4 ms·

If you are a non-academic hobby scientist who is actually doing interesting work, it's very easy to find someone in your specific field (even a PhD student) and

If you are a non-academic hobby scientist who is actually doing interesting work, it's very easy to find someone in your specific field (even a PhD student) and ask them for an arXiv invitation.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
elashri 3y ago
As an actual PhD student, I will find it very dangerous to endorse someone who I don't know very much personally and judge a hobbyist work in general. The consequences might be huge for any future academic career if this turned south. And I get emails from time to time asking about that or just people sending mass emails presenting their ideas/work. But graduate students are the bottom of pyramid who do most work but have the least authority and power. This is not even talking about that what you actually get most of the time is a complete non-sense and you don't usually have time to focus with the good stuff if you get something.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mindcrime 3y ago
  > As an actual PhD student, I will find it very dangerous to endorse someone who I don't know very much personally and judge a hobbyist work in general. How so? I mean, what danger is there in just endorsing somebody to submit to arXiv? It's not like you're endorsing their work as being correct or anything. An arXiv endorsement is saying nothing more than "this isn't pure bullshit / spam / pseudo-scientific nuttery". As they say: The endorsement process is not peer review. You should know the person that you endorse or you should see the paper that the person intends to submit. We don't expect you to read the paper in detail, or verify that the work is correct, but you should check that the paper is appropriate for the subject area. You should not endorse the author if the author is unfamiliar with the basic facts of the field, or if the work is entirely disconnected with current work in the area ... > The consequences might be huge for any future academic career if this turned south. How would it "turn south" though? What would that even mean in this context? If you read the paper and judged it to actually not be "pure bullshit / spam / pseudo-scientific nuttery" then unless you made one hell of an error in judgment, there shouldn't be any consequences. From what the arXiv page says, the worst thing that could possibly happen is you could lose your ability to endorse others in the future. Probably not exactly career ending? And note that your endorsement is not public information: The fact that you have personally endorsed or not endorsed a person (as well as any optional comments) is private between you and the arXiv administrators – this information will not be shared with arXiv users or the person requesting endorsement,
  - dguest 3y ago
    There are amazing discoveries that are that are made by relatively obscure people, but having one that is both simple and correct is extremely rare. Most of the time, it takes some development. Most of the time that means you can't do it as a hobby. If you start dropping by office hours (as someone suggested) to ask about your theories, you'll probably get a lot of polite "that sounds cool, but it doesn't work because of <cryptic reason>, maybe take a few years of classes and come back". This is a pretty powerful filter: most people will either enroll in a program (and thus cease to be a hobbyist) or give up. Those that remain are going to be pretty exceptional. Unfortunately exceptional is equally likely to be exceptionally smart or exceptionally unhinged. The later case can easily "go south".
    - mindcrime 3y ago
      I don't really disagree with anything you just said, but it feels like a response to a different thread. Nobody here is arguing that randos who approach university people are generally bringing valuable stuff to the table, or arguing that uneducated laypeople are likely to successfully unify QM and GR, or solve P=NP, etc. The topic at hand (at least as I took it, and what I was trying to address) is no more than endorsing somebody to submit to arXiv. I'm not suggesting academics should be champing at the bit to offer to collaborate with people who walk in off the street, or spend large amounts of time reading unsolicited papers in detail, etc. An arXiv endorsement is really just saying "this is generally appropriate to be on arXiv". They're explicit in saying it's not peer-review, and doesn't even require reading the work-to-be-submitted in detail. There are amazing discoveries that are that are made by relatively obscure people, but having one that is both simple and correct is extremely rare. True. But let me just point out that somebody wanting to submit to arXiv doesn't necessarily have to be claiming an "amazing" discovery. In fact, a lot of papers that get put up on arXiv represent incremental progress in a very narrow area, at best. I mean, go back to the era when researchers in meta-heuristics would routinely pick "random natural phenomenon" use it as a metaphor for a new meta-heuristic, code something up, improve by 1% on some published benchmark and name their "new algorithm" something like "the gopher tunnel method" or whatever and get a paper published. Some of those papers almost certainly wound up on arXiv before being published in whatever journal or conference proceeding they eventually wound up in. Speaking for myself, I know that if I were cold emailing somebody in academia to ask them to endorse me, it would almost certainly be for CS.LG or CS.AI and it would probably be something along those lines. An incremental improvement or minor "breakthrough" in an AI area. It wouldn't be to claim a solution to the P=NP problem or anything like that. And I'd hope that somebody would be willing to help out.

