3 ms·
> the giant resonance mode. In this mode each novel idea, once it appears, spreads in an explosive manner in the theoretical community, sucking into itself a ma
by btrettel 7y ago
> the giant resonance mode. In this mode each novel idea, once it appears, spreads in an explosive manner in the theoretical community, sucking into itself a majority of active theorists, especially young theorists. Naturally, alternative lines of thought by and large dry out. Then, before this given idea bears fruit in the understanding of natural phenomena (due to the lack of experimental data and the fact that on the theory side crucial difficult problems are left behind, unsolved), a new novel idea arrives, the old one is abandoned, and a new majority jumps onto the new train.
Reminds me of Jamie Zawinski's "CADT Model" of software development. There seems to be a dynamic in many fields where fixing known problems or finishing a project doesn't seem important to many people.
- gameswithgo 7y agosounds like a decent simulated annealing or genetic algorithm search. which seems fine. smart people trying different ideas for a while.
- btrettel 7y agoI'm in favor of trying many different ideas, for a while, i.e., when a problem is new. But at a certain point you need to address issues that are viewed as critical. In the academic fields that I'm familiar with, I don't see that occur as frequently as people try new ideas that don't obviously address the most critical issues. These new ideas typically do address some issues but they might be regressions in some areas, ignore other important issues, or address the issues they focus on poorly. In software development you have bug trackers. In scientific research you have review articles. These are useful tools that should be used to guide new work. Otherwise you're not doing simulated annealing or whatnot, you're just doing an inefficient random search.