Self-Experimentation = Old Buildings

In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs wrote, “Old ideas can use new buildings, but new ideas need old buildings.” New ideas need old buildings because old buildings are cheap. New ideas cannot be expected to be especially profitable, or profitable at all, at first. This is why self-experimentation should have a permanent place in the ecology of science: It provides a cheap way to develop new ideas.

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