5 ms·

> Jain, a copper-sulfide expert I would have never known that people are actual experts in one material. This is impressive.

lm28469 3y ago
Some fields are so advanced that people are expert in one single material in very specific settings. There are some really exotic things out there that are barely used/studied
morelisp 3y ago
He is likely an expert in many other materials too.
mensetmanusman 3y ago
I work with people who have basically researched amorphous silicon for decades.
- kergonath 3y ago
  Yeah. Not surprising. My Master’s supervisor did, though he branched out after a while. I know people who’ve spent almost their entire career on iron.
  - Tijdreiziger 3y ago
    Being that this is HN, I initially parsed ‘iron’ as ‘hardware’…
    - kergonath 3y ago
      Well, there is some of it in most hardware :D
kergonath 3y ago
You have to (though in general we’re expert on a couple of classes of compounds rather than just one). The literature is just too vast to follow otherwise. Particularly in fashionable fields with loads of funding like high-temperature superconductors, battery materials, PV materials, fuel cells, things like that.
transcriptase 3y ago
Most PhDs are incredibly specific and don’t necessary indicate broad knowledge of a field as a whole. Which is why you should be wary of “experts” making overly broad claims about topics within their field but far outside their area of expertise. Early on during Covid you would see postdoc infectious disease experts on every news channel 3 times daily giving their takes. Some of whom maybe took a 3000 level course in epidemiology when they were 21 and did their PhD on nematode infections in a single population of freshwater clams. Technically an infectious disease expert but I don’t particularly care what they have to say about Covid over a random person on the street either.
- parker_mountain 3y ago
  > Technically an infectious disease expert but I don’t particularly care what they have to say about Covid over a random person on the street either. I would absolutely care more what they had to say over the rando, especially if they prefaced it with their level experience.
  - madrox 3y ago
    Depends on the grade they got in that 3000 course, though I tend to agree with you
  - exmadscientist 3y ago
    Yeah, uh, I wouldn't. There was a B- or C-list physics blogger a few years back whose graduate homework I used to grade. (I still remember this one, so that should tell you something.) He got very angry that I gave him zero credit for one particular question. But he: - did not use the standard/expected approach to this problem - did not explain what he was doing well enough for me to find him any partial credit (this is not easy!) - had a pile of impenetrable unnecessary very complex alien math that I wasn't going to try to cut through given that - his final answer was very, very wrong - in fact, it was wrong by 26 orders of magnitude - and he didn't have the skill to notice something was wrong (and, yes, I was lenient with students who noticed final answers were weird even if they couldn't/didn't fix it up) - also, he was a major asshole (no surprise given that he's complaining about this "indignity") who was - somehow still causing #MeToo problems in the 21st century despite being under 30 (seriously??) So if that's who gets held up as "authorities", even minor ones, forgive me if I don't listen too much. I'll choose who I trust.
OJFord 3y ago
Well it doesn't preclude him being expert (or just doing work) in anything else? e.g. you might be a C++ expert, but also proficient in Python, and currently working professionally in Rust?
- darth_avocado 3y ago
  Right but it’s more like someone is an expert in the “async” method. You’d expect them to be expert in whatever language they’re using, so the framing threw me off.
  - OJFord 3y ago
    Yeah I get what you mean. Could just be a quirk of the reporting too - like you might write a lot of async python, comment on some hot topic case using that knowledge, GIL removal say, and then get labelled 'async functions expert Darth Avocado' when really you'd never think of yourself that way.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    The reality is that the real world is infinitely more complex than the toys we make in the software world.
lolinder 3y ago
It looks like he doesn't specialize exclusively in copper sulfide. His most cited works are to do with gold, and he has articles on a bunch of different materials: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=7WQhABIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=7WQhABIAAAAJ&hl=en...
- deaddodo 3y ago
  Yeah, OP seems to be confusing expert knowledge in a field with exclusive knowledge in a field.
godelski 3y ago
Oh for sure. Expertise is exceptionally narrow. It's not a super low variance value, as there is spillover (physics/concepts/math/whatever share many similar principles), but most people __vastly__ underestimate the depth and complexity of any given topic, no matter how mundane and simple it may seem. I mean a good example is that you'll find books on o-rings, nails, screws, bolts, etc that are individually over a thousand pages. Hell, The Art of Electronics -- a book this community is probably more familiar with -- is a fucking godsend, but even being over 1k pages and generally a reference manual it is still lacking. Even if you get the second book (X Chapters) with an additional 500 pages! This is also why experts can often sniff one another out on online forums like this. There's a subtly to the language that is used which conveys an understanding of many deeper nuances than were a novice or even someone with a undergraduate would use to discuss a topic. There's a common misnomer that you don't understand something unless you can explain it to a layman (probably invented by a layman to justify their lack of understanding), but accuracy and complexity are tightly coupled. A concept with x% accuracy has a minimum of y complexity. But also knowing this can help you sniff out experts in fields you aren't also an expert in, but of course your classification accuracy drops since you are introducing more noise. Still, a useful guide if you're trying to figure out who to listen to. Obviously much easier said than done.
dougmwne 3y ago
My partner's grandmother spent her entire career researching a single bacteria species and its reaction to a single environmental toxin.
at_a_remove 3y ago
One of my professors was an expert in the Helium-3 isotope. Spent a lot of time on the second excited state.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  That's some of the most interesting matter.
nvm0n2 3y ago
https://www.quora.com/In-Tesla-and-SpaceX-how-much-of-the-technical-designing-is-Elon-Musk-involved-in https://www.quora.com/In-Tesla-and-SpaceX-how-much-of-the-te... A number of years back I had an email from a bloke called Elon Musk. I was vaguely aware of who he was but not very. At the time I was the global expert in a very weird alloy (the market for it was perhaps 5 or 10 tonnes a year. A very weird and minority interest alloy). It was aluminium scandium, which the Russians had developed to compete with Nasa’s use of aluminium lithium. In many ways a better alloy too. And, obviously, there were possible uses in rockets and so on (rather more in something like a Shuttle than in simple rockets though). OK, so I get this email and it asks me whether this aluminium scandium is worth it, will it make my rockets lighter, asks Musk. No, not really, it’ll make them easier to weld but not lighter particularly. Which was pretty much the end of the exchange. So, when people ask me whether Musk does tech stuff I would have to say yes. Because he tracked down a one man company that knew the straight answer to the question he needed answering. OK, you might not think that is engineering, preferring to think of it as people using a slide rule to work it all out themselves. But finding the bloke who knows the answer and asking them is engineering to me - it’s still getting to the right answer, isn’t it?
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  >But finding the bloke who knows the answer and asking them is engineering to me - it’s still getting to the right answer, isn’t it? That's called management, not engineering.
- twic 3y ago
  Scandium-aluminium alloy was popular for bicycle frames briefly in the 2000s. On-One made a frame wittily called the Scandal from it. I have a Scandal frame, but it's a second generation one where they dropped the scandium but kept the name!
akarve 3y ago
He's probably a *-sulfide or copper-* expert. Or maybe just a physical chemist that the press is ginning up. Actually, the latter. His page doesn't even mention copper or sulfide; and makes only one mention of conductors. https://chemistry.illinois.edu/jain https://chemistry.illinois.edu/jain

