Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

motohagiography

You inhabit a global economy that was imagined by students in dorm rooms and couch surfing launch failures.

Working people today have the wealth and leisure of every single lady and gentleman scientist who has ever made a significant contribution - and we have the sum of human knowledge at our fingertips. You have running water, flushing toilets, and food delivery. The only thing standing in the way is a commitment to curiosity and competence. The beauty of science is it is in the evidence of reproducable experiments. All models are wrong, most theories are bullshit, and the people charged with progressing science for our species learned it in a couple lectures a week over three years or less. You can do valuable and edifying work in less time than it took to fully apprehend the disappointment of the Game of Thrones finale if you'd only watched 3blue1brown videos instead.

Prestige is what they offer you when they don't want to pay you what you are worth, and their esteem isn't worth the envy and sabotage it costs. If you are curious about something, find out. The one thing that I can guarantee that is true about this world is that it forgives you when you prevail, and when you fail, nobody cares. I say this to myself as much as anyone.

I was just reading this earlier today:

"“Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn't stop you from doing anything at all.” ― Richard P. Feynman "

Regardless of the source, these (and yours in the same vein) are some wonderful ideas.

Working people may have the wealth, but not the leisure. Working people are, by definition, working -- often during the most productive hours of the day. Scientific or artistic pursuits are usually in the off-hours: the early mornings, evenings and weekends, interrupted commuting, meal preparation, child care and housework. Lady and gentlemen scientists of the past were either wealthy or supported by patrons, and had at least eight more productive hours a day (on average) than today's hobbyist scientist.

True to some extent but middle class people in their 20s before having kids and after their kids are in high school have a ton of leisure time. It’s just usually spent spending money. Their entertainment dollars.

> the people charged with progressing science for our species learned it in a couple lectures a week over three years or less.

I beg to differ. Even for the undergrad level this feels naïve. There's much more learning going on outside the lecture and I'd wager that's where most of it is happening. For grad school this is definitely true. You learn the most when you stop taking classes and that period is generally associated with extremely unhealthy work life balances. I'm in my 5th year of grad school and I read probably a few papers in depth and a dozen or more at lighter levels every week. This is not including all the time I'm writing code, reading other people's implementations, or reading math books and blogs on the subjects. The people I know that research that have graduated also do a lot of similar things, just not at as high of a rate, and they have a healthier (but I'm not sure I'd call healthy) work life balance.

This inane kind of thinking only promotes the absurd armchair expertise we see where people think a few YouTube videos by communicators gives them sufficient knowledge to arrogantly argue with domain experts. I'll take pretentiousness over arrogance any day. The Internet is dominated with these armchair experts who group together in their bubbles and push out any who disagree with the "obvious" answers. They commonly criticize experts for not seeing something "obvious" which the experts actually accounted for but would require reading their actual publication rather than the telephone game that is science communicators.

No one is stopping you from getting domain expertise. No degree required. PhDs demonstrate self learning every day. But if you can't walk the walk then don't talk the talk. Shits a lot more complicated than you think. You're holding us back by trivializing things. It just encourages substaceless bickering between parties who are both severely misguided, instead of problem solving and working towards actual resolution.

Interesting divide. I prefer someone who is arrogant over someone who is pretentious because at least you know that while their arrogance may be ignorant and fatuous, at least it is sincere. You can fix arrogance with some sudden humility, but pretension defends itself to the death because it knows it is an impostor and it is fighting for its survival.

I have some sympathy for the beleaguered experts who respond to cranks, but if you are in the professing business, you don't always get to choose your audience. Who cares if someone criticizes an expert, criticism isn't science. Science means reproducible results or GTFO. The only question anyone needs to ask of their amateur interrogators is whether they are pursuing truth, or just acknowldegment and prestige. If it's the latter, you can just say, "go to school."

That last paragraph. Cuts like a knife

Beautifully put. These are important reminders.

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