[HN Gopher] The Newton hypothesis: Is science done by a small el...
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The Newton hypothesis: Is science done by a small elite?
Author : barry-cotter
Score : 33 points
Date : 2021-01-15 06:37 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nintil.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nintil.com)
| silicon2401 wrote:
| This is a fascinating question that does a great job of bringing
| realism and idealism head to head. If we're realistic, obviously
| a lot of people have great potential, but only a very few will
| both have enough potential and enough drive to realistically hit
| it big; but can we tell who they are? Idealistically, it's not
| entirely fair to give a select few all the support; but is it
| fair to deprive all of humanity of the advances an elite few
| could make, just to make the elite few's contemporaneous peers
| feel equally attended to?
|
| Personally, I think when you stack the probabilities of potential
| * interest * means * drive * luck, progress _is_ led by an elite
| few. The elite few are sometimes bolstered by a massive support
| system, but part of being the elite, successful few is being able
| to garner that support, whether through personality, luck, etc.
|
| For levity, I'll also add that one thing I love about history in
| general is finding a tidbit like this:
|
| > It is fitting that a pair of Coles gets a reply by a pair of
| MacRoberts (1986) who argue that bibliographies are incomplete.
| Out_of_Characte wrote:
| The premise of treating everyone equally under the law (or
| otherwise) despite knowing for certain that not everyone is
| equal is that it helps prove beyond reason of doubt who the
| elite truly is. That is, the top contributers are in part there
| because of socioeconomic factors, exeptional parental support
| or a culture of sorts (Think Chess versus Go) But trying to at
| least give everyone resources to compete helps us find the
| exeptional few.
| weichi wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by "premise", but I really hope
| that the justification for "treating everyone equally under
| the law (or otherwise)" is not because doing so "helps prove
| beyond a reason of doubt who the elite truly are". For that
| would imply that if a better way is found of "proving" who
| the elite truly are, we could abandon the idea of equal
| treatment. Or that we could abandon equal treatment if we
| agreed that "proving who the elite are" is actually
| unimportant. In fact, I'm personally skeptical of the value
| of "proving beyond reason of doubt who the elite truly are",
| but also highly committed to the principal of equal
| treatment, so I think the two are unrelated.
|
| Perhaps I am misunderstanding your point?
| dalbasal wrote:
| | Ah the dreamers ride against the men of action / Oh see the
| men of action falling back - leonard cohen
|
| To champion the idealists for a moment, what's the practical
| implication of realism in this case? Elitism in retrospect is
| one thing, but trying to bring it forward or explicitly
| advancing it seems like it would result poorly. By what
| criteria would an Albert Einstein, the patent clerk, ever have
| been selected? Your best bet at an Einstein is to let everyone
| in and see who discovers relativity.
|
| It seems to me that the only way to enrich the elite is to
| empower the masses, so to speak. In any case, I think it's more
| important to focus on what circumstances allow a person's
| potential to emerge. Potential is a highly available resource.
|
| Like the author note, the problem isn't that most will fail.
| It's that most will never try, tenure or no. The free
| mindedness required to even attempt greatness is often
| frivolous. Frivolousness is more of an egalitarian than an
| elitist hallmark.
|
| *Note: I'm not referring to politics or economics in any way.
| Just playing along with the language of the article.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Science is done by many people every day.
|
| But advancing the frontier of science is a different thing. It
| requires you to be in touch with the latest developments in the
| field and that does require full time dedication, sometimes
| resources in the form of assistants, infrastructure...
|
| Very rarely this happens outside academic institutions and well
| funded laboratories.
| rootsudo wrote:
| Much of the first documented papers were done by people who had
| access to wealth and free time and wanted to just let other
| people know what they discovered.
|
| https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/information-culture/the...
| lr1970 wrote:
| Most of the scientific breakthroughs are achieved by select few
| super talented scientists. But since we have no way to tell ahead
| of time who will become such a genius, we should educate and
| employ large number of scientists even if only tiny few of them
| will become next Einsteins.
| gaogao wrote:
| Reminds me of the Ratatouille monologue
|
| > In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef
| Gusteau's famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize, only
| now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can
| become a great artist, but a great artist can come from
| anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than
| those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau's, who is, in this
| critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France.
| I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more.
