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> She said she never had any trouble initiating contact with authority figures when she had some business to discuss. “We’re all just people,” she says.
by sitkack 5y ago
> She said she never had any trouble initiating contact with authority figures when she had some business to discuss. “We’re all just people,” she says.
- phkahler 5y agoI've found the same. If you contact an authority with serious questions about the subject they are an authority on, they will generally respond in a positive way. Keep in mind, this is very different than kids asking a math PhD for help with algebra homework - algebra is not their specialty and there is no reason to contact them specifically about such things.
- sitkack 5y agoI have also had similar experience cold-emailing domain authorities. I spent days writing 10s of words, double checking my facts, doing my homework and have gotten a response everytime. They are excited that someone is reading their work, thinking about it and then having the gumption to contact them. I think it is actually quite rare.
- phkahler 5y agoI contacted a guy about a paper he'd written on image de-blurring. Just some high level questions because the paper was behind a paywall. He asked for my snail-mail address and sent a full color printout of the paper in a large envelope! I still have it.
- sydthrowaway 5y agoHmm.. crank?
- gyc 5y agoA professor of mine once told me about when he was in school he studied a book written by a famous expert in the field and found a bunch of errors. So he wrote back to the author with the error and, after some back and forth correspondence, the author offered him a job after graduation. So that was how he first got his foot in the door in the field.