Science Is Getting Harder • Hacker News Board

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#51

Post by AnimalMuppet » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 8:53 PM UTC

_jal wrote: post #28

interroboink wrote: post #14

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…

Politics happens via communication, but what differentiates politics is that it is mostly about resource allocation. People don't (usually) get pissed off about idle chitchat. They do when their project is spiked.

OK, but it's a particular kind of resource allocation.

Economics is about resource allocation using money and markets. Politics is about resource allocation using... influence? Connections? Coercion?

If we had an open, transparent market where sponsors could bid on research, it might work better. (Hey, HN: Anybody want to set up such a market, funding it by taking a small cut of the bid?)

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#52

Post by foobarbecue » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 8:59 PM UTC

aborsy wrote: post #38

Having been long in academia, what has increased is commercialization of all kinds of science, number of science managers (like modern day billionaires, taking credit for the work actually done by the graduate students and postdocs, growing to be huge), number of politicians putting their names in various papers (I see managers co-authoring on average a paper per week), brutal competition for status and citations, ex…

I'm a scientist at heart, and my PhD is science, but this is a very good description of why I decided to work as an engineer instead.

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#53

Post by ralphmelish » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 8:59 PM UTC

ren_engineer wrote: post #45

aborsy wrote: post #38

Having been long in academia, what has increased is commercialization of all kinds of science, number of science managers (like modern day billionaires, taking credit for the work actually done by the graduate students and postdocs, growing to be huge), number of politicians putting their names in various papers (I see managers co-authoring on average a paper per week), brutal competition for status and citations, ex…

I agree, modern academia seems to be more about meta-skills of gaming the system and playing politics rather than who is the best at actual research. Probably why so many potential academics just go into private industry >I don’t think this system will last for too long. Balaji has a good prediction on that. link?

I believe he is talking about this thread: https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1450324226129338369?lang=...

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#54

Post by btrettel » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 9:13 PM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #36

This is especially true in math and physics. You will find that no matter what problem you can think of, either it has already been solved to the highest level of abstraction, or it's an unsolved and famous problem, or not worthwhile/trivial. Like, what about analogous of elliptic functions for non-elliptic integrals? already been done. The past century has seen a huge explosion of research into STEM subjects, from m…

> This is especially true in math and physics. You will find that no matter what problem you can think of, either it has already been solved to the highest level of abstraction, or it's an unsolved and famous problem, or not worthwhile/trivial.

This hasn't been my experience in fluid dynamics. There are so many places where one could apply a standard approach that people haven't. It takes some effort and experience to recognize that, but it's still true in my experience.

I think what you described is probably true for sexier areas like high-energy physics, but not true for more "boring" areas like turbulent flows. Yes, turbulence is "unsolved", but that doesn't mean that useful information couldn't come from applying standard approaches to particular turbulent flows. The variety of industrially-relevant flows is quite large.

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#55

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 9:16 PM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #34

interroboink wrote: post #14

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…

Imagine we somehow were able to purge all political and media influence, past and present, from the minds of each person today. And then had them rank the issues they find most relevant in the world. Where do you think the things people today spend all their time politicking on would rank? Similarly imagine they wrote out their 'oughts' of what the world ought look like in their eyes. How much overlap do you think th…

[deleted]

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#56

Post by aborsy » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 9:18 PM UTC

ren_engineer wrote: post #45

aborsy wrote: post #38

Having been long in academia, what has increased is commercialization of all kinds of science, number of science managers (like modern day billionaires, taking credit for the work actually done by the graduate students and postdocs, growing to be huge), number of politicians putting their names in various papers (I see managers co-authoring on average a paper per week), brutal competition for status and citations, ex…

I agree, modern academia seems to be more about meta-skills of gaming the system and playing politics rather than who is the best at actual research. Probably why so many potential academics just go into private industry >I don’t think this system will last for too long. Balaji has a good prediction on that. link?

He addressed this topic in a podcast around two years ago (he has too many podcasts to find it).

He was asked about his views on academia vs industry, having been in both himself. He said capable people in academia will gradually realize that it’s better to start companies or do the same work in industry, rather than writing these grants.

