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Comment by blueprint | Hacker News Reader

I hate to break it to you but that is part of science. Perhaps the major part of it too. Hypothesis: I can build a cabinet with these materials which will bear some load range. Experiment: I built it and it obviously works.

Now change cabinet to particle accelerator that a giant team of other theorists and engineers designed. Am I not doing science by participating in building it? So experimental scientists arent scientists?

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To me, you're describing the differences between a cook and a chef. Just because you've built something with well known methods doesn't make you a scientist. You didn't come up with anything new. In fact, we're starting to sound a lot like Apple. Apple is (in)famous for taking ideas that someone else did all of the hard work of developing and proving to work, and then take various ideas like that to combine into an actual useful working something. (They also do a lot of pure deep research as well, so don't think I'm going too far with the analogy.)

This image is burned into my retina https://en.meming.world/images/en/a/aa/Something_of_a_Scient...

semantics, I say. cooks are "chiefs" of certain things otherwise they'd have no value on a team. unless you're saying that chefs setting the menu means theyre more of a scientist. at worst you're saying e.g. scientists are like chefs in that their used their creativity to make up the standard model. at best you're saying chefs are theorists and cooks are experimental scientists which is , again, to my own point.

i'm saying that chefs are more likely to be aware of what is happening when doing the whipping, baking, cooling, etc and why that's important vs just doing it as a step. so when they experiment with the menus, there's a bit more than basic understanding in why they think the experiments might work. cooks are just the kids in chemistry class following the directions, and depending on how well they follow the directions (and to a point how well the instructions are written), they might not blow up the lab (or burn the m.f. soufflé)

says who? cooks at a fine restaurant better know everything about their part. but they chose to try to work under a greater chef because their eventual upward mobility as a practitioner is higher. literally chef means leader or the boss. in the rest of the world that usually means less specifically qualified. not likely here that a chef isnt a good cook but a good cook certainly has the ability to set a menu if they wanted. you're not making a strong argument imo.

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