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It's interesting how academics construct their own mythology. If Newton, Einstein, and Galileo can be branded as outcasts, who were working on obscure research, then maybe that can justify all of the waste in academia on research that benefits no one other than the professor who receives tenure for it. Academia, at the very least in the US, is fundamentally broken, and articles like this are very discouraging because they show that academics just don't get it. The incentives within academia do not encourage much new research of the sort that the article praises, and even Peter Higgs claims that if he were an academic today, he wouldn't be prolific enough to get tenure. 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.
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am_Unition · 475 days ago · link ·
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: 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++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.
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.
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i was thinking of the general trend where field theorists, string theorists and mathematical physicists are glorified in physics, and how we were all fed shit in undergrad about how you can be a theorist if you're "smart enough" but otherwise you'll have to settle for experimental work, or whatever. Ha ha. Ha.Can you give any examples?
At least the grant-writing process is totally painless, right? Right?!?
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Seriously? That's not just a joke? I mean, we also have some people who say bullshit like that, but it's the type of person who needs to make her lectures obligatory just so anyone would show up. No-one seems to care about this 'distinction' and people who do are quite visibly having some problems. What a load. My recent attempt at designing an experiment showed that I'm likely not creative enough to be an experimentalist, so I should rather focus on theory. All while being able to tell most theorists 'do you even knot theory, bitch'? ;)how we were all fed shit in undergrad about how you can be a theorist if you're "smart enough" but otherwise you'll have to settle for experimental work, or whatever.
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am_Unition · 474 days ago · link ·
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.
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Uh, dunno about that to be honest. That's like saying that a medical doctor with specialisation in genetics can become a surgeon with 'a little bit of extra work'. Or that a mathematician can become a computer scientist 'because it is just a subset of mathematics'. Yeah, it's doable to some people, but I doubt that it holds generality. I can't get over my amazement at people who can design a good experiment with such astounding foresight to eliminate sources of error in a way that seems effortless (I know that it isn't). I can't do it. My last design looked like a Rube Goldberg machine inside that mousetrap game when compared to works of one of more experiment-inclined students. Even that looked like crap when lab assistant showed us how it should work. That's not me giving up, just recognising that it's hard to 'switch gears' when it comes to design and out-of-the-box thinking. On the other hand, I know a few grad students who seemed to look at me in a similar way when it comes to formal proofs. They know a lot more about "how to solve it", but most of them never needed to prove things like "this is the only solution" or "all classes of solutions are continuous". This is a weirdly relevant SMBC strip. ;) Both boil down to creativity and rigour only applied to a different subject and are not necessarily governed by a similar set of skills. I don't want this post to read like me saying "cool story, bro", but such abstract generalisations like the ones made by your friend can be false even in mathematics. And that's as close to ideal conditions as you can get. ;)experimentalists can be theorists if they really wanna, but that theorists never make good experimentalists
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am_Unition · 473 days ago · link ·
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.experimentalists can be theorists if they really wanna, but that theorists never make good experimentalists.
am_Unition · 474 days ago · link ·
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. :)
YevheniiaTod · 445 days ago · link ·
Good, but one problem is I do not want to be a subscriber. It is pity,