4 ms·

The line between crackpottery and genius is a fine one. If blogs had existed in 1900 and a certain patent clerk had written a post on his ideas about clock syn

The line between crackpottery and genius is a fine one. If blogs had existed in 1900 and a certain patent clerk had written a post on his ideas about clock synchronization somehow being related to electromagnetism, many would have dismissed him as a crackpot as well. The questions this article relates to are among the most profound and difficult that human reason has ever attempted to confront. I think one should be careful in labeling such ambitious speculation as crackpottery just because it doesn't yet amount to a fully coherent and formally testable theory.

throwawaymath 7y ago
Okay...but Einstein didn't write a blog. He published a paper for peer review. Some of his ideas remained controversial for decades, but he had a sufficiently mature, cogent and well-specified theory that he could at least work through hypotheses and publish results.
- tgflynn 7y ago
  He published that paper in 1905. Is it absurd to think that if the Internet existed in his time he might have blogged about his preliminary ideas before publishing a formal paper ?
  - throwawaymath 7y ago
    Absurd is a really strong word. I will say that I really doubt he'd blog about his ideas instead of just publishing them, even on arXiv, because all the examples of groundbreaking new work in the modern era have been blogged about contemporaneous with, or after peer review of formal papers. I'll also go further and say that, while there's a kernel of validity to your analogy, it's not the right analogy with which to deliver your overarching point. I don't think the publishing method for one of the most significant scientific advancements of the previous century is a particularly good lens for analyzing this blog post. The critical content of this post is far below the threshold usually associated with an idea sufficiently well formed to be publishable. Einstein had a minimum viable theory before he solicited feedback; and when he did solicit that feedback, it was through what we'd consider orthodox channels.
    - tgflynn 7y ago
      What you say is true. The main point I was trying to make was that given a speculative post of such breadth, which touches on such difficult issues as AGI, how the brain works and perhaps even the nature of conscious experience, and which makes some claims that are at least interesting, I think it's quite presumptuous to assert that these ideas are all nonsense without a deeper exploration of them. I certainly would not want to make such an assertion, despite being troubled by what I think are some inaccuracies in the author's description of certain physical concepts. Now a secondary issue is that it is true that as far as I'm aware major scientific discoveries have typically been initially published in much more developed form and have thus been the work of a single individual or of a relatively small group of closely affiliated individuals. I'm not convinced however that this historical model of very small scale scientific collaboration is necessarily the only one nor the best one in light of modern means of communication. It seems at least conceivable to me that there is a possible future in which the following hold: * There is some kernel of validity in this author's ideas. * A small number of other people find them intriguing and choose to collaborate with the author to further elaborate them. * This collaboration leads to major progress in our understanding of one or more of the areas mentioned above. For me the, admittedly very small, likelihood of such an outcome, justifies the author's post and its appearance on HN.
shadowgovt 7y ago
It is a fine line, but it exists. Results make the difference.
rad88 7y ago
This is a general purpose excuse for any rambling theory posted online.
gumby 7y ago
> If blogs had existed in 1900 and a certain patent clerk had written a post on his ideas about clock synchronization somehow being related to electromagnetism, many would have dismissed him as a crackpot as well. That "certain patent clerk" was hardly working in a vacuum; not only was he building upon the work of others (e.g. Lorentz just to pick someone) but he had been in school with some of them and was in constant communication with them, as he was hardly the only one working on the problem. This is not to minimize his brilliance (Special Relativity in particular has that wonderful property of being completely obvious once explained...but that you could almost see before the explanation but yet nobody had previously characterized) and the mind blowing nature of his three-paper year. But when published his work fell on fertile ground.
- tgflynn 7y ago
  > But when published his work fell on fertile ground. I'm not sure how fertile that ground was. It was still 3 years after the year he basically laid the foundations of modern physics before he was able to get an academic job.

throwawaymath 7y ago

Okay...but Einstein didn't write a blog. He published a paper for peer review. Some of his ideas remained controversial for decades, but he had a sufficiently mature, cogent and well-specified theory that he could at least work through hypotheses and publish results.

tgflynn 7y ago
He published that paper in 1905. Is it absurd to think that if the Internet existed in his time he might have blogged about his preliminary ideas before publishing a formal paper ?
- throwawaymath 7y ago
  Absurd is a really strong word. I will say that I really doubt he'd blog about his ideas instead of just publishing them, even on arXiv, because all the examples of groundbreaking new work in the modern era have been blogged about contemporaneous with, or after peer review of formal papers. I'll also go further and say that, while there's a kernel of validity to your analogy, it's not the right analogy with which to deliver your overarching point. I don't think the publishing method for one of the most significant scientific advancements of the previous century is a particularly good lens for analyzing this blog post. The critical content of this post is far below the threshold usually associated with an idea sufficiently well formed to be publishable. Einstein had a minimum viable theory before he solicited feedback; and when he did solicit that feedback, it was through what we'd consider orthodox channels.
  - tgflynn 7y ago
    What you say is true. The main point I was trying to make was that given a speculative post of such breadth, which touches on such difficult issues as AGI, how the brain works and perhaps even the nature of conscious experience, and which makes some claims that are at least interesting, I think it's quite presumptuous to assert that these ideas are all nonsense without a deeper exploration of them. I certainly would not want to make such an assertion, despite being troubled by what I think are some inaccuracies in the author's description of certain physical concepts. Now a secondary issue is that it is true that as far as I'm aware major scientific discoveries have typically been initially published in much more developed form and have thus been the work of a single individual or of a relatively small group of closely affiliated individuals. I'm not convinced however that this historical model of very small scale scientific collaboration is necessarily the only one nor the best one in light of modern means of communication. It seems at least conceivable to me that there is a possible future in which the following hold: * There is some kernel of validity in this author's ideas. * A small number of other people find them intriguing and choose to collaborate with the author to further elaborate them. * This collaboration leads to major progress in our understanding of one or more of the areas mentioned above. For me the, admittedly very small, likelihood of such an outcome, justifies the author's post and its appearance on HN.

shadowgovt 7y ago

It is a fine line, but it exists. Results make the difference.

rad88 7y ago

This is a general purpose excuse for any rambling theory posted online.

gumby 7y ago

> If blogs had existed in 1900 and a certain patent clerk had written a post on his ideas about clock synchronization somehow being related to electromagnetism, many would have dismissed him as a crackpot as well. That "certain patent clerk" was hardly working in a vacuum; not only was he building upon the work of others (e.g. Lorentz just to pick someone) but he had been in school with some of them and was in constant communication with them, as he was hardly the only one working on the problem. This is not to minimize his brilliance (Special Relativity in particular has that wonderful property of being completely obvious once explained...but that you could almost see before the explanation but yet nobody had previously characterized) and the mind blowing nature of his three-paper year. But when published his work fell on fertile ground.

tgflynn 7y ago
> But when published his work fell on fertile ground. I'm not sure how fertile that ground was. It was still 3 years after the year he basically laid the foundations of modern physics before he was able to get an academic job.