or what doctor to see. The broad assumption is that an M.D. is an M.D., they are all well trained to deal with mo…
- Loving boundaries: Conditional love applied to parenting and therapy 11 Jul 2026 I used to think that you could love someone unconditionally or conditionally, and I never really thought that you could do both at the same time, but it just occurred to me today that this is indeed not only possible bu…
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- Links (97) 14 Jun 2026 Dynomight on the rise of colorectal (and other types of) cancer in young people Writing is thinking: a case against using AI for writing Can you (if you are a worm, that is) acquire memories by eating them? On how patte…
- There was only mom 3 May 2026 One morning I got a call from my younger brother Jaime. He was crying. He tells me my mom’s health, which had been slowly declining over the past month from advanced cancer, had reached the point where not much time was…
- Links (96) 18 Apr 2026 Monoclonal antibodies against Abeta continue to have lackluster performance (I have a standing bet that this will continue) Rapamycin tested in a human clinical trial over 13 weeks on various strength endpoints, didn't…
- Free Radicals Podcast 17 Mar 2026 I just recorded a new podcast you can find here. It's my favorite one so far! Hope you enjoy it.
- Links (95) 28 Feb 2026 The use of the Forced Perspective Technique in Lord of the Rings To my surprise, OpenAI seemingly didn't get their money back for GPT5's training if one includes the costs of running the org. I have this longstanding (b…
- A first glimpse of non-duality 16 Feb 2026 At a recent retreat, I found myself sitting on a cushion facing a wall while my meditation partner sat to my side, outside of my visual field and started reading to me "From You to Infinity", pointing-out instructions f…
- Anthropic's Claude Constitution; or love as the solution to the AI alignment problem 26 Jan 2026 "The Claude Constitution is a beautiful document. Incomplete and overly verbose in some ways, but in a necessary way", I said on Twitter. It is beautiful in that it is self-aware, transparent, honest, and embodies these…
- Alzheimer's: from causes and risk factors to models and interventions 26 Dec 2025 Since the recent disappointingly small effects of monoclonal antibodies on Alzheimer's Disease (AD) progression, there has been lots of discourse around what the cause of Alzheimer's might be. "If not amyloid then what…
- Links (94) 24 Dec 2025 Bacteria isolated from japanese tree frogs shown to work better in mice against cancer than doxorubicin or checkpoint inhibitors CAR-T to treat cardiovascular disease New proteomics clock, I wrote a brief thread with so…
- Links (93) 28 Nov 2025 Nasa's orion is flaming garbage Looks like the AI 2027 report scenario isn't happening and money is running out, fundraising is no longer enough, and large debt raises are now happening. Derek Thompson and Tim Lee on AI…
- Links (92) 27 Oct 2025 Book Review of Breakneck from Noah Smith, endorsed On China and rare earths Rotating detonation engines Progress in pan-cancer therapy DOGE and its consequences in the federal government The AI revolution in radiology t…
- 33 Things I've Learned at 33 18 Oct 2025 I just turned 33 and thought: What are some lessons I keep coming back to? What would I have told my younger self? Each of this could take an entire post to unfold and I don't expect them all to make sense to you. To so…
- Slutcon, or the attractiveness of embodied authenticity 14 Oct 2025 One of the reasons I like living in the Bay Area are the social occasions one rarely finds anywhere else. One such recent one I attended was Slutcon (more on the event here). When I first saw the event announcement show…
- Systems Biology: understanding beyond genes 5 Oct 2025 Two scientists may look at the same data and draw different conclusions. Faced with a problem to solve they may see different solutions as the obvious way to go. The cause of this is scientific taste: one's crystalized…
- From chaos, order: On the nature and measurement of biological aging 27 Sept 2025 What is aging and how to measure it is an everpresent question in the field of aging research. Given the complexity of biology many give up on the task, proclaiming that "we" (either the field or humanity) don't underst…
- Links (91) 13 Sept 2025 Lithium orotate seems to help with Alzheimer's Electronics components have gotten very very cheap in the past few decades On LLM adoption from Zvi Mowshowitz On the wild stories where someone that gets an organ transpla…
- Links (90) 9 Aug 2025 Good post on what the meaning of heritability. Only a crazy person should do any given job A while back I noted that everything sleeps. Now here some recent work on the why. Memory in cells As I noted a while back, infl…
Link verified 20 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
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