- The sense of entitlement in science research is very strong, that somehow scientists are better people if they study the most esoteric, non-applicable field possible, and that the rest of us should fund their work, because they're making the world a better place by getting tenure, citing the other people in their field, and making their papers intentionally difficult to read.
Can you give any examples?
Earlier today I coincidentally spent a few minutes writing an intentionally obfuscated description about that one time I dug a hole in the sand at the beach:
- The System has been instituted as a successful model in several recent projects, the results of which were peer reviewed by unbiased observers as they unfolded in realtime. Most people arrived at an understanding of how The System worked immediately, requiring at maximum several sentences to communicate its simple axioms. The majority understood the process intuitively and some had even applied it successfully in recent history, but hadn’t yet formulated the methodology into words. One prominent participant has recently theorized that The System should work reasonably well within a broad regime of scale sizes.
Maybe tomorrow I'll be working on the next paragraph, where I describe how one person loosens up the sand by prying it free from the sides of the hole with a shovel, while the other removes it by hand. I probably lost you there with that last sentence, so I'll go into much more detail, of course.
Yeah, I'd rather just coauthor forever, the publishing process sucks, for many reasons. At least the grant-writing process is totally painless, right? Right?!?
P.S. Somewhere out there is footage from later that night of me yelling into a mirror while visibly drunk, tears running down my cheeks, about how The System ruined my entire life. I was acting, but it's pretty convincing. Too convincing. Can't wait to never show you guys that someday.
P.P.S. While we're getting weird, here's a guy who registered a vanity license plate proclaiming his pet theory. He thinks (thought?) the sun is primarily composed of iron. Ran into him online, a decade ago, during my summer internship, much of which was spent cruising the old physorg forums. It looks like his site I linked to hasn't been updated in over ten years, but it's still up and running (shit, should I archive it?). The page's thumbnail is the yahoo.com logo. He selected that picture of himself for his homepage. There's actually more, I'm stopping here. Nothing makes sense. Nothing. It never did. A++
I've seen it go both ways. Had a good friend tell me that experimentalists can be theorists if they really wanna, but that theorists never make good experimentalists. I just said "yeah, yeah, totally," and then went back to whatever I was doing. More often than not, it's generational.
I think creativity might be the #1 most undervalued trait in physics, but it's notoriously difficult to quantify. It's a catch-22.
- experimentalists can be theorists if they really wanna, but that theorists never make good experimentalists.
No, I was saying that I didn't agree with the guy. I said what I did to be polite, but I didn't want to explore that conversation with him any further. Any broad sort of generalizations having anything to do with different types of intelligence hold no appeal with me.
Going to edit in more of a response later, but wanted to clear that up ASAP. Very busy right now, my apologies.
In one of the screenplays I'm writing (for funsies), an academic-type refers to the general public as "not even experimentalists". So we're good. :)
Good, but one problem is I do not want to be a subscriber. It is pity,