Principle: Survival of the Fittest Answer

In Science, the goal is to explain nature. Someone (even a patent clerk) can submit a paper to a scientific publication. What is supposed to be important is not who says it, but for experts in that area to criticise it as witheringly as possible. To figure out whether the ideas, methods, and results presented are any good. Once a paper is published, other researchers read it, and the more papers others are inspired to write based on the paper, the more successful the paper is deemed to be. If the ideas in the original are confirmed by all the follow up work of others, that adds to our confidence in those ideas. It is crucially important that a paper that proves to be entirely wrong can still be very successful if it inspires people to do further research. Threats to scientific method are anything that constrains a field of inquiry (usually, political interference, censorship, unwise legislation.) Evidence here is a coherent weaving together of an explanation for some set of physical phenomena or artifacts.

Democracy is exactly the same thing, but the idea is not to solve objective problems, but to convince as many people as possible to take care of their government. Ideas have to be aired in public, and subject to withering criticism. The media are key in both these roles. Freedom of Speech, ability to investigate unfettered, even when things are un-popular, is central to Democracy. Threats to democracy are anything that stifle criticism. (dictatorship, censorship) evidence are ideas and votes.

Capitalism is exactly the same thing, but the purpose is to optimize production (in biology speak, optimize metabolism, and gain maximum resources for successful reproduction) People buy into technologies and companies, either as stock holders, customers, or both. Threats to capitalism are anything that stifle the free flow of information about companies, and anything that allows monopolies to develop. A monopoly is a failure of competition to produce an effective market. Evidence here is expressed in monetary value. A key role of society is to regulate natural monopolies for the greater good.

Free Software is exactly the same thing, but the purpose is to develop software. Immature software is released, and gradually improved upon, by the critique of other developers. The key accellerator of this is the free exchange of source code. The chief threat is anything that reduces the choices of software developers. evidence here is expressed in terms of source code, developer and user base.

All of these domains of problem solving share common characteristics: A solution is proposed in public, open to any and all criticism. An improvement can be suggested, or proposed as an alternative, and there is an objectively identifiable means of figuring out which solution wins. Any winner is not definitive. A new upstart solution can arise at any time and knock the current winner off of it's podium. There is a competition of ideas/ways/means. In order to get a right answer, there has to be a competition.

People are pretty bad at getting the right idea. If you look back at the history of invention, we generally tried absolutely every possiblity, and one lucky sod tried something that actually worked. Often most of humanity is on the wrong side at first, and folks sort of generally come around after a while. Airplanes, automobiles, heliocentrism, television, evolution are examples. Friction isn't resistance to new ideas in the sense of criticism. Criticism itself is not a problem. Friction is only important when it shuts off areas of research either by eliminating needed funding, or by persecution of researchers (such as classifying cryptographic technologies as weapons, making any cryptanalyst an arms dealer)

The best system for getting answers is the one that generates the largest number of answers, with the least amount of friction (and in the shortest amount of time.) The fittest answers will survive.