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Yeah, cynicism is actually terrible for science, and as a result many scientists aren't overly cynical. I think it's something that happens as folks mature: the

Yeah, cynicism is actually terrible for science, and as a result many scientists aren't overly cynical. I think it's something that happens as folks mature: they tend to look for the positives in papers, rather than the negatives. This has certainly been my experience in cryptography: as a student you often start off proposing schemes which get broken by your advisor/collaborators (not out of malice, but just because broken schemes are broken), and so you learn to react to novel ideas with "how is this broken?". However, as you mature, you realize that all new correct ideas arise from the ashes of many broken attempts, and so your reaction slowly changes to "how can I fix this?", leading to an overall more positive outlook on both your work as well as others' work.

ramraj07 5y ago
You are partially correct, absolute cynicism would mean that you would see the possibility that any hypothesis can be wrong before testing it so you’d just not do any experiment at all. So you do need to be optimistic. But that’s not what most scientists do today. They are cynics masquerading (even to themselves) as optimists. They have preprogrammed themselves to never even think of a question that has a good chance of failing, modern academia has collectively programmed them all to only ask questions that never have a real chance of being false to begin with. So just softball niche questions or in the case of the videos topic, reformulate the question in a way so that the answer doesn’t fundamentally solve the real problem. Both because the real problem might be unsolvable and also because if you solve the problem then you have fired yourself from yoUr job. Now you might think I and Sabine and others are just shitting on scientists doing the work, but many of us are only doing so after wasting decades with this establishment and giving up. Perhaps you can see that for yourself earlier and save yourself a lifetime.
- chevman 5y ago
  Dang man, what?????? Tell us more of this tale!
  - goldenkey 5y ago
    Duck Tales, woah oh!

ramraj07 5y ago

You are partially correct, absolute cynicism would mean that you would see the possibility that any hypothesis can be wrong before testing it so you’d just not do any experiment at all. So you do need to be optimistic. But that’s not what most scientists do today. They are cynics masquerading (even to themselves) as optimists. They have preprogrammed themselves to never even think of a question that has a good chance of failing, modern academia has collectively programmed them all to only ask questions that never have a real chance of being false to begin with. So just softball niche questions or in the case of the videos topic, reformulate the question in a way so that the answer doesn’t fundamentally solve the real problem. Both because the real problem might be unsolvable and also because if you solve the problem then you have fired yourself from yoUr job. Now you might think I and Sabine and others are just shitting on scientists doing the work, but many of us are only doing so after wasting decades with this establishment and giving up. Perhaps you can see that for yourself earlier and save yourself a lifetime.

chevman 5y ago
Dang man, what?????? Tell us more of this tale!
- goldenkey 5y ago
  Duck Tales, woah oh!