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It would be much better if these articles started by describing the experiments themselves and experimental results. Instead the article and even recent 'scien

It would be much better if these articles started by describing the experiments themselves and experimental results. Instead the article and even recent 'scientific' papers now start with the outlandish conjectures by the author based on some strained potential interpretation of the evidence.

darkerside 5y ago
Starting with why makes a lot of sense before you start putting technical details in front of a lay audience
- aeternum 5y ago
  The problem is the why is complete conjecture. No one knows how human memories are stored, it's ridiculous to assert that quantum noise plays a role when we can't even tell whether it's the brain's connectome that stores memories vs. molecules like talin.
bonoboTP 5y ago
This is a typical problem with Quanta. I'm not quite sure who their target audience is, but I doubt they get anything beyond the vaguest idea of what is done here. And if you know more, you don't need to be told about Thomas Bayes etc. and you could probably quickly realize that the research is an overinterpreted incremental thing dressed up as a breakthrough to advance careers and back-scratch some famous academics who then go on to pose as the face of, and to take credit for an entire subfield/line of research. Laypeople would gain much more from learning about solid, settled and stable pieces of knowledge about various scientific aspects. Instead, we get these weird frankenstein stories mixing basic concepts and cutting edge research, where in the end readers go aways with a smug sense of satisfaction of keeping up with new scientific developments while not really understanding what it really was about. Instead, listening to a well-structured didactic lecture or reading a textbook has much better "return on investment", but it's less satisfying than the glossy magazine (or its online equivalent).

darkerside 5y ago

Starting with why makes a lot of sense before you start putting technical details in front of a lay audience

aeternum 5y ago
The problem is the why is complete conjecture. No one knows how human memories are stored, it's ridiculous to assert that quantum noise plays a role when we can't even tell whether it's the brain's connectome that stores memories vs. molecules like talin.

bonoboTP 5y ago

This is a typical problem with Quanta. I'm not quite sure who their target audience is, but I doubt they get anything beyond the vaguest idea of what is done here. And if you know more, you don't need to be told about Thomas Bayes etc. and you could probably quickly realize that the research is an overinterpreted incremental thing dressed up as a breakthrough to advance careers and back-scratch some famous academics who then go on to pose as the face of, and to take credit for an entire subfield/line of research. Laypeople would gain much more from learning about solid, settled and stable pieces of knowledge about various scientific aspects. Instead, we get these weird frankenstein stories mixing basic concepts and cutting edge research, where in the end readers go aways with a smug sense of satisfaction of keeping up with new scientific developments while not really understanding what it really was about. Instead, listening to a well-structured didactic lecture or reading a textbook has much better "return on investment", but it's less satisfying than the glossy magazine (or its online equivalent).