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Science Is Getting Harder

mattsclancy.substack.com

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Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#91

Post by melony »

aborsy wrote: post #78
cycomanic wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Teller touches upon this subject. In an interview published on YouTube, he says, increasing scholarships and science funding further doesn’t help; because money doesn’t buy science, money buys technology; we actually don’t have enough scientists on whom to spend the money. And that, most of the advances in quantum mechanics and atomic physics were made by individuals genuinely interested in problems in these domains,…

I can't decide whether Teller's head is stuck up the rafters of the ivory tower he lives in or whether it is held up where the sun does not shine. There are so many students in academia searching for the magic path through graduate school where you can get a permanent role either in teaching or tenureship (research) that it is becoming a crisis for both STEM fields and otherwise. It is easy for him to preach when he is one of the few that have "made it" through a combination of intellectual pedigree, geopolitical necessity, and the plucking of low hanging fruits in an emerging field.

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#92

Post by potbelly83 »

hankman86 wrote: post #76
kergonath wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private companies are often quite happy to fund an academic research group for a specific project. They also sometimes use this as a source of pre-vetted, competent future hires for R&D positions. The focus is quite different in private companies and research institutions.

Yes, but why? How can taxpayer-funded research institutions morally justify doing research that doesn’t increase our collective wealth or at least lead to some useful application in the short term?

Because aprior it's not really clear what does increase our collective wealth. For example, the whole quantum age (and hence the silicon age), came about from people trying to understand the spectrum of radiation emitted from a heated box. If you spoke to someone at the end of the 19th century they'd probably think this was a waste of time, and tell you that people should be trying to make steam engines more efficient.

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#93

Post by wrp »

laingc wrote: post #60
btrettel wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

Very much so. Also, there is the gain from applying new tools to discover new features of old, "boring" problems.

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#94

Post by giantg2 »

paulkrush wrote: post #89
giantg2 wrote: post #66

I feel like life in general is getting harder. There is less chance of escaping past mistakes, or more chance that a mistake will ruin you. There are more things you have to stay on top of benefits and finance wise. There are more options for many things, which leads to more analysis of what's best. The systems we use every day, from cars to computers, are more complex.

At the same age? Your comment just sounds like someone that is getting wiser with age. I agree to all you said, but I think it's because I am wiser with age. Is life really getting harder at the same age and at the same opportunity? Man, this is hard question to ask because you are looking at the rear view mirror.

It seems like an objective increase vs prior generations. Just look at stuff like child anxiety, how much different school is for kids today (more complex), and how many more financial instruments exist today (401k, 403b, IRA, Roth vs std, HSA, FSA, tax complexity, etc.

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#95

Post by Qem »

paulkrush wrote: post #89
giantg2 wrote: post #66

I feel like life in general is getting harder. There is less chance of escaping past mistakes, or more chance that a mistake will ruin you. There are more things you have to stay on top of benefits and finance wise. There are more options for many things, which leads to more analysis of what's best. The systems we use every day, from cars to computers, are more complex.

At the same age? Your comment just sounds like someone that is getting wiser with age. I agree to all you said, but I think it's because I am wiser with age. Is life really getting harder at the same age and at the same opportunity? Man, this is hard question to ask because you are looking at the rear view mirror.

Well, at my age my parents already had their own house and a couple of children. So I think GP has a point.

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#96

Post by xkcd1963 »

hankman86 wrote: post #64

This should worry everyone. Economic progress is intimately tied to scientific discoveries. And if that’s slowing down, we may still see some business model innovation (think: Uber), but less progress that increases humanity’s collective wealth. Making matters worse, population count in highly educated countries is shrinking, inevitably leading up to fewer brains trying to solve hard problems than before. For now, I…

There have been many great scientists from all around the world, from all kind of backgrounds. Your view is biased.

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#97

Post by xkcd1963 »

concordDance wrote: post #23
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…

Life is getting harder in some fairly concrete and objective ways. Most noticably the number of hours the average person needs to work to be able to buy a house has gone up a lot.

we gotta just build more housing

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#98

Post by xkcd1963 »

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…

I would argue psychology is not a science and I'm not alone with that opinion

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#99

Post by XorNot »

melony wrote: post #91
aborsy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teller touches upon this subject. In an interview published on YouTube, he says, increasing scholarships and science funding further doesn’t help; because money doesn’t buy science, money buys technology; we actually don’t have enough scientists on whom to spend the money. And that, most of the advances in quantum mechanics and atomic physics were made by individuals genuinely interested in problems in these domains,…

I can't decide whether Teller's head is stuck up the rafters of the ivory tower he lives in or whether it is held up where the sun does not shine. There are so many students in academia searching for the magic path through graduate school where you can get a permanent role either in teaching or tenureship (research) that it is becoming a crisis for both STEM fields and otherwise. It is easy for him to preach when he…

Yeah I really don't understand what he's saying there - where does he think his salary comes from? Money buys those interested individuals time to pursue that interest, and the more of it we have the more people we can put in the right time and place to find the next big thing.

Re: Science Is Getting Harder

#100

Post by maxFlow »

giantg2 wrote: post #66

I feel like life in general is getting harder. There is less chance of escaping past mistakes, or more chance that a mistake will ruin you. There are more things you have to stay on top of benefits and finance wise. There are more options for many things, which leads to more analysis of what's best. The systems we use every day, from cars to computers, are more complex.

Agree with this. There is a lot more information to process, and it's being generated at greater and greater rates. Ideas that used to be an entire paper in the 1970s have now become an extra paragraph in an undergrad textbook from the 2020s. Further and further specialization in every field--e.g. in SWE: SysAdmin branched out into DevOps and SRE, Data Science branched out into Data Engineering, Analytics Engineering, ML Engineering, etc. It seems we have built more efficient tools, but the barrier to entry to use them is taller; and once you can use them they seem to require longer and longer hours of tinkering and supervision. Yet if you don't put in the hours your tools/systems start to decay simply by virtue of progress[1]. Tool-integreation costs are also higher: new tools don't exist in a vacuum but rather need to be adapted and vetted by the host system.

Somewhat related, but I believe this is the reason why academia will continue to lag behind industry. Academia has a bias for fundamental knowledge, but as information grows, fundamental knowledge represents a smaller proportion of all knowledge[2]. Anecdotally I have observed a 2-5 year gap between innovation in industry vs academia (CS). Academia often far behind looking to monetize the success of industry via newly minted formulaic programs. This was not always the case, e.g. databases came mostly from academia into industry in the 1970s, but nowadays innovation in the field seems industry-driven. To be fair, perhaps academia has already explored much of the relevant concepts, and it's easier to innovate by way of implementing these same ideas in different programming languages and business models.

[1] What are we left with then? More efficient but also less robust systems? Being more efficient, i.e. generating more output, seems to be the chosen trade-off today, when you can afford extra human intervention, but will it ever be the case when we reach an inflexion point and economics favor robustness/stability over output?

[2] Not to mention the issues with defining something as fundamental. Should fundamental knowledge be frozen in time, or instead act a sliding window? I.e. when, if at all, does something go from fundamental to obsolete? and when does something go from innovation to fundamental? Is it merely popularity driven?

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