21–30 of 150 posts
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…
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…
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ... 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
"Politics" in this context means a form of communication, consensus and decision making in a group.
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.
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...
Also, many major historical scientific breakthroughs have been just a smart (usually rich) dude/dudette with a lot of free time and not a member of the conventional 'academic' system.
So somehow figure out a way for public to get in on the research instead of government restrictions on who can purchase supplies which limits research to the .0001% who have PhD's.
This opens the door to a lot more mind power going into research.
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.
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…
People don't (usually) get pissed off about idle chitchat. They do when their project is spiked.
> A basket of indicators all seem to document a trend similar to what we see with technology. Even as the number of scientists and publications rises substantially, we do not appear to be seeing a concomitant rise in new discoveries that supplant older ones. Science is getting harder. Nothing worth doing is easy. We have cleared the low hanging fruit and can now do the actual work. This is so exciting :) (also I wond…
Breathing is pretty easy.
But more seriously, I think what you said only applies in iterations of revolutions. A new breakthrough (e.g. new physics, new invention) could create a lot more low hanging fruit.
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.
See the book "the structure of scientific revolutions".