"Auguries are second-circle spells and trade off directly against Resist Energy (Acid) spells; their time horizon is roughly half an hour; and they're not reliable enough that we could try anything we had a strong prior expectation would be dangerous, even if otherwise cleared by Augury.  It's not a bad idea, but relatively narrowly applicable - we apply it only when the experiment is expensive enough that we don't just do it regardless, only when the time horizon is less than half an hour, only when the danger level is such that the Augury's 'likelihood-ratio' of around 4 actually shifts our decision."

"We'd also have to experiment earlier to see if Augury could learn to define 'got a surprising or enlightening result' rather than 'improved the manufacturing process' as being the 'good' outcome.  Which is my way of changing the subject back to the next point I was going to make:  Civilization teaches a soft conceptual separation between understanding a phenomenon, and improving it.  We want to develop magical Science!, and it's tempting to jump right to casting Auguries as a way of improving it.  But first we'd want to understand how Auguries interact with the work of Science."

"Can Augury define 'got a surprising or enlightening result' rather than 'improved the manufacturing process' as being the 'good' outcome, if that's what we want?  Is an Augury smart enough to know that a very surprising explosion can be worth the cost of equipment destroyed, for what the explosion tells us?  Do we have to figure that it within half an hour for the Augury to know it was worth it?"

"Auguries are second-circle spells and trade off directly against Resist Energy (Acid) spells; their time horizon is roughly half an hour; and they're not reliable enough that we could try anything we had a strong prior expectation would be dangerous, even if otherwise cleared by Augury.  It's not a bad idea, but relatively narrowly applicable - we apply it only when the experiment is expensive enough that we don't just do it regardless, only when the time horizon is less than half an hour, only when the danger level is such that the Augury's 'likelihood-ratio' of around 4 actually shifts our decision."

"We'd also have to experiment earlier to see if Augury could learn to define 'got a surprising or enlightening result' rather than 'improved the manufacturing process' as being the 'good' outcome.  Which is my way of changing the subject back to the next point I was going to make:  Civilization teaches a soft conceptual separation between understanding a phenomenon, and improving it.  We want to develop magical Science!, and it's tempting to jump right to casting Auguries as a way of improving it.  But first we'd want to understand how Auguries interact with the work of Science."

"Can Augury define 'got a surprising or enlightening result' rather than 'improved the manufacturing process' as being the 'good' outcome, if that's what we want?  Is an Augury smart enough to know that a very surprising explosion can be worth the cost of equipment destroyed, for what the explosion tells us?  Do we have to figure that it within half an hour for the Augury to know it was worth it?"

"The first step would be to do promising experiments, cast Auguries before doing them, go on to do the experiment regardless of what the Augury said, and figure out exactly what Auguries were telling us."

"Auguries are second-circle spells and trade off directly against Resist Energy (Acid) spells; their time horizon is roughly half an hour; and they're not reliable enough that we could try anything we had a strong prior expectation would be dangerous, even if otherwise cleared by Augury.  It's not a bad idea, but relatively narrowly applicable - we apply it only when the experiment is expensive enough that we don't just do it regardless, only when the time horizon is less than half an hour, only when the danger level is such that the Augury's 'likelihood-ratio' of around 4 actually shifts our decision."

"We'd also have to experiment earlier to see if Augury could learn to define 'got a surprising or enlightening result' rather than 'improved the manufacturing process' as being the 'good' outcome.  Which is my way of changing the subject back to the next point I was going to make:  Civilization teaches a soft conceptual separation between understanding a phenomenon, and improving it.  We want to develop magical Science!, and it's tempting to jump right to casting Auguries as a way of improving it.  But first we'd want to understand how Auguries interact with the work of Science."

"Can Augury define 'got a surprising or enlightening result' rather than 'improved the manufacturing process' as being the 'good' outcome, if that's what we want?  Is an Augury smart enough to know that a very surprising explosion can be worth the cost of equipment destroyed, for what the explosion tells us?  Do we have to figure that out within half an hour for the Augury to know it was worth it?"

"The first step would be to do promising experiments, cast Auguries before doing them, go on to do the experiment regardless of what the Augury said, and figure out exactly what Auguries were telling us."