Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations • Hacker News Board

Re: Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations

#201

Post by lalaithion » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 1:26 AM UTC

kloch wrote: post #47

PaulHoule wrote: post #25

One thing obvious is the breakdown between theory and experiment in physics. Newton's great accomplishment was discovering a link between terrestrial and extraterrestrial physics. Today on the large scale we see it takes multiple kinds of "dark matter" to explain the rotation of galaxies, structure of galaxy clusters, and cosmology. "Dark matter" evades any attempt to detect it on Earth. Einstein's prediction of how…

I don't understand why consensus jumped to the conclusion that there must be a new form of undetectable matter instead trying to figure out what we don't know about gravity. Theoretical particle physics is even worse. There haven't been any advances since the 1970's. Experimental particle physics has done a great job in verifying/testing the predictions from the 1960's/1970's but theoretical physicists are stuck in a…

Here’s an overview of why dark matter is the leading theory: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rNFzvii8LtCL5joJo/dark-matte...

Re: Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations

#202

Post by dredmorbius » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 1:28 AM UTC

TuLithu wrote: post #198

gameswithgo wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Book: "The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation"

An excellent book that needs to be read carefully by many college students, including engineers, scientists, political scientists, and business students.

There is a similar book on DuPont's research labs, and I believe others regarding Kodak, Xerox, IBM, and other large industrial R&D operations.

See David Hounshell's Science and Corporate Strategy https://www.worldcat.org/title/science-and-corporate-strateg...

Re: Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations

#203

Post by ta988 » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 1:31 AM UTC

screye wrote: post #179

luckluckgoosed wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't h-index prevent exactly the scenario of having 10 forgettable papers? Having a couple of great papers yields a high h-index, but 10 forgettable papers would hold the number at a low count because you need N papers with at least N citations each. So a seminar paper would +1 to that h-index indefinitely, whereas low value papers would upper bound the h-index to their citation count.

It kind of regresses to a median. 1 big paper, and 100 papers with zero citations aren't that useful. However, most top phd students/ assistant professors hover around the nebulous 5-30 hindex where getting 30 citations is a lot easier than publishing 30 papers. So, in most cases, you will prefer to figure out quantity, because the quality bar is so low. Additionally, they and lab mates always cite each other which l…

> assuming that equal time is spent on all papers.

And that's exactly what makes the h-index useless, every paper has a different effort put into it. I've had papers that required 5y of work, some others only 1 month... And yet they are counted the same.

Also the number of citations depends on the field, for people working across multiple fields you get papers that are highly important for a smaller community get less citations than low quality papers in a large community... Most papers are cited "by chance". Researcher type two keywords, cite paper that seem to go somewhat toward the wanted direction, rinse repeat.

Re: Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations

#204

Post by bllguo » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 1:40 AM UTC

iamcurious wrote: post #139

findalex wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Disagreement, the possibility to be stupid and wrong, and the ability to take random choices based on intuition are eliminated when the majority of a field acts like scientific managers. How do we democratize physical sciences in the same way as CS? My bet would be on the combination of the two (simulation) and providing the high-level tools to the masses.

By focusing on Small Science. Big Science needs big money, big equations, big machines, big careers, big meetings, etc, so big science should be last resort. Make experiments cheap, cheap enough that it becomes embarrassing not to double check. Cheap enough that half of the comments in a science article are about people doing the experiment themselves right there.

are there guarantees that "Small Science" is productive? Regardless of how knowledgeable I am I don't think I can do experimental particle physics in my garage.

Re: Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations

#205

Post by lincpa » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 1:51 AM UTC

The Grand Unified Programming Theory: The Pure Function Pipeline Data Flow with Principle-based Warehouse/Workshop Model

My theory based on the simple, classic, vivid, and widely used in social production practice, elementary school mathematics "water input/output of the pool" as a mathematical prototype, Therefore, it is scientific.

The "von Neumann architecture" and "programming paradigms" used by computers now has no mathematical model support. So it cannot prove its scientificity.

My theory rebuilt the theoretical foundation of the IT industry, The IT industry is fundamentally associated with mathematics. Solved the most fundamental and core major problems in the IT industry.

Therefore, my "warehouse/workshop model" will surely replace the "von Neumann architecture" and other "programming paradigms", become the first architecture in the computer field, and it is the first architecture to achieve a unified software and hardware.

Software and hardware are factories that manufacture data, so they have the same "warehouse/workshop model" and management methods as the manufacturing industry.

In the IT field, only it and binary system fully comply with these 5 aesthetics: Simplicity, Unity, order, symmetry and definiteness.

