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Yup, the arrogance when barging into unfamiliar domain that was previously reserved mainly to physics grads seems to have spread everywhere. I also had people o
by varjag 15d ago
Yup, the arrogance when barging into unfamiliar domain that was previously reserved mainly to physics grads seems to have spread everywhere. I also had people opining on my expert area via their LLMs and the problem is they can't even ask the model the right question, let alone evaluate the nuance of their answer.
- conductr 15d agoAs an unfamiliar, I find it interesting how you specifically called out physics grads in the pre-LLM era. Is that just snark or is there some widespread truth / stereotype of that behavior?
- dhbradshaw 15d agoIt might be a reference to this: https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/
- jltsiren 15d agoI prefer the SMBC version: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-03-21 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-03-21
- harvey9 15d agoI suspect the person you replied to only happened to see that from physics grads. I have seen it in all sorts of people and I sometimes did it myself when I was young (I am not a physics grad).
- francoisdevlin 15d agoNot the parent, but it's half joke half truth. Anyone who's done a lot of "first principles" work falls into this trap a bit, it's an issue across stem fields. Most grow out of it, or at least learn to qualify their statements for the audience.
- acomjean 15d agoIts snark/stereotype, but there is some truth. But my take, is physics sort of took over a lot of chemistry, biology.. and to them its the answer to all questions, because in the end it just molecules. There is some truth to that but..
- skinfaxi 15d agoObligatory xkcd, everything is math. https://xkcd.com/435/ https://xkcd.com/435/
- torginus 15d agoIf you are very smart, and/or have an incredibly high tolerance for pain/repetition, you can solve amazingly complex issues, with awful code. Both of these statements are true for physicists
- fidotron 15d agoPhysics, and to a large degree pure mathematics, has attracted a critical mass of the personality type that needs to feel like the smartest person in the room in any given situation. It has given them a slightly notorious reputation in academia.
- neutronicus 15d agoFrom a one-time physics grad student, I do think there advantages to being ... like this. The flip side of being confidently wrong sometimes is that we treat understanding new systems as something approachable. So, yeah, it's annoying that we don't stay in our lane, but, from my boss's perspective, I'm the only one who's actually willing to just read code, investigate, possibly read a paper, and figure out what's going on instead of punting and saying it's someone else's turf I'm blocked until they get back to me. Like, ultimately you can't be a knowledge worker by just waiting for answers and instruction from experts and relaying them back and forth. Eventually you have to understand something. And part of that process is being wrong and annoying people.
- grey-area 15d agoIt is quite possible to be wrong and not annoy people, and it's not even terribly difficult to learn. It does require a bit of humility and introspection though. You don't have to not stray into areas you don't understand, but be humble when doing so - if you think something is being done in a stupid way, you probably don't understand it yet.
- neutronicus 15d agoI agree! Missteps are inevitable, though.
- fidotron 15d agoLike your sibling comment I saw this mainly with physics people doing data science: > Eventually you have to understand something. And part of that process is being wrong and annoying people. There is nothing more frustrating as a colleague than having a smart person walk in, insist you're all wrong, and then burn all the energy and goodwill in the organisation having to rebuild absolutely everything from the principles they currently understand because they refuse to listen to the experience that has built up already (in the entire field, let alone the organisation), only to produce something worse on every dimension than what already existed.
- moregrist 15d agoIt’s a very common experience that people in the physics-adjacent sciences have. It’s so common that there’s an xkcd about it: https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/
- saghm 15d agoIt's common enough to have an xkcd for it at least (then again, what doesn't?) https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/
- HWR_14 15d agoIt's a widespread stereotype at least: https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/
- alcomatt 15d agolike a prosthetic dunning-kruger....
- odyssey7 15d agoI hypothesize that with more people on a daily basis encountering information and claims that require those skills, there will be a time in the future when those skills are much more enhanced.
- gowld 15d agoCurrently, the leader of USA national AI policy (Trump admin and OpenAI) is a history Bachelors with no technical training or advanced training of any kind, Dean Ball.
- buellerbueller 15d ago>arrogance when barging into unfamiliar domain describes nearly every tech attempt at "disruption"
- GlibMonkeyDeath 15d agoThere is a reason this exists: https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/ I sadly share this as a physicist. To be fair, sometimes this arrogance can be useful. I worked at the boundary between domains my entire career where there aren't "experts" per se. But yeah, barging into an established domain without some humility generally leads to embarrassment - especially Nobel winners (e.g. https://www.newsweek.com/nobel-prize-winner-who-doesnt-believe-climate-crisis-has-speech-canceled-1815020 https://www.newsweek.com/nobel-prize-winner-who-doesnt-belie...)
- tty456 15d agoHilarious. Do they preface the conversation with "Well, Claude said..."?
- _1 15d agoWith my younger coworkers it's their defence when I push back on them.