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Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

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Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#91

Post by syn0byte »

yipbub wrote: post #84
tokai wrote: post #73

It is a fun little event that something posted on 4chan is used in a research paper. But that nobody knows how it should be cited is just plain wrong. They should maybe contact their research library and get a introduction to citing. All citation styles I know of can handle web citations. Anonymous authors is nothing new either. And you have things like the internet archive or Webcite[0] to make sure the web document…

I'm not in academia. How is it possible for people to check if the proof is peer reviewed? Do they have to rely on their own verification?

It's a proof. It validates itself or it doesn't.

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#92

Post by gmueckl »

qubax wrote: post #24
_mtkq wrote: post #7

An "academically correct" solution (i.e., not to taint the prestige of a scholar who cites the solution) would be to cite a real, proxy scholar who checks the solution, but gives all credit to the anonymous 4chan user. Scientists often abhor citing from blogs, forums, and Wikipedia, as those publications "are not peer-reviewed by trustworthy professionals".

> Scientists often abhor citing from blogs, forums, and Wikipedia, as those publications "are not peer-reviewed by trustworthy professionals". Which is sad because most peer-reviewed material are not trustworthy either. https://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/believe-it-or-not-most-pub... https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo... It's worrying that academia is slowly turning into a rigid "appeal to au…

I am about to get really mad about statements like this one. It contains an egregious generalization within itself, rendering it essentially untrue.

The papers check results in fields like medicine and psychology which are plagued by the fact that they have to rely on various kind of effects from random sampling of study participants and statistics. I am not surprised that a study with 10 participants leads to wrong results with a significant probability.

But this does not generalize to science in general. Physics and chemistry do not suffer fron this because their experiments have fundamentally different setups. So extrapolating from medicine to "most science is wrong" is just as wrong. You need to approach these fields differently when you want to know how many wrong results are published.

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#93

Post by Loughla »

krustyburger wrote: post #60
mohammedbin wrote: post #59

Something I somehow doubt too many of you would know but 4chan, despite being considered an unsavoury place because of certain subsections of it (which I'm not proud to admit I visit to learn what "the other side" is talking about), has a lot of great communities as well and I usually find the discussion quality there better than reddit. Also, in the context of this thread, 4chan is an ephemeral site so there is no s…

What are some of the worthwhile communities?

[dead]

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#94

Post by jessriedel »

rspeer wrote: post #86
tokai wrote: post #73

It is a fun little event that something posted on 4chan is used in a research paper. But that nobody knows how it should be cited is just plain wrong. They should maybe contact their research library and get a introduction to citing. All citation styles I know of can handle web citations. Anonymous authors is nothing new either. And you have things like the internet archive or Webcite[0] to make sure the web document…

It's not that nobody knows how to cite it, it's that nobody wants to cite things from outside of academia, perhaps because it lowers their own perceived prestige. I have seen this in computational linguistics where people frequently don't cite their data sources, which often come from outside of the field or outside academia altogether. Instead they put a link to a webpage in a footnote, which does nothing for assign…

> Instead they put a link to a webpage in a footnote, which does nothing for assigning credit.

Why would a footnote be considered less credit than something in the list of references? It's pretty common in my field to use footnotes to give credit to other researchers for ideas that arose in an informal context, e.g., "I thank A. Zee for pointing this out". Indeed, the question of whether prose footnotes are at the bottom of the page rather than displayed intermixed with citations to published sources (as in Physical Review Letters) is just a stylistic choices that varies by journal.

Obviously unpublished sources can't easily be counted into automated citation tracking systems for technical reasons, but if the author wanted that they could publish something (or, e.g., put it in a free repository like the arXiv).

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#95

Post by strictnein »

ortusdux wrote: post #46

The Haruhi problem reminds me of De Bruijn sequences, aka why I don't trust 5 button keyless car entry systems. Fords keypads do not have return keys, delays, or attempt limits. A 3125 button sequence can guarantee you will unlock the door. It would take about 10-20 minutes for someone who has practiced to break in. Someone this year made a bot that did it in about 5 minutes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bruijn_s…

You're worried about someone standing next to your car for 10-20 minutes pushing buttons and not messing up a 3125 number combo on a keypad with almost no tactile feedback?

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#96

Post by jessriedel »

ASipos wrote: post #38

Come on, this is a myth. I work in math and it is not at all unusual to cite informal sources. Also, someone should inform Greg Egan: http://www.gregegan.net/SCIENCE/Superpermutations/Superpermu...

Yea, this is also something that is not unique to the internet age. Academics have been (imperfectly) assigning credit to informal contributions since there have been citations (and before!). Footnotes like "I thank B. Johnson for this argument" have always been used.

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#98

Post by presscast »

rspeer wrote: post #86
tokai wrote: post #73

It is a fun little event that something posted on 4chan is used in a research paper. But that nobody knows how it should be cited is just plain wrong. They should maybe contact their research library and get a introduction to citing. All citation styles I know of can handle web citations. Anonymous authors is nothing new either. And you have things like the internet archive or Webcite[0] to make sure the web document…

It's not that nobody knows how to cite it, it's that nobody wants to cite things from outside of academia, perhaps because it lowers their own perceived prestige. I have seen this in computational linguistics where people frequently don't cite their data sources, which often come from outside of the field or outside academia altogether. Instead they put a link to a webpage in a footnote, which does nothing for assign…

>It's not that nobody knows how to cite it, it's that nobody wants to cite things from outside of academia, perhaps because it lowers their own perceived prestige.

What makes you say this? Citing anybody does little to increase your personal prestige. I think the issue has more to do with 4chan not being peer-reviewed, and the proof being so recent that few papers have yet been written.

On the contrary, citing a hot new thing is what academics do best.

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#99

Post by Notorious_BLT »

CPLX wrote: post #6

Also lending strong support for the infinite number of monkeys theorem.

I think you misunderstand the population of 4chan. Across its diverse boards, there's all kind of people, and they don't fit into a single mold. For example, all kind of skilled laborers and handy homeowners, many with families, frequent the /diy/ board. The technology board /g/ is host to a lot of talented, high-earning programmers mixed in with tinkerer types. /toy/ is full of all kinds of folks, from teenagers with a few anime figures to parents with children, the only commonality being liking some kind of toys.

A lot of people who use it simply like the lack of filters or reputation that anonymity provides. A post doesn't come with the baggage of a username that people can hunt through, so it can really only be judged by its content, not by the reputation (good or bad) of its author.

Just because 4chan shows up in the news when its users are stirring up trouble doesn't mean its all a bunch of edgy teens. Even if thats how it began, an edgy teen from 4chan's inception is now old enough to be a part of the adult workforce.

Re: Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved an interesting problem

#100

Post by tspike »

strictnein wrote: post #95
ortusdux wrote: post #46

The Haruhi problem reminds me of De Bruijn sequences, aka why I don't trust 5 button keyless car entry systems. Fords keypads do not have return keys, delays, or attempt limits. A 3125 button sequence can guarantee you will unlock the door. It would take about 10-20 minutes for someone who has practiced to break in. Someone this year made a bot that did it in about 5 minutes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bruijn_s…

You're worried about someone standing next to your car for 10-20 minutes pushing buttons and not messing up a 3125 number combo on a keypad with almost no tactile feedback?

Surely a rock or other heavy blunt object would be more effective.
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