8 ms·

What I found interesting is that the period for reappearance of “failed ideas” is roughly the length of a career. Coincidence or due to any real effect I don’t

What I found interesting is that the period for reappearance of “failed ideas” is roughly the length of a career. Coincidence or due to any real effect I don’t know. I wrote a little about it here: “Don’t be discouraged by the failure of technology or approaches of the past. If the problem is still important after all this time then it’s a problem worth solving. Don’t avoid unsuccessful solutions. Avoid insignificant problems. Success this time around could be unlocked by advances in any number of unrelated disciplines.” https://blog.eutopian.io/the-next-big-thing-go-back-to-the-future./ https://blog.eutopian.io/the-next-big-thing-go-back-to-the-f...

jonplackett 5y ago
I read a while back that scientific ideas usually take about 50 years to be accepted. Which means essentially that they never are accepted, the people who disagree with them just die and the next generation embrace them. Einstein pretty much hated quantum mechanics and ended up making a bunch of discoveries while making every effort to disprove it. So if that’s how scientists do it - who should be the most amenable profession to new information and ideas, what chance do the rest of us have?
- dougabug 5y ago
  > Which means essentially that they never are accepted, the people who disagree with them just die and the next generation embrace them. This is to some degree the point made in Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Re...
- raziel2701 5y ago
  I think the new ideas get accepted when either the old guard die, and/or an undeniable technology gets created by use of the new idea.
  - teddyh 5y ago
    “A new scientific truth does not generally triumph by persuading its opponents and getting them to admit their errors, but rather by its opponents gradually dying out and giving way to a new generation that is raised on it. […] An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth.” — Max Planck, 1948
    - auggierose 5y ago
      Fuck. I don't have that kind of time.
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      I don't think this is accurate. Sometimes the facts are so plain that the new truth wins (or, at least, the old truth dies) quickly without much fuss. Perhaps the earliest example of this was the destruction of the Ptolemaic view of the solar system by Galileo's observation of the phases of Venus. This was a "killer fact" that rapidly (after 1611) led to abandonment of that venerable theory, even by its supporters (although Clavius would die soon after). Sales of the standard texts on Ptolemaic astronomy, Sacrobosco's Sphere and Peuerbach's Theoricae novae planetarum went into immediate terminal decline. A more recent example is the Big Bang's success over the Steady State model. The cosmic microwave background radiation was such an overwhelming piece of evidence in favor of the former that only cranks persisted with the latter (including unfortunately Hoyle, admittedly.)
- burnished 5y ago
  I mean.. Einstein did prove himself wrong a bunch he just hated it. Its not like the work was flawed, or not performed. Its hard to find the sort of fault in that you seem to be implying.
  - jonplackett 5y ago
    I’m not really implying ‘fault’. Who the hell has the right to criticise Einstein! Certainly not me and probably not any other mere human. Just pointing out that he fought hard against a new idea (that did turn out to be right) - with, as you say some really helpful consequences! Maybe he will still turn out to be right in the end though and some grand unification theory is eventually found that is beautiful and simple!
raziel2701 5y ago
I went through grad school and I saw how change comes about one funeral at a time. A big shot professor that has made their name with their pet theory/work will fiercely defend it against competing ideas, and people will defer to their expertise. It's not scientific, it's egotistic. They are a wall against progress that gets removed upon death. These professors can also create a dogma through their students who also all rely on the continued success of their theory for their employment. The incentives are misaligned against accepting new theories if it means someone will lose prestige. This article resonated strongly with me.
- bee_rider 5y ago
  There's always the quote attributed to Clarke, "If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong." It is unfortunate -- sometimes very smart people try good ideas, but the world isn't quite ready yet so they fail, move on to something different, and write off the old idea.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ta988 5y ago
  Exactly the reason why I left academia. Egos competing for space, money or talk-time to defend themselves not the progress of science.
  - mnl 5y ago
    We tend to romanticise it, but in the end it's just another job. It shouldn't, because selling you doing science is not the same as doing science, but on the other hand social expectations are that you must have a job, so what kind of exemption were we hoping for exactly? Once you realise it's ordinary people looking for whatever ordinary people look for anywhere else everything falls into place. Some science gets done regardless, we're talking about professionals here.
    - 5y ago
hungryforcodes 5y ago
Wow, that's incredibly well expressed. I bookmarked it - I rarely do that too.
flir 5y ago
That generational thing sounds a lot like IT's eternal flip-flop between thick clients and thin clients. (I'm fully expecting "web browsers are too thick, we need a thin alternative" to appear any day now). On the back-end, serverless is time-sharing. Your attempt-fail-stigmatise curve has a lot in common with the Gartner hype cycle.
- padthai 5y ago
  I would argue that the birth of Gemini and the (timid) Gopher revival have to do with this. They are very far from being mainstream though.
- sheikheddy 5y ago
  > "web browsers are too thick, we need a thin alternative" isn't this the thesis of mighty.app?
sul_tasto 5y ago
I found your article very interesting, but how does one know which problems are ripe for revisiting?

