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??
As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work
81–90 of 157 posts
Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
With the (somehow sadly) added value that the TV broadcast algorithm is kinda known by everyone (morning programs, prime time etc), and that if there wasn't nothing interesting to watch, we would just do something else.
yeah shared “did you this weeks X” is lame, but it was social glue for a long time.
Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of younger people think that building of solar power and wind power in the past years caused decrease of global CO2 emissions. In reality, global CO2 emissions have been increasing each year. https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions
The per region and per capita graphs do tell something you might want to consider.
Per region CO2 emissions don't matter, CO2 is a largely non-reactive gas, which is rapidly mixed throughout the entire troposphere in less than a year.
https://www.metlink.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/FAQ6_2.pd...
It's the total CO2 amount in atmosphere that determines radiative forcing.
The IPCC summarized the current scientific consensus about radiative forcing changes as follows: "Human-caused radiative forcing of 2.72 W/m2 in 2019 relative to 1750 has warmed the climate system. This warming is mainly due to increased GHG concentrations, partly reduced by cooling due to increased aerosol concentrations"
Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work
#84I 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…
Or to be clichéd and quote 2Pac:
> You don't see no loud mouth thirty-year old motherfuckers
Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of boomers thinks windmills are against the natural order and will end the world. Also solar parks are just the most ugly thing in the world. They must be banned.
My experience is that some people (of all generations) react really strongly against anything that involves birth and family. IVF, gamete donation, surrogacy, gay families, various experiments with human embryos or artificial wombs, much or all of this is banned in many countries of the world mostly due to the "ick" factor. The smarter opponents tend to decorate their objections in the "we must be very, very careful"…
Could it be all the conservative propaganda that gets people prejudiced against things they're ignorant about and aren't impacted by?
Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not disagreeing, but is a possible additional factor that younger, more naive, people just don't have what is and isn't "possible" so deeply ingrained in their minds? The disruptive part of the startup ecosystem kinda runs on that, right?
Young people understand that it isn't possible to win gambling, they due it anyways because of thrill seeking, which decays for multiple reasons as you get older, but has a lot to do with reputation/how established you are and your relative comfort level. This is probably why old people in highly competative fields take HRT, Dopamine Agonists, Stimulants or Psychedelics
A bunch of truly naive people trying "impossible" things sounds a bit like the Infinite Monkey Theorem.
However, what if they are grad students, or the best of the best product people/devs, which is what YC tries to harvest?
That improves the chances of the naive finding some actual disruption, does it not?
Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
My experience is that some people (of all generations) react really strongly against anything that involves birth and family. IVF, gamete donation, surrogacy, gay families, various experiments with human embryos or artificial wombs, much or all of this is banned in many countries of the world mostly due to the "ick" factor. The smarter opponents tend to decorate their objections in the "we must be very, very careful"…
Could it be all the conservative propaganda that gets people prejudiced against things they're ignorant about and aren't impacted by?
IDK, but I have read a lot of objections from feminists as well.
Where I live, the religious population is under 10 per cent, but complete atheists will argue like this as well.
I suspect the "ick" factor is simply inherent here. Kids provoke instinctive protective/emotional reactions in a way that other phenomena don't.
For example, it is quite obvious that Trump faces a lot more popular backlash due to his suspected connections with Epstein than over his actual threats to Denmark/Greenland and war with Iran.
Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work
#88It is not about the age, it is about the time you work in a specific field.
If you are newcomer to a field you simply don't know what is difficult and what is not. So you have a more open mind.
See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuval_Ne'eman
This guy was a soldier for 15 years before he studied physics for 3 years and discovered SU(3) and quarks before Gell-Mann did.
So switching fields opens your mind for new discoveries. If you stay very long in the same field you're mind gets just used to all the unsolved problems.
Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work
#89>>> It was the Nobel laureate and quantum physicist Max Planck who wrote that “science advances one funeral at a time” (which is actually a somewhat artful translation of his original statement, in German) about revered gatekeepers and their nostalgia for insights past that keep leaps in scientific understanding from happening. Turns out, he may have been right. Or he may have been wrong. I think it was Paul Feyerabe…
You can't teach an old scientist new tricks; because they know all the tricks.
Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work
#90If researchers are like hackers, they can do their best work when they’re unaware that it’s impossible. As time progresses, what was radical can or often does become mainstream. Decades later, it’s part of the background and something that can be replaced.
A lot of time is lost in maintenance and overhead. Pundits and fundraisers don’t do research.