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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

#51

Post by dylan604 »

zoogeny wrote: post #16
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…

This feels apt in more than just science/technology. It matches my experience with culture as well, e.g. music and movies.

I knew I was officially old when I had to start trying to decipher what a teen was saying to me. All of the words were spoken in the language I speak, all of the words were heard by me, but their use of those words were not a use I was familiar.

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#52

Post by tim333 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #4
Animats wrote: post #2

Einstein spent his later career trying to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics. He failed. So has everyone after him. It's not about Einstein being old. It's that it's a really hard problem.

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 nature follows general relativity and quantum mechanics so presumably they can co-exist. We just don't have a mathematically consistent theory as to how.

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#53

Post by ordu »

> Even the greatest minds, such as Einstein, transitioned from disruptor to gatekeeper when quantum mechanics threatened his nostalgic view of the universe

Just watch Veritasium[1] take on this claim. Eistein claimed that QM in Copenhagen interpretation is non-local. Bohr claimed he proved Einstein wrong. And then came Bell and ruled out local hidden variables, proving the QM is non-local, at least in Copenhagen interpretation. Pity neither Einstein nor Bohr lived to that moment, so we can't know what they would say on that.

But in any case Einstein was right all the time.

[1] https://youtu.be/NIk_0AW5hFU

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#54

Post by _carbyau_ »

cgriswald wrote: post #30
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 think that if the pattern exists, it is strongly muted for GenX because everything we are seeing (and more) was virtually promised to be here “any day now” during the hay day of science fiction media. If anything, 2026 in the real world isn’t futuristic enough compared to what was “supposed” to have happened by now.

>hay day of science fiction media

I played Shadowrun. I am both disappointed but mostly glad it is not happening according to that game universe history! I do want cool cybereyes though...

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#55

Post by lmm »

ninkendo wrote: post #41
lmm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Not all interpretations of QM have collapses, which tend to be underdescribed even in purely QM terms.

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#56

Post by scarecrowbob »

ojbyrne wrote: post #39
readthenotes1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was shocked that the article did not mention Kuhn as the source for the two paradigms. Has he been forgotten already? And of course if you haven't read that book, it's insightful and easy

It’s almost like a corollary to the Douglas Adam’s principle referred to in the article - if there’s a theory about social behavior formulated before you’re born, it’s fair game to reformulate it.

As much as I enjoy DA, Kuhn takes it a little further- it's almost like folks live in completely different worlds because the worlds are made up of fundamentally different basic parts...

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#57

Post by jampekka »

ninkendo wrote: post #41
lmm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> 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?

This is a symptom of the problem of gravity/spacetime being a handled as a classical field, not really the problem itself. The electromagnetic field for example has this exact same problem, but it's handled by the electromagnetic field being quantized. The problem is that nobody is able to fully quantize gravity.

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#58

Post by vjk800 »

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 feel this more and more as I age. Especially after having children.

I used to be a "tech guy" (like most people here probably) and was excited about new technology. Now my main feeling when something disruptive (like AI currently) comes up is: "why the hell do people need to rock the boat".

The thing is, I'm perfectly happy living my life as I have been living so far, concentrating on doing stuff with my children and having fun. When the world changes, stuff I need to worry about it: is this going to affect my job in the future? What is the long term effect of exposing my children to this? Is the stuff I teach my children going to be relevant in the future after this disruption has happened?

I don't want to be forced to learn new stuff. I mean, I can learn new stuff occasionally for fun, but it's not fun if my life and salary depends on it. Fuck the tech bros trying to change everything up.

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#59

Post by vjk800 »

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…

> 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.

This is how TV broadcasts also work, though. You could even argue there's an algorithm behind TV broadcasts too - it's just a kinda poor human-run algorithm trying to maximize viewer numbers.

Unlike many people, I still often watch TV broadcasts to relax for exactly this reason - there's no decision fatigue since I don't need to choose what to watch. Usually there's only one channel with something that's even remotely interesting and it's kind of an obvious choice.

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#60

Post by vjk800 »

dylan604 wrote: post #51
zoogeny wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels apt in more than just science/technology. It matches my experience with culture as well, e.g. music and movies.

I knew I was officially old when I had to start trying to decipher what a teen was saying to me. All of the words were spoken in the language I speak, all of the words were heard by me, but their use of those words were not a use I was familiar.

It's even worse when you live in a small country with high amount of immigration. Half of the new words are borrowed from other languages or internet memes and there's no way to decipher their meaning without looking it up.
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