It has a wide range of applications, from SOC to supercomputer, from software to hardware, from stand-alone to network, from application layer to system layer, from single thread to distributed, from general programming to explainable AI, from manufacturing industry to IT industry, from energy to finance, from the missile's "Fire-and-Forget" technology to Boeing aircraft pulse production line technology, from myth to Transformers.

Link: [The Grand Unified Programming Theory: The Pure Function Pipeline Data Flow with Principle-based Warehouse/Workshop Model](https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow)

Re: Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations

#206

Post by dredmorbius » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:00 AM UTC

supernovae wrote: post #200

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We weren’t building hyper efficient carbon fiber airframes with high bypass turbofans (Dreamliner)." Sir Joseph Wilson Swan first created carbon fiber in 1860. Carbon nanotubes were discovered in 1950's. If Dreamliner was built out of carbon nanotube, then I would concede. Like this, meh. "There is a strong argument that the past 40 years has seen some of the fastest progress in the history of the human race when it…

now you're just being silly Let's just get back to tech. In the 1980s a 4mhz computer with 360k floppy disks and cga monitor cost about 2500 bucks... Today, you have a phone in your pocket exponentially faster and smaller - all in a few decades. The apple watch - has 100s of times more compute/storage and resolution than that computer... and some of those watches have 4g / gps and things we could have only dreamed ab…

And what has all that computational improvement bought?

Modest improvements in communications (the bulk of which are taken up by ... decidedly non-critical messages). Adtech. Another few days on the long-term weather forecast. Pervasive Panopticon surveillance, both capitalist and state, largely symbiotic. Random death from the sky if you happen to be brown-skinned.

For millionsfold increases in CPU power, and billionsfold increases in the actual number of CPUs available.

Re: Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations

#207

Post by dredmorbius » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:01 AM UTC

chrisamiller wrote: post #23

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's obviously waning if you look at any field that deals with physical world: a car from 1940 looks totally different than one from 1980's, but the one from 2020 and 1980 looks almost the same. Space rockets are same as they were in 80's, where are nuclear engines, fusion propultion, etc? Its the same for airplanes, appliances, and everything execept computers. https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/145134227466…

Maybe your car hasn't changed, but your cancer care sure as hell has. The medical and biological sciences are where a lot of innovation has taken place, and the pace of technological advancement in things like DNA sequencing (as one example) is breathtaking.

Nope.

Same disease that would've killed my friend 30 years ago would kill him today, with the same treatments being used as had been available another 30 years before that, based on WWI chemical warfare.

Healthcare's shining decade was the teens.

The 1910s.

Largely based on public health measures. Much as today.

Re: Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations

#208

Post by ClumsyPilot » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:03 AM UTC

johncearls wrote: post #163

f6v wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was watching the Boardwalk Empire not so long ago. When the main character was a boy, people were wearing fancy clothes, sending letters, and riding horses. As a grown man, he talked on the phone and flew a plane. Whereas my parents were flying planes when they were young. I fly almost the same planes(yes, more safe and efficient) and it takes the same time to get from A to B.

While your parents have been flying in the same planes, they payed twice as much (inflation adjusted) and a lot less often. I too wish I was vacationing in Luna City tovarich, but things have gotten better by quite a bit. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-air...

I think appropriate comparison would be, what would equivalent travel cost, in money an time, to the parents of your parents.

The argument is not that nothing is getting better, but that the rate of improvement has slowed. So the frequently touted 'exponential progress' is a myth.

Re: Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations

#209

Post by leereeves » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:06 AM UTC

xadhominemx wrote: post #127

kloch wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not both? Part of why dark matter is such an attractive explanation is because there are no constraints on it. Unfortunately this seems to have relieved pressure to explore and test modified gravity.

What do you mean there are “no constraints” on dark matter. There are plenty of constraints. I think you just have no idea what you are talking about.

I think they mean that the theory of dark matter has an infinity of parameters. For every point in space, one can (rather arbitrarily) assign a mass of dark matter to make the theory fit observations.

Re: Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations

#210

Post by generationP » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:09 AM UTC

lrem wrote: post #169

carbocation wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's painful because (IMHO) the H index is just a much worse approximation of something that we could actually achieve with PageRank for academic citations. In that case, a bunch of middling papers would be rewarded, but so too would one critical paper that lays a foundation for a field.

I always thought that PageRank was inspired on methods previously used for scoring academic papers. Now I'm wondering if I misunderstood something, or my professor misunderstood it first. Damn.

PageRank has nothing to do with h-index to my knowledge. The problem with using PageRank-like methods for academic papers is that academic papers mostly reference backwards in time (except for the occasional draft or work-in-progress being referenced, but proper cycles are rare). A triangular matrix doesn't yield an interesting stationary distribution...