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HackerNews amazes me with how for nearly any topic there will be deep expertise in the thread. Thank you for sharing

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
But then it also usually impresses me with how people think companies haven’t thought of and tried the things they thought of in reading the article and thinking about it for a few minutes.
- jiggawatts 5y ago
  But sometimes they haven't thought of "it". These forums have an interesting kind of collective intelligence. People commenting here rarely (if ever) have full knowledge of the specifics of the particular instance of the topic at hand, but often have very deep knowledge of the associated theory. In my experience, if you take any 10 people and form a team or company to make some product, they won't have anywhere near the breath or depth of knowledge that people here could bring to bear. What they have is time and persistence, but I guarantee you that they're "flailing about" and wasting time on many wrong or suboptimal solutions. In most cases, someone here could set them on the right track within minutes. It's so strange to me that the Internet enables this, but we use this superpower for essentially nothing more than casual chit-chat. We show off our knowledge, where we happen to have a particularly impactful trick up our sleeve, win some meaningless points, and feel smug about ourselves for an afternoon. I do this all the time. It's fun. But what would happen if we did this properly? Like Uber? Made it into an app where startups, research teams, and software developer houses could use the collective knowledge and advice of hundreds of thousands of people instead of just the dozens on their staff? Just click here to get expert advice on your question, $55 guaranteed price? Would you click? Maybe it is time that we all plugged into the group consciousness and started contributing to the collective... /s
  - MauranKilom 5y ago
    To some extent, that's just StackOverflow (and the other StackExchange sites). Not quite as commercially focused as you imagine, but at least the code parts definitely are used like that. For more individualized problem solving, this just amounts to consultancies, no?
  - jaclaz 5y ago
    >Made it into an app where startups, research teams, and software developer houses could use the collective knowledge and advice of hundreds of thousands of people instead of just the dozens on their staff? Maybe it would be needed that those (startup, research teams, software developer houses) learn before to listen to their customers/users. Everyone of course is different and has different experiences, but in the last few years (personally) I found an increasing "detachment" between the people that write the software and their users. Maybe it us just me, but it seems like users (even paying ones in case of commercial tools) are considered more a nuisance than a resource.
  - fuzzfactor 5y ago
    "Someday scientists will discover" These are code words I almost never use. I'm no Gary Larson [0]. But someday scientists will discover that they were plum fools for dropping the advancing momentum in vacuum science as badly as they did when solid-state electronics needed to be quickly developed & adopted. [0] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/ed/7a/98ed7ae52758dbb4a645e956edde89cf.gif https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/ed/7a/98ed7ae52758dbb4a645... https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse3.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.po_jghkD0euzxVB90kRQdgAAAA%26pid%3DApi&f=1 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
- musingsole 5y ago
  We're talking about quantum mechanics and vacuum chambers. If you can spec such a system... congratulations, you're an expert. Kathy down the street doesn't even know this technology exists. On patents...if you're in a sufficiently unexplored space, simple ideas become eminently patentable. So -- given the context -- yeah, pretty much any thought made that is aware of these systems is likely patentable. Profitable to patent? That's a different question.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  I think engineers tend to have a borderline-compulsive need to understand why the simple/obvious solution didn’t work. Sure sometimes the comments are along the lines “duh, just do X” but I think they’re usually “why not do X?” asked earnestly. It’s hard to tell on the internet but I think most engineers ask questions like that not to second-guess decisions but to get a better understanding of complicated systems.
brabel 5y ago
The OP seems to know something, but I wouldn't go as far as taking the comment above as coming from an "expert"... the fact they feel confident to make recommendations about improvements on the chamber without even reading the paper actually tells me they are just armchair expert.
- a_e_k 5y ago
  I don't know about that. At least for myself, when I say that I've read a paper I mean that I've read it thoroughly from end-to-end and thought deeply about it, not unlike what I do when I'm doing a peer review. (I.e., "grokking" the paper.) There are way too many papers to do that for every one that comes out in my field, though, so I've gotten pretty good at skimming a paper quickly and making a snap assessment. I might say I'm aware of or acquainted with said paper, but I'd never say I'd really _read_ it. So charitably speaking, I'd interpret the top-level commenter (avsteele) as meaning that they've only skimmed the paper and these are off-the-cuff comments, rather than that they haven't looked at the paper at all.
- avsteele 5y ago
  I am an expert. I have a PhD in experimental atomic physics. My work thesis work was on laser cooled atoms and ions. I have multiple publications in this topic area^. I started and run a company that is making the first commercial instruments that rely on laser-cooled atoms.^^ There is nothing wrong with making few conversational comments without being aware of the details in a particular paper. This is how scientists talk to each other BTW. If I was at a conference with the authors I'd say something similar to the OP above, then they'd agree or disagree. ^https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=mBN1xwcAAAAJ&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=mBN1xwcAAAAJ&hl=en ^^https://www.zerok.com https://www.zerok.com