lm28469 3y ago

Some fields are so advanced that people are expert in one single material in very specific settings. There are some really exotic things out there that are barely used/studied

morelisp 3y ago

He is likely an expert in many other materials too.

mensetmanusman 3y ago

I work with people who have basically researched amorphous silicon for decades.

kergonath 3y ago
Yeah. Not surprising. My Master’s supervisor did, though he branched out after a while. I know people who’ve spent almost their entire career on iron.
- Tijdreiziger 3y ago
  Being that this is HN, I initially parsed ‘iron’ as ‘hardware’…
  - kergonath 3y ago
    Well, there is some of it in most hardware :D

kergonath 3y ago

You have to (though in general we’re expert on a couple of classes of compounds rather than just one). The literature is just too vast to follow otherwise. Particularly in fashionable fields with loads of funding like high-temperature superconductors, battery materials, PV materials, fuel cells, things like that.

transcriptase 3y ago

Most PhDs are incredibly specific and don’t necessary indicate broad knowledge of a field as a whole. Which is why you should be wary of “experts” making overly broad claims about topics within their field but far outside their area of expertise. Early on during Covid you would see postdoc infectious disease experts on every news channel 3 times daily giving their takes. Some of whom maybe took a 3000 level course in epidemiology when they were 21 and did their PhD on nematode infections in a single population of freshwater clams. Technically an infectious disease expert but I don’t particularly care what they have to say about Covid over a random person on the street either.

parker_mountain 3y ago
> Technically an infectious disease expert but I don’t particularly care what they have to say about Covid over a random person on the street either. I would absolutely care more what they had to say over the rando, especially if they prefaced it with their level experience.
- madrox 3y ago
  Depends on the grade they got in that 3000 course, though I tend to agree with you
- exmadscientist 3y ago
  Yeah, uh, I wouldn't. There was a B- or C-list physics blogger a few years back whose graduate homework I used to grade. (I still remember this one, so that should tell you something.) He got very angry that I gave him zero credit for one particular question. But he: - did not use the standard/expected approach to this problem - did not explain what he was doing well enough for me to find him any partial credit (this is not easy!) - had a pile of impenetrable unnecessary very complex alien math that I wasn't going to try to cut through given that - his final answer was very, very wrong - in fact, it was wrong by 26 orders of magnitude - and he didn't have the skill to notice something was wrong (and, yes, I was lenient with students who noticed final answers were weird even if they couldn't/didn't fix it up) - also, he was a major asshole (no surprise given that he's complaining about this "indignity") who was - somehow still causing #MeToo problems in the 21st century despite being under 30 (seriously??) So if that's who gets held up as "authorities", even minor ones, forgive me if I don't listen too much. I'll choose who I trust.

