4 ms·
Papers like this are so terse. I understand the need to use correct verbiage; but to the layman, this is incomprehensible.
by thomastjeffery 8y ago
Papers like this are so terse.
I understand the need to use correct verbiage; but to the layman, this is incomprehensible.
- abdullahkhalids 8y agoWith all due respect, these papers are not written for the layman. They are written for the few thousand people who work in the field or near enough to understand this work. Single results in physics (and science) in general are almost never individually relevant to the public. The public should read either review or meta papers, or they should read the articles/books written by scientists for public consumption. As a physicist, I rarely upvote physics papers on HN, unless there is insightful commentary in the comments. This is not an insult to anyone who is not a scientist - just that jargon is necessary for rapid progress, and understanding jargon requires developing expertise by many years of work.
- copperx 8y agoI think OP was questioning how is this paper fits in an generalist IT/business forum.
- abdullahkhalids 8y agoI totally agree with them that it should not be posted here.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- krastanov 8y agoThis paper is really not meant for the layman. Even PhD physicists would find it terse unless they are working in the field of quantum information or AMO physics. However, there are many exciting and great resources where anybody interested can learn more about advanced physics. "The Theoretical Minimum" or Feinman's Lecture series are a great long on boarding experience that starts slow but gets pretty serious towards the end. And many researchers have more pop-sci type of blogs and media materials for those that want just a quick fix.
- stephengillie 8y agoTo those saying the paper isn't for the "layperson", or average reader - papers like this exist to fluff the ego of the author more than they exist to convey information. It's very possible to write in a way that is both accessible to everyone and still informative to experts.
- franciscrick1 8y agoAnything you don't understand is just designed to insult you and fluff the ego of the elitist author?
- krastanov 8y agoI find this statement very offensive. Papers like this exist to update people on the state of the art in their field (a target audience of rarely more than 100k people in the whole world). As others have mentioned already, there are great review articles, specifically meant for people just entering the field, and even they require quite a bit of dedication for a layperson to understand. Or to phrase it in a different way: how often do emails on the dev mailing lists of open source project include a detailed description of the project that would be enough to bring laypeople up-to-speed.
- stephengillie 8y agohttps://www.xkcd.com/547/ https://www.xkcd.com/547/
- krastanov 8y agoWhat point are you trying to make with the comics? Of course a textbook or a review paper should be written clearly and simply, we already said that, and it has nothing to do with the original point of writing efficient letter when talking to your colleagues (as opposed to the public).