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#57

Post by cycomanic » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 9:22 PM UTC

aborsy wrote: post #38

Having been long in academia, what has increased is commercialization of all kinds of science, number of science managers (like modern day billionaires, taking credit for the work actually done by the graduate students and postdocs, growing to be huge), number of politicians putting their names in various papers (I see managers co-authoring on average a paper per week), brutal competition for status and citations, ex…

I think we underestimate the amount of politics that was going on in science previously.

Really compared to the shenanigans with Newton, Leibnitz or Hooke and Newton, much of what we see today is quite harmless. Or take for a more recent example Teller and Oppenheimer. I think in science (but not only in science) we tend to idealise the old days and scientists, because we remember the discoveries not the politics and their personal flaws. I would even argue that this greatly demonstrates the success of the scientific process. In the end the best science won, despite all the political infighting.

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#58

Post by icelancer » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 9:25 PM UTC

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #43

rscho wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you've not met my advisors. Please no. Old scientists sometimes contribute to push the younger generation forward. In my experience though, most of the time they're a liability, due to their incredibly overdeveloped ego and their deep involvement into politics. I'm an academic MD, so this phenomenon might be more marked than in other fields. See the book "the structure of scientific revolutions".

There's no private industry competition in academia, which allows those old scientists to become old slow codgers. Most scientific breakthroughs through out history were just private citizens outside of the conventional academic establishment. We need to put an end to these government restrictions on buying supplies and equipment which keeps the research down to just a tiny fraction of the population. Allowing privat…

>> Allowing private citizens to do research would put a fire under those old codgers asses.

I have a few published papers in peer-reviewed journals with 30+ citations and I'm a college dropout, but I run a company that can fund/produce this kind of research as part of our mission statement. It's not really restrictions, but rather money/funding, and willingness of private companies to publish publicly (which is a big blocker for most).

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#59

Post by cycomanic » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 9:29 PM UTC

btrettel wrote: post #54

paulpauper wrote: post #36

This is especially true in math and physics. You will find that no matter what problem you can think of, either it has already been solved to the highest level of abstraction, or it's an unsolved and famous problem, or not worthwhile/trivial. Like, what about analogous of elliptic functions for non-elliptic integrals? already been done. The past century has seen a huge explosion of research into STEM subjects, from m…

> This is especially true in math and physics. You will find that no matter what problem you can think of, either it has already been solved to the highest level of abstraction, or it's an unsolved and famous problem, or not worthwhile/trivial. This hasn't been my experience in fluid dynamics. There are so many places where one could apply a standard approach that people haven't. It takes some effort and experience t…

I agree with you there are so many areas still vastly unexplored, fluid dynamics or the whole area of complex systems is definitely a prime example. Stephen Hawkins called his inaugural lecture "Is the End in Sight for Theoretical Physics?" suggesting that we are very close to the end of theoretical discoveries.

Although less famous I would argue that prediction was just as wrong as "640kB should be enough for everyone", lots of extremely fundamental discoveries had been made since then, and we don't seem to significantly closer to a theory of everything.

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#60

Post by laingc » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 9:30 PM UTC

btrettel wrote: post #54

paulpauper wrote: post #36

This is especially true in math and physics. You will find that no matter what problem you can think of, either it has already been solved to the highest level of abstraction, or it's an unsolved and famous problem, or not worthwhile/trivial. Like, what about analogous of elliptic functions for non-elliptic integrals? already been done. The past century has seen a huge explosion of research into STEM subjects, from m…

> This is especially true in math and physics. You will find that no matter what problem you can think of, either it has already been solved to the highest level of abstraction, or it's an unsolved and famous problem, or not worthwhile/trivial. This hasn't been my experience in fluid dynamics. There are so many places where one could apply a standard approach that people haven't. It takes some effort and experience t…

I think GP is conflating Maths with Pure Maths. While I’m sure there is new ground to break in Pure Maths, I would agree that it’s getting harder and harder.

However, as you note, in Applied Maths there are more unsolved problems than you could address with a million researchers.

A physicist or pure Mather social looks at Navier-Stokes and says, “Oh, we know how that works, nothing to do there I guess”, whereas the applied mathematician looks at it and goes, “holy cow, this could keep my entire department busy for the rest of our natural lives”.