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As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

nautil.us

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Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#41

Post by ninkendo »

lmm wrote: post #31
ceejayoz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a physicist, so this may be a dumb question… but do we even know for sure it’s a problem with a solution?

Well, the universe does something with extremely small but extremely heavy objects, unless you think that merely creating that situation will cause the universe to cease to exist.

You don’t even need that to understand the tension between QM and GR:

What is the gravitational field of a particle in a superposition of two different locations? What about when the superposition collapses? Does the gravity field instantly change shape, faster than light?

The consensus right now is this is so hard to measure we’ll basically never know the answer from just observations. Maybe having a gravitational influence on something at all, collapses the superposition? Maybe if you put the particles in a large enough configuration it’s impossible to maintain superposition? Maybe there’s enough background noise in our particular universe to make such a measurement permanently impossible, and we get by on a technicality? Nobody knows.

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#42

Post by dylan604 »

hackthemack wrote: post #6

I prefer the full quote by Douglas Adams. I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented…

As for 3, I think by the time you're in that age bracket, you've seen enough to not be fooled as much by the marketing so that a sale from a brochure alone is much less likely. Take the crypto fad as an example. To me, it was obvious that the "good" use would be limited and by far exceeded by the "bad" use. Current AI hype train is leading me in the same direction as nothing has quite lived up to what's printed on the tin. It just has that same icky pump&dump feel. At least AI has a some products that have a wider range of use than crypto

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#43

Post by toast0 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #5
kulahan wrote: post #3

Author must not have heard of Nobel Disease - many laureates go on to propose absolutely batshit insane theories. Sounds disruptive to me…

They’re usually outside their field of expertise, though. It’s like being a billionaire; you stop getting “no, that’s stupid” feedback and it rots your brain.

This happens in lots of different fields. I feel like people need to start developing pseudonyms when they achieve success, so that they still get feedback. Either that, or they have to carefully cultivate a group of no people to hang around and tell them which ideas are stupid.

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#44

Post by [deleted] »

johnny22 wrote: post #17
ktallett wrote: post #9

Disruptive work nowadays is not very popular with institutions and doesn't win you grants. What does win grants is plodding along on a same path usually towards some end goal that is the latest buzzword. Those who stay in academia all start aspirational and wish to change the world, but the system sucks it out of them.

nowadays? It's never been popular.

[deleted]

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#45

Post by torben-friis »

munificent wrote: post #28
slillibri wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about number 3. As a 53 year old Gen X'er, I still haven't come across things that see against the natural order. The main things I don't understand are things like the Humane AI pin, which didn't seem against the natural order, I just didn't see the appeal or usefulness of it. Maybe it just doesn't seem like there is much new being invented.

> I still haven't come across things that see against the natural order. So many people these days spend hours watching short-form videos spray endlessly from a screen while they stare dumbly at it. They aren't even picking which videos to watch, just letting the algorithm do it. Every time I see someone doing that, I just absolutely cannot relate to what's going on in their head at all. I'm certainly not above watch…

>They aren't even picking which videos to watch, just letting the algorithm do it.

As a teenager, I used to torrent content I liked and scoff at my parents generation for letting tv feed then slop :)

It's hard to understand why TikTok is addictive from the outside, precisely because if you look at the app over someone's shoulder you'll see their tailored content, not yours.

Give the algorithm a couple weeks and it WILL find the weird thing that gets you to check. Maybe you find someone restoring books relaxing, or like toy commercials from where you were a kid, or are attentive on news of potential pandemics out of fear. It will learn.

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#46

Post by dylan604 »

delecti wrote: post #36
munificent wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still haven't come across things that see against the natural order. So many people these days spend hours watching short-form videos spray endlessly from a screen while they stare dumbly at it. They aren't even picking which videos to watch, just letting the algorithm do it. Every time I see someone doing that, I just absolutely cannot relate to what's going on in their head at all. I'm certainly not above watch…

I don't want to defend short-form video feeds too much, but "They aren't even picking which videos to watch" is overstating it. Essentially nobody behaves like: watch 100% of a video, swipe, watch 100%, swipe. The expected behavior is that you swipe away if you're not interested, which is often done within a fraction of a second. Accordingly, Tiktok's content selection algorithm heavily weighs watch time as a signal…

> In many ways, TikTok is kinda like channel surfing.

I've been making the same comparison as well. As someone not watching the videos yet still hear the videos being played, the constant switching is very noticeable much like being the one in the room that didn't have the clicker in their hand. You're not in control of the constant switching which I think makes it even that much more annoying.

Rather than just parking on the marathon, choosing to turn it off and do something else entirely is still my preferred "old man yells at clouds" option.

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#47

Post by ktallett »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #25
johnny22 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nowadays? It's never been popular.

I was surprised that the article did not mention that Einstein was not originally given the Nobel prize for relativity because the Old guard did not like the work...

A nobel prize was very rarely given for theory, especially one that hadn't been stringently experimented on until the 50's to the -70's.

The photoelectric effect definitely was more solid to give out the prize on.

Saying this I think the Nobel prize is becoming less relevant, especially as nowadays one person is rarely the reason advancements are made.

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#48

Post by tim333 »

renox wrote: post #11
jampekka wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFA also refers to just Einstein's 1905 papers. He published general relativity 10 years later. And after GE he contributed e.g. stimulated emission, Bose-Einstein statistics, Einstein-de Sitter cosmological model and the EPR paradox, among lots of other stuff. Also the claim "toward the tail end of Einstein’s life, he argued strenuously against the concepts undergirding the emerging field of quantum mechanics" downp…

Yes and being 'opposed' to QM contributed to expose the 'spooky action at distance' that QM implies, which is very important.. It's a pity that experimentators were able to demonstrate it only a long time after Einstein's death, what would have been his reaction??

I'm sure he would have found it interesting.

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#49

Post by aleph_minus_one »

hackthemack wrote: post #6

I prefer the full quote by Douglas Adams. I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented…

I disagree with

> 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

> 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

> 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

My experience is rather that early in your life you get "imprinted" with specific values, and then you judge technology by how it fits these values:

For example, I was "imprinted" against surveillance since I was born in West Germany, and people were telling me what evil surveillance stuff the Stasi does in "the other Germany (GDR)". Also I deeply detested authorities (I was likely born this way), and thus got attracted to hacking.

Thus, for example:

I already heard about the internet early in my life (from magazines) - say, when I was 8 years old - but I actually saw how people organized stuff "offline" against what I would consider "how the world naturally works" (believe it or not).

Smartphones were invented when I was between 15 and 35, but I immediately saw them as surveillance bugs. The same holds for the advent of social networks.

On the other hand, 3D printing got mainstreamed later than when I was 35, but I immediately got in love with it, and couldn't wait the day until 3D printing got more reliable and I earned enough money to get a 3D printer, since 3D printers fit my values very well.

So, in my experience it is typically not about the year when something was invented, but rather about whether the invention is a good or bad fit for the values that you were shaped with in your early life.

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#50

Post by ktallett »

johnny22 wrote: post #17
ktallett wrote: post #9

Disruptive work nowadays is not very popular with institutions and doesn't win you grants. What does win grants is plodding along on a same path usually towards some end goal that is the latest buzzword. Those who stay in academia all start aspirational and wish to change the world, but the system sucks it out of them.

nowadays? It's never been popular.

Yes, as nowadays we have the ability to simulate or experiment theories at a great speed. A century ago it was a lot harder so scepticism made sense as you couldn't easily prove your theory. You feel we should be able to take more risks now, but if anything we take as many or fewer, therefore I fear mavericks have become even less popular.
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