Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

Post by fargolime » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 5:30 AM UTC

chunky1994 wrote: post #60

fargolime wrote: post #17

> He doubts a similar breakthrough could be achieved in today's academic culture, because of the expectations on academics to collaborate and keep churning out papers. The opposite of an Einstein or Higgs. Academia no longer tolerates deep, unconventional thinking. Physics used to be a hobby, now its an industry to be protected from major change. For example, if you have basic knowledge of relativity you can go to ht…

In reading that link here are just a few things that seem to be wrong with it on first glance. (In the link attempting explain the flatness problem), one cannot just assume all galaxies are moving towards each other without first positioning a center (of those galaxies). That in itself invalidates the rest of the flatness argument, which is required for the article on your link. This was based on a precursory read, s…

Post by purringmeow » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 5:35 AM UTC

drdeca wrote: post #66

adamnemecek wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you can criticize things only if you have a better alternative.

No, but I would think that it is often useful to indicate when one does not know of a better option than the one one is criticizing. Because "this is a bad choice" has a connotation that that is not the one that should be made, but that a different known one should be made instead, I think. Of course, the indication can be implicit, or from context, etc. And there might be exceptions, But I think this generally holds…

Post by TheZenPsycho » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 5:40 AM UTC

purringmeow wrote: post #57

amerika_blog wrote: post #48

School is an obedience/memorization test, the exact opposite of the real-world applied thinking skills that are needed. Private schooling is bad; public schooling is even worse. That's where ideology substitutes for academics as well. Memorizing 20 ways to do something, and then finding a way to cram in each one on a test in an "applied" situation, leads to indiscriminate use of technique and poor debugging skills.

I am interested in what kind of alternative are you offering? How do you give basic knowledge to the majority of people?

Post by naiyt » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 5:45 AM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #64

kulkarnic wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few days? People get upset if you haven't replied in an hour. Seriously though, long periods of solitude is not what we need. I'd not be productive if I became a hermit, but I'd be a lot more productive if I had periods of quiet time, punctuated by moments of discussion. This is how thinkers and artists (and hackers) worked for a long time, before we wrongly convinced ourselves that being interruptible improves pro…

>A few days? People get upset if you haven't replied in an hour. I've solved this problem by always taking forever to answer e-mails. If it's important, people just call me. Whether this is good or not is questionable, however.

Post by dinkumthinkum » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 5:54 AM UTC

amerika_blog wrote: post #48

School is an obedience/memorization test, the exact opposite of the real-world applied thinking skills that are needed. Private schooling is bad; public schooling is even worse. That's where ideology substitutes for academics as well. Memorizing 20 ways to do something, and then finding a way to cram in each one on a test in an "applied" situation, leads to indiscriminate use of technique and poor debugging skills.