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Einstein had already published several papers in physics and he was about to receive his PhD when he made his major discoveries in 1905. The idea that he was ju

Einstein had already published several papers in physics and he was about to receive his PhD when he made his major discoveries in 1905. The idea that he was just some outsider patent clerk is an urban legend that needs to die. As an active researcher, I often find papers in distant fields easier to understand than those in my field. Papers on topics related to my research but not that close to it are particularly difficult. When I'm unfamiliar with the topic, I just see some text written in everyday language. And while most researchers are not great at writing, they are not particularly bad either, because they write so much. When I read such papers, I have absolutely no idea what I'm missing or misinterpreting. I may interpret technical terms with specific definitions as everyday words, and there may be shared context, implicit assumptions, and basic background knowledge I'm simply unaware of. Hence my default assumption that if you read a research paper and think you understood it, you probably didn't. Research is so specialized these days that you should require something better than your own beliefs to convince yourself that you understood what you read. Relying on external validation ("an expert is someone other experts on the topic recognize as an expert") is pretty useful when you are not an expert yourself.

morpheos137 4y ago
[flagged]
- refulgentis 4y ago
  Idk, I read it as a humble, even self-effacing, comprehensive, yet concise, explanation of how to evaluate claims in common scenarios, as well as an explanation of interesting observations you gain from looking outside your discipline regularly.
sigg3 4y ago
I think you're half right. You might have read a specialized article and understood it, i.e. created a meaningful whole of all the parts. But you cannot verify it from prior experience with the domain, so it is an internally unconfirmed reading. In addition, subtle key terms might have been replaced with their mundane meanings. So while you understood the article, you don't have enough information (yet) to confidently say that you understood it correctly. Over time you gain domain knowledge, and it becomes easier to verify assumptions of new things you read, or to question and correct your own apparatus of understanding. There's an important observation to be made here, though, with regards to this behavior. Whenever subject field outsiders want to discuss a matter in my field of study, they invariably simplifies what they've read to childish levels and relate some personal property or recent event in their own life. I recognize they're simply being social, and appreciate the interaction for what it is, rather than getting annoyed by what it isn't. Human beings are social beings, and many internet comments (including of own) are just expressions of individuality and basic human need to partake rather than thoughtful arguments in an actual effort to discover something new. That said, I do believe e.g. Einstein's Relativität was written for the larger non-expert audience, so I would expect it to safeguard against most of the interpretative traps that would entail.

morpheos137 4y ago

[flagged]

refulgentis 4y ago
Idk, I read it as a humble, even self-effacing, comprehensive, yet concise, explanation of how to evaluate claims in common scenarios, as well as an explanation of interesting observations you gain from looking outside your discipline regularly.

sigg3 4y ago

I think you're half right. You might have read a specialized article and understood it, i.e. created a meaningful whole of all the parts. But you cannot verify it from prior experience with the domain, so it is an internally unconfirmed reading. In addition, subtle key terms might have been replaced with their mundane meanings. So while you understood the article, you don't have enough information (yet) to confidently say that you understood it correctly. Over time you gain domain knowledge, and it becomes easier to verify assumptions of new things you read, or to question and correct your own apparatus of understanding. There's an important observation to be made here, though, with regards to this behavior. Whenever subject field outsiders want to discuss a matter in my field of study, they invariably simplifies what they've read to childish levels and relate some personal property or recent event in their own life. I recognize they're simply being social, and appreciate the interaction for what it is, rather than getting annoyed by what it isn't. Human beings are social beings, and many internet comments (including of own) are just expressions of individuality and basic human need to partake rather than thoughtful arguments in an actual effort to discover something new. That said, I do believe e.g. Einstein's Relativität was written for the larger non-expert audience, so I would expect it to safeguard against most of the interpretative traps that would entail.