jonplackett 5y ago

I read a while back that scientific ideas usually take about 50 years to be accepted. Which means essentially that they never are accepted, the people who disagree with them just die and the next generation embrace them. Einstein pretty much hated quantum mechanics and ended up making a bunch of discoveries while making every effort to disprove it. So if that’s how scientists do it - who should be the most amenable profession to new information and ideas, what chance do the rest of us have?

dougabug 5y ago
> Which means essentially that they never are accepted, the people who disagree with them just die and the next generation embrace them. This is to some degree the point made in Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Re...
raziel2701 5y ago
I think the new ideas get accepted when either the old guard die, and/or an undeniable technology gets created by use of the new idea.
- teddyh 5y ago
  “A new scientific truth does not generally triumph by persuading its opponents and getting them to admit their errors, but rather by its opponents gradually dying out and giving way to a new generation that is raised on it. […] An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth.” — Max Planck, 1948
  - auggierose 5y ago
    Fuck. I don't have that kind of time.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    I don't think this is accurate. Sometimes the facts are so plain that the new truth wins (or, at least, the old truth dies) quickly without much fuss. Perhaps the earliest example of this was the destruction of the Ptolemaic view of the solar system by Galileo's observation of the phases of Venus. This was a "killer fact" that rapidly (after 1611) led to abandonment of that venerable theory, even by its supporters (although Clavius would die soon after). Sales of the standard texts on Ptolemaic astronomy, Sacrobosco's Sphere and Peuerbach's Theoricae novae planetarum went into immediate terminal decline. A more recent example is the Big Bang's success over the Steady State model. The cosmic microwave background radiation was such an overwhelming piece of evidence in favor of the former that only cranks persisted with the latter (including unfortunately Hoyle, admittedly.)
burnished 5y ago
I mean.. Einstein did prove himself wrong a bunch he just hated it. Its not like the work was flawed, or not performed. Its hard to find the sort of fault in that you seem to be implying.
- jonplackett 5y ago
  I’m not really implying ‘fault’. Who the hell has the right to criticise Einstein! Certainly not me and probably not any other mere human. Just pointing out that he fought hard against a new idea (that did turn out to be right) - with, as you say some really helpful consequences! Maybe he will still turn out to be right in the end though and some grand unification theory is eventually found that is beautiful and simple!

raziel2701 5y ago

I went through grad school and I saw how change comes about one funeral at a time. A big shot professor that has made their name with their pet theory/work will fiercely defend it against competing ideas, and people will defer to their expertise. It's not scientific, it's egotistic. They are a wall against progress that gets removed upon death. These professors can also create a dogma through their students who also all rely on the continued success of their theory for their employment. The incentives are misaligned against accepting new theories if it means someone will lose prestige. This article resonated strongly with me.

bee_rider 5y ago
There's always the quote attributed to Clarke, "If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong." It is unfortunate -- sometimes very smart people try good ideas, but the world isn't quite ready yet so they fail, move on to something different, and write off the old idea.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ta988 5y ago
Exactly the reason why I left academia. Egos competing for space, money or talk-time to defend themselves not the progress of science.
- mnl 5y ago
  We tend to romanticise it, but in the end it's just another job. It shouldn't, because selling you doing science is not the same as doing science, but on the other hand social expectations are that you must have a job, so what kind of exemption were we hoping for exactly? Once you realise it's ordinary people looking for whatever ordinary people look for anywhere else everything falls into place. Some science gets done regardless, we're talking about professionals here.
  - 5y ago

hungryforcodes 5y ago

Wow, that's incredibly well expressed. I bookmarked it - I rarely do that too.

flir 5y ago

That generational thing sounds a lot like IT's eternal flip-flop between thick clients and thin clients. (I'm fully expecting "web browsers are too thick, we need a thin alternative" to appear any day now). On the back-end, serverless is time-sharing. Your attempt-fail-stigmatise curve has a lot in common with the Gartner hype cycle.

padthai 5y ago
I would argue that the birth of Gemini and the (timid) Gopher revival have to do with this. They are very far from being mainstream though.
sheikheddy 5y ago
> "web browsers are too thick, we need a thin alternative" isn't this the thesis of mighty.app?

sul_tasto 5y ago

I found your article very interesting, but how does one know which problems are ripe for revisiting?