OJFord 3y ago

Well it doesn't preclude him being expert (or just doing work) in anything else? e.g. you might be a C++ expert, but also proficient in Python, and currently working professionally in Rust?

darth_avocado 3y ago
Right but it’s more like someone is an expert in the “async” method. You’d expect them to be expert in whatever language they’re using, so the framing threw me off.
- OJFord 3y ago
  Yeah I get what you mean. Could just be a quirk of the reporting too - like you might write a lot of async python, comment on some hot topic case using that knowledge, GIL removal say, and then get labelled 'async functions expert Darth Avocado' when really you'd never think of yourself that way.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  The reality is that the real world is infinitely more complex than the toys we make in the software world.

lolinder 3y ago

It looks like he doesn't specialize exclusively in copper sulfide. His most cited works are to do with gold, and he has articles on a bunch of different materials: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=7WQhABIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=7WQhABIAAAAJ&hl=en...

deaddodo 3y ago
Yeah, OP seems to be confusing expert knowledge in a field with exclusive knowledge in a field.

godelski 3y ago

Oh for sure. Expertise is exceptionally narrow. It's not a super low variance value, as there is spillover (physics/concepts/math/whatever share many similar principles), but most people __vastly__ underestimate the depth and complexity of any given topic, no matter how mundane and simple it may seem. I mean a good example is that you'll find books on o-rings, nails, screws, bolts, etc that are individually over a thousand pages. Hell, The Art of Electronics -- a book this community is probably more familiar with -- is a fucking godsend, but even being over 1k pages and generally a reference manual it is still lacking. Even if you get the second book (X Chapters) with an additional 500 pages! This is also why experts can often sniff one another out on online forums like this. There's a subtly to the language that is used which conveys an understanding of many deeper nuances than were a novice or even someone with a undergraduate would use to discuss a topic. There's a common misnomer that you don't understand something unless you can explain it to a layman (probably invented by a layman to justify their lack of understanding), but accuracy and complexity are tightly coupled. A concept with x% accuracy has a minimum of y complexity. But also knowing this can help you sniff out experts in fields you aren't also an expert in, but of course your classification accuracy drops since you are introducing more noise. Still, a useful guide if you're trying to figure out who to listen to. Obviously much easier said than done.

dougmwne 3y ago

My partner's grandmother spent her entire career researching a single bacteria species and its reaction to a single environmental toxin.

at_a_remove 3y ago

One of my professors was an expert in the Helium-3 isotope. Spent a lot of time on the second excited state.

jacquesm 3y ago
That's some of the most interesting matter.

nvm0n2 3y ago

https://www.quora.com/In-Tesla-and-SpaceX-how-much-of-the-technical-designing-is-Elon-Musk-involved-in https://www.quora.com/In-Tesla-and-SpaceX-how-much-of-the-te... A number of years back I had an email from a bloke called Elon Musk. I was vaguely aware of who he was but not very. At the time I was the global expert in a very weird alloy (the market for it was perhaps 5 or 10 tonnes a year. A very weird and minority interest alloy). It was aluminium scandium, which the Russians had developed to compete with Nasa’s use of aluminium lithium. In many ways a better alloy too. And, obviously, there were possible uses in rockets and so on (rather more in something like a Shuttle than in simple rockets though). OK, so I get this email and it asks me whether this aluminium scandium is worth it, will it make my rockets lighter, asks Musk. No, not really, it’ll make them easier to weld but not lighter particularly. Which was pretty much the end of the exchange. So, when people ask me whether Musk does tech stuff I would have to say yes. Because he tracked down a one man company that knew the straight answer to the question he needed answering. OK, you might not think that is engineering, preferring to think of it as people using a slide rule to work it all out themselves. But finding the bloke who knows the answer and asking them is engineering to me - it’s still getting to the right answer, isn’t it?

mrguyorama 3y ago
>But finding the bloke who knows the answer and asking them is engineering to me - it’s still getting to the right answer, isn’t it? That's called management, not engineering.
twic 3y ago
Scandium-aluminium alloy was popular for bicycle frames briefly in the 2000s. On-One made a frame wittily called the Scandal from it. I have a Scandal frame, but it's a second generation one where they dropped the scandium but kept the name!

akarve 3y ago

He's probably a *-sulfide or copper-* expert. Or maybe just a physical chemist that the press is ginning up. Actually, the latter. His page doesn't even mention copper or sulfide; and makes only one mention of conductors. https://chemistry.illinois.edu/jain https://chemistry.illinois.edu/jain