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Comment by suoduandao3 | Hacker News Reader

I rather enjoy talking to smart 15 year olds. They're curious about the world and more likely to have fresh takes. What's not to like?

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The problem is, even smart 15 year olds with fresh takes have to learn that no matter how interesting their ideas are, the scientific establishment is much more focused on finding good evidence to support incremental discoveries, rather than wide-eyed speculation about how complex biological processes work.

(I was that 15 year old, and then after many years of sciencing, realized that it was nothing like what I thought, and that all my best ideas were either wrong, ahead of their time, or stolen by more accomplished scientists.

...and why not encourage to keep being like the 15 year old instead of accepting the status quo?

The only problem i see here is, apparently this "establishment" got to you faster than you could remind yourself of what's truly important to you.

I hate when people get discouraged by other people who mostly don't care that much & are afraid... they feed on your Neugier. Don't feed them. Feed other minds alike & screw the establishment.

becase when the 15 year old grows up, unless they are an absolute true genius (and even then), if they try to go around chasing wild ideas, they won't get funding or the ability to run the experiments to build a case for their hypothesis.

That seems like a problem with society (maybe an academia) more than 15 year olds no?

Besides, a lot of people interested in a wild theory greatly ups the chances someone gets funding to test the hypothesis, no?

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