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

#211

Post by ClumsyPilot » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:14 AM UTC

supernovae wrote: post #199

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just because you don't agree with the cool shit going on, doesn't mean it isn't cool." Dota is cool shit too, but I am not pretending it's an achievement that will be remembered in 3 generations, like the invention of an airplane. I feel your categorisation is fed by being a fan of SpaceX and fails to put things into proper perspective.

No, not a "fan" of spacex, i'm a fan of space in general. my passion is cosmology, where were discovering more about black holes and gravity waves and new kinds of stars and getting closer and closer to possibly figuring out what all the dark matter and dark energy is. But hey, two can play this game, you seem to hate SpaceX so you throw out the sciences and engineering too.. There are multiple space companies sendin…

"you seem to hate SpaceX"

Absolutely not! I love SpaceX and the all-composite Dreamliner, but the benchmark is not 'pretty good', the benchmark being discussed is 'exponentially better than anything that came before', otherwise we don't have 'exponential progress' - perhaps we have linear progress, or quadratic, or asymptotic.

I think they are not in the same league as Wernher von Braun or the Wright Brothers - those folks changed the world as we know it, - when Braun was designing rockets, we didnt even know that human body can function in space at all. There were no engines to look at for examples. There was nothing.

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

#212

Post by ClumsyPilot » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:21 AM UTC

chinchilla2020 wrote: post #187

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…

Cars are massively different. Anyone who works on cars in the garage will know that our modern vehicles are very different than the old carburetor and magneto machines. Drivetrain, running gear, and fuel systems are completely different systems that would be unrecognizable to a 1985 mechanic. This statement sounds like it came from a software engineer who has never washed grease off his hands.

The claim is not "car of 1980 is same as car of 2020" , the claim is "car of 1980 is much-much closer to the car of 2020 than to the car of 1940's"

If the latter is true, then it is evidence thay the statement "we have exponential progress" is false

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

#213

Post by andyferris » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:09 AM UTC

generationP wrote: post #210

lrem wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

You could just make it bidirectional (add the transpose and make it symmetric), right?

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

#214

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:21 AM UTC

bjornsing wrote: post #64

echelon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something has changed. I can't imagine Einstein's generation functioning like that. Have pioneers of innovation moved to private corporations now that they have capital that rivals academia? Private companies can reward innovators with more than just credentials. Bell Labs, Xerox Parc, Google Brain, OpenAI, Tesla, SpaceX, ... Granted, this isn't even across all fields as they are not all economic drivers.

Something I often think about is how eccentric the leading researchers were in Einstein’s generation. Just look at a picture of the guy himself. Or consider Kurt Gödel, who starved to death when his wife was hospitalized because he could only eat food prepared by her. Different times/cultures tend to put different personalities in charge, and that has a huge impact on what gets done. Overall I have a feeling the curi…

[deleted]

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

#215

Post by Ar-Curunir » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 4:38 AM UTC

mrjangles wrote: post #164

dilawar wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I don't even bother to read physics article in quanta anymore. I won't compare some theories to astrology but if someone does, I won't run to defend either. I struggle with thwir math articles, but I know that if I find time on weekend, I'll get the theorem (may not be the proof). Knuth books feels the same. Hard reading but rewarding. Biology is always pleasing to read. CS is my bread and butter so I usually b…

As a general rule, if you are hearing about some scientific endeavor in the popular press, it is because that science isn't very important, and they need publicity to get funding. What a lot of people don't understand is that there is actually a lot of real science going on in physics. There are two branches of physics, what you call condensed matter / atom optics. And then there is Cosmology / High energy physics. c…

We know less about the oceans on our planet than the surface of the moon. Does that make lunar scientists “crackpots”?

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

#216

Post by specialist » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:36 AM UTC

supernovae wrote: post #10

No, it isn't waning. There are struggles, but that doesn't mean its waning. We're having massive progress in medicine, space, cosmology, environment, biology, food, transportation. Hell, the only thing that's waning is public perception of science and that seems to be a deliberate political attack.

Yup. We live in an Age of Miracles.

~30 years ago I had a bone marrow transplant. I lived in an isolation bubble for a month. 95% mortality rate in the first year. A year of recovery.

Today, treating my original disease is practically an outpatient therapy.

To say nothing of immunotherapy replacing chemotherapies. My buddy had a late stage solid organ tumor. Cured with immunotherapy. For a condition that was absolutely fatal just a few months prior.

I could go on and on.

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

#217

Post by laichzeit0 » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:42 AM UTC

crazy_horse wrote: post #55

ren_engineer wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Academia now selects for people who are good at navigating bureaucracy and getting research funding rather than people who are good at doing actual research

What kind of comments does HN select for?

Academia and any sort of formal education is a waste of money. Math is difficult because of the notation used. The random guy who shows up in any ML/AI thread and starts talking about how useless it is because it’s not AGI. How stupid every hiring process is, especially anything involving testing technical competency.

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

#218

Post by generationP » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:52 AM UTC

andyferris wrote: post #213

generationP wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

You could just make it bidirectional (add the transpose and make it symmetric), right?

Too easy to game by citing the most reputed sources. Reputation shouldn't flow up a citation.

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

#219

Post by fooofw » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 7:16 AM UTC

generationP wrote: post #210

lrem wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I don't know if it makes any difference, but if PageRank should replace the h-index, the most direct equivalent would be to rank the authors rather than the papers, no?

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

#220

Post by native_samples » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 7:26 AM UTC

xmprt wrote: post #140

epistasis wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I only see my little corner of biology, but I am continually astonished at what is being learned. Often times the pace of learning and the diversification is such that I often don't find out about significant discoveries until a couple years after they happen, and I can still bring the ideas to others years later after that and people will say "holy crap that's amazing, I can't believe I hadn't heard of that.…

Biology is one field that seems to be making massive breakthroughs recently. On the other hand, it seems like a lot of theoretical sciences like Physics haven't have similar breakthroughs in decades.

Is it? Biology is one of the fields most often cited as stagnant. Yes there's lots of papers, and some progress in understanding at the micro level, but progress against the most important diseases is nearly zero (see: Alzheimers, obesity, heart disease).

Also, the field is full of low standards and fraud. That's one reason why there's so much arguing over COVID, and why tech VCs stay away from it. Way too many impressive sounding results that you only discover don't replicate once you funded and spun up a lab. In biology you get things like Theranos, which is the sort of long term scam that's much harder to pull off in the software world.

Biology is also one of the few fields that appears to have serious problems with undetected paper forgery, which professional firms that create entirely fictional experiments and sell them. Browse through https://pubpeer.com/ and you'll see that the papers getting flagged are nearly always biology papers.