But then it also usually impresses me with how people think companies haven’t thought of and tried the things they thought of in reading the article and thinking about it for a few minutes.

jiggawatts 5y ago
But sometimes they haven't thought of "it". These forums have an interesting kind of collective intelligence. People commenting here rarely (if ever) have full knowledge of the specifics of the particular instance of the topic at hand, but often have very deep knowledge of the associated theory. In my experience, if you take any 10 people and form a team or company to make some product, they won't have anywhere near the breath or depth of knowledge that people here could bring to bear. What they have is time and persistence, but I guarantee you that they're "flailing about" and wasting time on many wrong or suboptimal solutions. In most cases, someone here could set them on the right track within minutes. It's so strange to me that the Internet enables this, but we use this superpower for essentially nothing more than casual chit-chat. We show off our knowledge, where we happen to have a particularly impactful trick up our sleeve, win some meaningless points, and feel smug about ourselves for an afternoon. I do this all the time. It's fun. But what would happen if we did this properly? Like Uber? Made it into an app where startups, research teams, and software developer houses could use the collective knowledge and advice of hundreds of thousands of people instead of just the dozens on their staff? Just click here to get expert advice on your question, $55 guaranteed price? Would you click? Maybe it is time that we all plugged into the group consciousness and started contributing to the collective... /s
- MauranKilom 5y ago
  To some extent, that's just StackOverflow (and the other StackExchange sites). Not quite as commercially focused as you imagine, but at least the code parts definitely are used like that. For more individualized problem solving, this just amounts to consultancies, no?
- jaclaz 5y ago
  >Made it into an app where startups, research teams, and software developer houses could use the collective knowledge and advice of hundreds of thousands of people instead of just the dozens on their staff? Maybe it would be needed that those (startup, research teams, software developer houses) learn before to listen to their customers/users. Everyone of course is different and has different experiences, but in the last few years (personally) I found an increasing "detachment" between the people that write the software and their users. Maybe it us just me, but it seems like users (even paying ones in case of commercial tools) are considered more a nuisance than a resource.
- fuzzfactor 5y ago
  "Someday scientists will discover" These are code words I almost never use. I'm no Gary Larson [0]. But someday scientists will discover that they were plum fools for dropping the advancing momentum in vacuum science as badly as they did when solid-state electronics needed to be quickly developed & adopted. [0] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/ed/7a/98ed7ae52758dbb4a645e956edde89cf.gif https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/ed/7a/98ed7ae52758dbb4a645... https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse3.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.po_jghkD0euzxVB90kRQdgAAAA%26pid%3DApi&f=1 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
musingsole 5y ago
We're talking about quantum mechanics and vacuum chambers. If you can spec such a system... congratulations, you're an expert. Kathy down the street doesn't even know this technology exists. On patents...if you're in a sufficiently unexplored space, simple ideas become eminently patentable. So -- given the context -- yeah, pretty much any thought made that is aware of these systems is likely patentable. Profitable to patent? That's a different question.
elliekelly 5y ago
I think engineers tend to have a borderline-compulsive need to understand why the simple/obvious solution didn’t work. Sure sometimes the comments are along the lines “duh, just do X” but I think they’re usually “why not do X?” asked earnestly. It’s hard to tell on the internet but I think most engineers ask questions like that not to second-guess decisions but to get a better understanding of complicated systems.

brabel 5y ago

The OP seems to know something, but I wouldn't go as far as taking the comment above as coming from an "expert"... the fact they feel confident to make recommendations about improvements on the chamber without even reading the paper actually tells me they are just armchair expert.

a_e_k 5y ago
I don't know about that. At least for myself, when I say that I've read a paper I mean that I've read it thoroughly from end-to-end and thought deeply about it, not unlike what I do when I'm doing a peer review. (I.e., "grokking" the paper.) There are way too many papers to do that for every one that comes out in my field, though, so I've gotten pretty good at skimming a paper quickly and making a snap assessment. I might say I'm aware of or acquainted with said paper, but I'd never say I'd really _read_ it. So charitably speaking, I'd interpret the top-level commenter (avsteele) as meaning that they've only skimmed the paper and these are off-the-cuff comments, rather than that they haven't looked at the paper at all.
avsteele 5y ago
I am an expert. I have a PhD in experimental atomic physics. My work thesis work was on laser cooled atoms and ions. I have multiple publications in this topic area^. I started and run a company that is making the first commercial instruments that rely on laser-cooled atoms.^^ There is nothing wrong with making few conversational comments without being aware of the details in a particular paper. This is how scientists talk to each other BTW. If I was at a conference with the authors I'd say something similar to the OP above, then they'd agree or disagree. ^https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=mBN1xwcAAAAJ&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=mBN1xwcAAAAJ&hl=en ^^https://www.zerok.com https://www.zerok.com