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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

#91

Post by GTP »

ordu wrote: post #53

> 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 inte…

Did Einstein ever say that QM is non local, and therefore it is wrong? The discussions around this topic seem to imply this, but I don't know if this happened. Also, AFAIK what Einstein really didn't like, was the idea that, at a fundamentals level, our reality isn't deterministic. This is at odds with our everyday experience, but it seems to have been confirmed by experiments. So maybe focusing on what their thoughts about locality were could be missing the forest for the tree.

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#92

Post by loloquwowndueo »

leonidasrup wrote: post #75
silvestrov wrote: post #69

Earlier 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.

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

Imagine how much more they would have increased if it weren’t for all the solar and wind capacity.

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#93

Post by throwaway52348 »

slillibri wrote: post #27
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 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.

When I was a child in the 80s, 2026 was in the FUTURE. The expectations I had are not yet met. I have not seen anything that is not just an evolution of what we already had. The only exception may be how the internet usage has changed the economy and the world in general. Maybe we are only allowed one or two major changes in our lifetimes? (maybe AI will be the last change)

Don't get me wrong. The world has generally become a better place, and I would not want to go back in time. But we are so far from where we could have been. I am actually more afraid that we will revert because the rule based world order that we has created stability (at least in the west) seem to be at risk.

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#95

Post by [deleted] »

gkoz wrote: post #85
inglor_cz wrote: post #72

Earlier 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?

[deleted]

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#96

Post by myrmidon »

leonidasrup wrote: post #83
krige wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Regional emissions do matter for the conclusions you draw.

All high-income countries already trend down in emissions.

Global emissions are rising because poorer countries that were basically almost "no emission"/capita in the past are still catching up (but that catch-up is less steep than in the past because green energy is available from the get-go).

Conclusions would be: Emission reductions in rich countries need to be aaccelerated, and helping poor countries peak at a lower level would probably be prudent (but good luck selling such policies to alt-right voters).

"Renewable are not helping" is not a sensible conclusion.

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#97

Post by Xcelerate »

I feel like we still don’t have great research on how much of this is due to biological factors related to age and how much is due to confounding factors.

I suspect that sustained creativity may be a result of continuous exposure to new experiences and concepts (which younger people are naturally situated to encounter quite often), so I try to consistently add novelty to my life as I get older, specifically targeting things way outside my comfort zone or previous interests.

For example, I’ve always been sort of uneasy with flying, so I figured I would sign up for general aviation classes and learn to fly myself, which is something I never would have had the slightest inclination toward when I was younger. I ultimately didn’t go through with it, as while signing up, my wife strongly insisted that I find a different form of “novelty” to pursue, but I think it decently illustrates what I was attempting to accomplish.

Some more mundane examples include listening to music that I don’t enjoy, completely mixing up how I dress after decades of wearing the same thing, reading books opposite my interests, taking classes in fields different than what my degree was in, and trying to constantly meet people who are very different from myself.

I guess we’ll see if this has any effect or not.

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#98

Post by idiotsecant »

Xcelerate wrote: post #97

I feel like we still don’t have great research on how much of this is due to biological factors related to age and how much is due to confounding factors. I suspect that sustained creativity may be a result of continuous exposure to new experiences and concepts (which younger people are naturally situated to encounter quite often), so I try to consistently add novelty to my life as I get older, specifically targeting…

I'm not sure old farts doing experience tourism is recreating the conditions of youth, and I say that as a fellow old fart.

It seems to me that being young and stupid has the advantage of making people hungry for success damn the consequences in a way that is more subdued as we age. This partly is a thing of biology, I think, and partly a thing of understanding consequence.

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#99

Post by myrmidon »

leonidasrup wrote: post #75
silvestrov wrote: post #69

Earlier 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.

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

To be fair, a lot of younger people also think that human extinction by climate change is a significant threat (it is not), while a lot of older people believe that a nuclear war could eradicate our species (also no).

Re: As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

#100

Post by ontouchstart »

I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between human aging and “filling up” the context window in Agentic AI: the “chain of thoughts” getting so heavy that nothing new can be created.

On the other hand, there was lot of disruptive work did survive, or we can call them “hallucinations”.

Hindsight is 20/20.

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