| codingprograms wrote:
| Almost everything in society is built by a few people. The best
| ideas and processes come from a small minority, the rest of us
| are just along for the ride
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Actually, the rest of us are building things. The ideas and
| processes are the goals or blueprints that need to be
| implemented.
|
| Today I watched four guys pour the foundation of a house using
| very conventional methods. Those four guys weren't along for
| the ride. They were building the house. True they didn't come
| up with the method, nor the concrete, but they did build part
| of the house.
|
| Likewise, the person who made my taco last night might not have
| invented the taco but she did make it.
|
| Very often the most impressive part of building something isn't
| the novelty, it's the raw effort.
| dalbasal wrote:
| > There are various levels of epistemic nihilism one can go,
| culminating into the "We can't ever know who or what will be
| successful" so we should fund everyone equally, maximally
| equalizing funding. I don't agree with this, and will discuss
| scientific egalitarianism and lotteries in the next part
|
| I enjoyed this a lot. Lots of stimulating ideas and a
| refreshingly robust way of thinking.
|
| But... being in the "IDK" camp, and being a self hating
| empiricist, I smarted a little at the "nihilism" quip. I'm
| absolutely not against these kinds of pursuits though. If I held
| the pursestrings, I'd give this man (or woman.. who wrote this?)
| a go.
|
| I just don't think we can get far beyond "lets give this a try"
| in our knowledge/prediction of what will work here. We're talking
| about how to fund, and therefore organize, science. There almost
| certainly isn't one way, and results will likely be different in
| different between, fields and such.
|
| Game theory also plays a role. Funding methods are legible, and
| legible criteria (such as citations) quickly become game fodder.
| The best defence against this might be to throw out criteria
| regularly. One of the reasons I'm game for what the author
| suggests is that the "co-funding" model where private interests
| provide 50% of the cash to prove merit is extremely played out.
| There was a rationale there too. I'm sure you could support it
| with "n-hypothesis" and such. That breaks down though, a new
| rationale emerges. Ideally, whatever mechanism is used tries to
| consciously avoid citation-seo or somesuch.
|
| I think there are elephants in the room, when it comes to funding
| systems. We are, almost by definition, constructing a social
| system... a society almost. One where livelihood, success,
| prestige and such are at stake. These can't be taken for granted.
| A concept like "tenure" invents a type of person... a tenured
| professor. I think we should be thinking and defining these these
| problems in such terms. "Lets invent X" where X is a type of
| institution, title, station etc.
| ramoz wrote:
| Anyone thinks this applies to competitive enterprise software
| business? Or is there large complex systems models where
| innovation happens (like in science discoveries) at scale.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Keeping a few theoretical physicists to develop paradigms to
| calculate things, but firing anyone who would use those paradigms
| to calculate things. Yeah, great plan, I'm sure that will be
| helpful.
|
| Citations are heavily biased towards papers that open questions,
| and against papers that answer questions. Compare the value of a
| paper that uses a new technique to answer one question to the
| value of a paper that uses established techniques to answer a
| thousand questions. The former will get many citations, but the
| latter is the one you'd want to read, most likely, if you wanted
| answers to questions.
| feralimal wrote:
| If some scientists did complete some work comparable to the works
| "Darwin, Einstein, or Galileo" do you think this would reach
| everyday folk? Or would industry monetise said discovery, and
| that might best be done by withholding information or even
| suppressing it completely, if it challenged vested interests?
| oriolid wrote:
| No scientist of that caliber would certainly want to publish
| that kind of research, even if their career depended on it. If
| they did, it certainly would be ignored by Nature, Science and
| others, and the newspapers who pick their content from those
| would have no idea.
| juanbyrge wrote:
| I think they may be underestimating the interactions that
| scientists have with other perhaps lesser folks in their field.
|
| For example, Einstein may not have been able to publish the
| special theory of relativity without the work produced by lesser
| known scientists such Lorentz, Michaelson, Morley, Maxwell,
| Grossman. And transitively all of those scientists were
| undoubtedly influenced by others who may be even lesser known or
| influential.
| konjin wrote:
| Not to mention that the majority of 'big' ideas are published
| simultaneously by multiple people at different locations.
|
| Big name scientists are usually the ones happy with publishing
| a half baked idea instead of being universally original.
|
| One need to look at Turing and Post, or Darwin and Wallace for
| a comparison.
|
| I blame papers being referenced by author name for this mental
| bias in the sciences.
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| It's scientists all the way down
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