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Science Is Getting Harder

mattsclancy.substack.com

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Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#11

Post by kkfx »

bjornsing wrote: post #9

Sorry if this sounds elitist to anyone but (I guess it is): When the R&D workforce expands at the rate it has over the last few decades you will invariably see less talented and less talented people entering the field. Also, various forms of overhead will grow with the size of the workforce. As an example about 20 people attended the 1911 Solvay Conference on Physics. How many attend a conference today? With the grow…

IMVHO less talents are there because less public research where researchers manage themselves is there. R&D on-purpose for making money, product, in a publish-or-perish aka short-time-to-market move simply do not work.

Volumes goes up, quality goes down.

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#12

Post by bee_rider »

girishso wrote: post #8

I have always thought if I was born some 200-300 years back, I would have made many scientific discoveries by myself. Science has indeed got harder.

What is "you?"

If I, with my current education, was sent back 200 years... I could probably do OK with inventing stuff (engineering education, so I have some good answers backed by a nice model, much of which I'd have to work backwards to derive because who remembers 200 level engineering classes?). It took Marconi a while to realize that he had to ground the antennas, so there's a pretty good discovery for free.

On the other hand, if I was actually born then... I think I'm a pretty clever guy, but not a genius. Someone like me 200 years ago would probably... I dunno, be trusted to fix mill equipment. Or maybe work on watches, depending on where I was born. Maybe I'd be a town pharmacist or something.

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#13

Post by inglor_cz »

bjornsing wrote: post #9

Sorry if this sounds elitist to anyone but (I guess it is): When the R&D workforce expands at the rate it has over the last few decades you will invariably see less talented and less talented people entering the field. Also, various forms of overhead will grow with the size of the workforce. As an example about 20 people attended the 1911 Solvay Conference on Physics. How many attend a conference today? With the grow…

Weelll ... the world population in 1911 was approx. 1,8 billion people, growing fourfold since then. One would expect some extra talents to emerge from the extra population.

Also, an average Earthling is now much richer than before. A random Korean or Turk of 1911 had much smaller chance to study physics, much less money to even buy a ticket to travel to the Solvay Conference. Both is now easier and cheaper.

On the downside, there is a lot more prestigious and well paying jobs today. Instead of tackling physics, best minds of today may be sitting in Facebook, trying to discover yet more ingenious ways to push ads on the rest of us.

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#14

Post by interroboink »

bjornsing wrote: post #9

Sorry if this sounds elitist to anyone but (I guess it is): When the R&D workforce expands at the rate it has over the last few decades you will invariably see less talented and less talented people entering the field. Also, various forms of overhead will grow with the size of the workforce. As an example about 20 people attended the 1911 Solvay Conference on Physics. How many attend a conference today? With the grow…

> ... the most destructive force in any human endeavor: politics.

I imagine you were being tongue-in-cheek, but just to unreasonably latch onto that statement a bit: politics is certainly infuriating, and it's easy to treat it as some unalloyed Bad Thing that we wish would just go away, but politics is essentially communication, and so it can be a good thing, too. The bigger the group, the more communication you need to keep everything (somewhat) together.

For instance, on a larger "human endeavor" scale, I am grateful that WW3 has not happened yet — thank you politics (:

As with many things, it's a tool that can be used poorly or used well. But the tool itself is not inherently bad or destructive, I don't think. Or maybe it is both inherently good *and* bad, and you can't entirely separate the two.

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#15

Post by mikkergp »

bjornsing wrote: post #9

Sorry if this sounds elitist to anyone but (I guess it is): When the R&D workforce expands at the rate it has over the last few decades you will invariably see less talented and less talented people entering the field. Also, various forms of overhead will grow with the size of the workforce. As an example about 20 people attended the 1911 Solvay Conference on Physics. How many attend a conference today? With the grow…

But it seems like if you're making the argument that science is getting harder, then raw numbers should matter more than percentages. From the article:

"I’m claiming that science is getting harder, in the sense that it is increasingly challenging to make discoveries that have comparable impact to the ones in the past".

So, unless you're arguing that there aren't an equivalent 20 people alive today as prestigious as the 20 people that went to the 1911 Solvay conference. Then the fact that there are greater percentage of less talented people now, shouldn't make it harder for the greater number of talented people to make "discoveries comparable impact". (With some caveats of course.)

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#16

Post by ajg4 »

So acedemical research isn't relevant to new technologies anymore? Then one might conclude that most technology driven research is done in private companies rather than in public academia.

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#17

Post by growwrkr6 »

When was it easy? So much early discovery has been binned or replaced; easy answers were wrong. It took hundreds of years of effort to bubble up relativity and information theory.

When was this golden age in the past when the world was magically easier and “better”? I see complaints about social media brainwashing people but what is religion and nation state populism?

I have a hard time taking contemporary opinions on “life is getting harder” seriously or sincerely. It’s just another clickbait trope.

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#18

Post by concordDance »

interroboink wrote: post #14
bjornsing wrote: post #9

Sorry if this sounds elitist to anyone but (I guess it is): When the R&D workforce expands at the rate it has over the last few decades you will invariably see less talented and less talented people entering the field. Also, various forms of overhead will grow with the size of the workforce. As an example about 20 people attended the 1911 Solvay Conference on Physics. How many attend a conference today? With the grow…

> ... the most destructive force in any human endeavor: politics. I imagine you were being tongue-in-cheek, but just to unreasonably latch onto that statement a bit: politics is certainly infuriating, and it's easy to treat it as some unalloyed Bad Thing that we wish would just go away, but politics is essentially communication, and so it can be a good thing, too. The bigger the group, the more communication you need…

Given the word "politics" has many different meanings you need to state your definition here if you want people to understand your post

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#19

Post by xwdv »

growwrkr6 wrote: post #17

When was it easy? So much early discovery has been binned or replaced; easy answers were wrong. It took hundreds of years of effort to bubble up relativity and information theory. When was this golden age in the past when the world was magically easier and “better”? I see complaints about social media brainwashing people but what is religion and nation state populism? I have a hard time taking contemporary opinions o…

It was definitely easier in the past. I look at a lot of past scientific discoveries and I think I could have easily come up with them if I was in the time period and was educated. Could have made light bulbs, automobiles, telephones, computing machines, etc.

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#20

Post by timkam »

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #7

I think we need to figure out how to extend human lifespan to allow for experts to continue to grow their knowledge/skills past the 40 year retirement mark to have a greater chance of making more advanced breakthroughs.

I think the (hopefully) more realistic action plan would be to change the academic system so that the average academic does not need to spend what amounts to the full official working hours on non-research tasks, latest after their first Post Doc, i.e., ~2 years after reaching academic maturity...
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