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Oh bullshit. Know nothing's of the intricacies of the field love to pretend that the experts are dishonest or idiots. It is so tiring. I'm a neuroscientist, I k

Oh bullshit. Know nothing's of the intricacies of the field love to pretend that the experts are dishonest or idiots. It is so tiring. I'm a neuroscientist, I know nothing of this field, so I keep my damn mouth shut about it. People who've read a few pop physics books should also shut their damn mouths.

dnautics 6y ago
nobody's saying they're idiots. But it's not like the structure of how contemporary scientific discovery gets done isn't ridden with questionable processes that should make you doubt that the system is aligned with producing good science. There is nothing fundamentally different about how physics gets funded (TLAs like NSF, NIH giving out grants via committee), and how physics professors get promoted (H-factors and hiring committees, playing politics at conferences, choosing strategically to work for certain PIs, the truly smart grad students and postdocs burning out and quitting). Most of my peers from high school went into high energy physics (one works at JLab, another is a professor at an east coast college; the others quit or went into... other fields, like finance). Although I am no longer a practicing biochemist, when we got together we complained about the exact same things. So yeah, I don't know about the intricacies of what happens in physics. But that doesn't mean I don't have real insight about what's going on.
- anoncareer0212 6y ago
  sir this is a thread about Hubble data
  - dylan604 6y ago
    Whoa, there big fella! You've wandered away from the pack a little. Let's get you back with the herd before a wolf comes a-callin' Giddyup
andrewflnr 6y ago
I believe GP is trying to say that the people you hear the most from are not necessarily the real experts. The phenomenon of experts being silent while idiots make noise is damn near a human universal, so it's a hypothesis worth taking seriously regardless of the field. The problem is when people use that as an excuse to loudly substitute their own nonsense rather than try to find the actual experts.
- inopinatus 6y ago
  This is also a problem in product marketing. For example, throughout my career, whatever the commercial domain, there is almost always a noisy competitor whose product is an amateur hour shit-show, usually a superficial clone of the market leader, that still picks up market share from naive customers by sheer volume of message. When you’re trying to focus on making something that actually creates value for others this can be an irritating distraction. “Pay attention to competitors, but obsess over customers” isn’t always a comfortable mantra to fulfil.

dnautics 6y ago

nobody's saying they're idiots. But it's not like the structure of how contemporary scientific discovery gets done isn't ridden with questionable processes that should make you doubt that the system is aligned with producing good science. There is nothing fundamentally different about how physics gets funded (TLAs like NSF, NIH giving out grants via committee), and how physics professors get promoted (H-factors and hiring committees, playing politics at conferences, choosing strategically to work for certain PIs, the truly smart grad students and postdocs burning out and quitting). Most of my peers from high school went into high energy physics (one works at JLab, another is a professor at an east coast college; the others quit or went into... other fields, like finance). Although I am no longer a practicing biochemist, when we got together we complained about the exact same things. So yeah, I don't know about the intricacies of what happens in physics. But that doesn't mean I don't have real insight about what's going on.

anoncareer0212 6y ago
sir this is a thread about Hubble data
- dylan604 6y ago
  Whoa, there big fella! You've wandered away from the pack a little. Let's get you back with the herd before a wolf comes a-callin' Giddyup

andrewflnr 6y ago

I believe GP is trying to say that the people you hear the most from are not necessarily the real experts. The phenomenon of experts being silent while idiots make noise is damn near a human universal, so it's a hypothesis worth taking seriously regardless of the field. The problem is when people use that as an excuse to loudly substitute their own nonsense rather than try to find the actual experts.

inopinatus 6y ago
This is also a problem in product marketing. For example, throughout my career, whatever the commercial domain, there is almost always a noisy competitor whose product is an amateur hour shit-show, usually a superficial clone of the market leader, that still picks up market share from naive customers by sheer volume of message. When you’re trying to focus on making something that actually creates value for others this can be an irritating distraction. “Pay attention to competitors, but obsess over customers” isn’t always a comfortable mantra to fulfil.