If you are a non-academic hobby scientist who is actually doing interesting work, it's very easy to find someone in your specific field (even a PhD student) and ask them for an arXiv invitation.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

elashri 3y ago

As an actual PhD student, I will find it very dangerous to endorse someone who I don't know very much personally and judge a hobbyist work in general. The consequences might be huge for any future academic career if this turned south. And I get emails from time to time asking about that or just people sending mass emails presenting their ideas/work. But graduate students are the bottom of pyramid who do most work but have the least authority and power. This is not even talking about that what you actually get most of the time is a complete non-sense and you don't usually have time to focus with the good stuff if you get something.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mindcrime 3y ago
> As an actual PhD student, I will find it very dangerous to endorse someone who I don't know very much personally and judge a hobbyist work in general. How so? I mean, what danger is there in just endorsing somebody to submit to arXiv? It's not like you're endorsing their work as being correct or anything. An arXiv endorsement is saying nothing more than "this isn't pure bullshit / spam / pseudo-scientific nuttery". As they say: The endorsement process is not peer review. You should know the person that you endorse or you should see the paper that the person intends to submit. We don't expect you to read the paper in detail, or verify that the work is correct, but you should check that the paper is appropriate for the subject area. You should not endorse the author if the author is unfamiliar with the basic facts of the field, or if the work is entirely disconnected with current work in the area ... > The consequences might be huge for any future academic career if this turned south. How would it "turn south" though? What would that even mean in this context? If you read the paper and judged it to actually not be "pure bullshit / spam / pseudo-scientific nuttery" then unless you made one hell of an error in judgment, there shouldn't be any consequences. From what the arXiv page says, the worst thing that could possibly happen is you could lose your ability to endorse others in the future. Probably not exactly career ending? And note that your endorsement is not public information: The fact that you have personally endorsed or not endorsed a person (as well as any optional comments) is private between you and the arXiv administrators – this information will not be shared with arXiv users or the person requesting endorsement,
- dguest 3y ago
  There are amazing discoveries that are that are made by relatively obscure people, but having one that is both simple and correct is extremely rare. Most of the time, it takes some development. Most of the time that means you can't do it as a hobby. If you start dropping by office hours (as someone suggested) to ask about your theories, you'll probably get a lot of polite "that sounds cool, but it doesn't work because of <cryptic reason>, maybe take a few years of classes and come back". This is a pretty powerful filter: most people will either enroll in a program (and thus cease to be a hobbyist) or give up. Those that remain are going to be pretty exceptional. Unfortunately exceptional is equally likely to be exceptionally smart or exceptionally unhinged. The later case can easily "go south".
  - mindcrime 3y ago
    I don't really disagree with anything you just said, but it feels like a response to a different thread. Nobody here is arguing that randos who approach university people are generally bringing valuable stuff to the table, or arguing that uneducated laypeople are likely to successfully unify QM and GR, or solve P=NP, etc. The topic at hand (at least as I took it, and what I was trying to address) is no more than endorsing somebody to submit to arXiv. I'm not suggesting academics should be champing at the bit to offer to collaborate with people who walk in off the street, or spend large amounts of time reading unsolicited papers in detail, etc. An arXiv endorsement is really just saying "this is generally appropriate to be on arXiv". They're explicit in saying it's not peer-review, and doesn't even require reading the work-to-be-submitted in detail. There are amazing discoveries that are that are made by relatively obscure people, but having one that is both simple and correct is extremely rare. True. But let me just point out that somebody wanting to submit to arXiv doesn't necessarily have to be claiming an "amazing" discovery. In fact, a lot of papers that get put up on arXiv represent incremental progress in a very narrow area, at best. I mean, go back to the era when researchers in meta-heuristics would routinely pick "random natural phenomenon" use it as a metaphor for a new meta-heuristic, code something up, improve by 1% on some published benchmark and name their "new algorithm" something like "the gopher tunnel method" or whatever and get a paper published. Some of those papers almost certainly wound up on arXiv before being published in whatever journal or conference proceeding they eventually wound up in. Speaking for myself, I know that if I were cold emailing somebody in academia to ask them to endorse me, it would almost certainly be for CS.LG or CS.AI and it would probably be something along those lines. An incremental improvement or minor "breakthrough" in an AI area. It wouldn't be to claim a solution to the P=NP problem or anything like that. And I'd hope that somebody would be willing to help out.