27 ms·

I don't think it's a cultural thing - I just don't think modern scientists are as personally interesting (for the most part). Most people know of, say, Hawking

by smanek 17y ago

I don't think it's a cultural thing - I just don't think modern scientists are as personally interesting (for the most part). Most people know of, say, Hawking or Perelman because of their personal stories. But even their lives aren't as near as compelling as the greats of the last generation. Not to mention the face that 50 years ago, the work being done was much more significant. I hate to say it, but no truly 'ground breaking' work has really been done in the last half century. There are still a lot of open questions - but we just haven't found the answer. We've just been refining our knowledge of the important work done before that. (Note: I don't mean to say no new work has been done, just nothing major. Name something done in the last 50 years that could compare to the fundamental work done in Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, Genetics, Computation Theory, etc. before that.)

calambrac 17y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model
- smanek 17y ago
  Fine, you got me - that was 40 years ago, not 50 like I said ;-)
  - calambrac 17y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project (for the list of interesting contemporary scientists, I'll nominate Venter. That guy is a trip.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanning_tunneling_microscope http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanning_tunneling_microscope http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractals All since 1970, is that recent enough? And, ya know, sometimes it does actually take a little time for major achievements to be recognized as such.
    - apu 17y ago
      As well as the fact that sometimes entire new fields open up in very short periods of time -- for example, physicists thought at the end of the 19th century that they were basically just tying up loose ends, when relativity and quantum mechanics burst on the scene (in a relatively short time span).
    - smanek 17y ago
      I don't know - Id on't consider those to be that significant. The Human Genome project was a fairly natural extension of the discovery of DNA 50+ years ago, the DARPA Grand Challenge is a pretty natural extension of Turing, Von Neumann, etc.'s works 50+ years ago. I'm not saying the things you list weren't hugely important, I'm just saying that they weren't as fundamental as the entirely new fields that were developed earlier (relativity, quantum mechanics, theory of computation, etc).
      - calambrac 17y ago
        That the HGP isn't as significant as the discovery of DNA is pretty obvious - DNA ranks with fire and the atom as the most important discoveries in human history. But it (or, more precisely, the science and techniques developed to accomplish it) is easily as important as the other things you listed. The HGP is to the discovery of DNA as quantum mechanics is to the discovery of the atom. And you're being overly reductive when you say the Grand Challenge is a "pretty natural extension of Turing, Von Neumann, etc.'s". I'm pretty sure the physicists that you've mentioned would take exception to the idea that their work didn't have a clear lineage of its own.
        smanek 17y ago
        Of course no idea appears ex nihlio - but I think certain ideas are just so novel and groundbreaking that they mark a qualitative change in humanity (I would include, for example, newtonian physics, relativistic physics, or quantum mechanics.) I just feel like their were are far fewer (if any) of those truly ground breaking discoveries now than there were in the early 20th century. This might just be perspective bias, but it seems like scientific progress was being made much more quickly from, say, 1850-1950 than any other time in human history. We still have a lot of big open questions, but progress seems to have slowed down. Hopefully the LHC will change that ... As for the Grand Challenge, I work in the AI field myself (I'm engaged in some work for DARPA right now, and I know several people who were on Grand Challenge teams), and we're still basically stuck in turing/von-neumann paradigms. In my opinion, most of what we've done in the last 50 years in AI is come up with better search heuristics. It makes AI/ML much more useful - but it's nothing really paradigm shifting. I will of course grant this could all be in my head, since I haven't, and probably couldn't, define a metric that measures the 'significance' of theory (maybe something about marginal information-theoretic predictive power, but that's difficult to measure and still not quite right).
yummyfajitas 17y ago
Modern financial engineering is only about 30 years old. That's easily comparable to the fundamental works of physics, biology and computing. As for the next big thing? My guess is that the field of high dimensional analysis (encompassing machine learning, compressed sensing, etc) will be comparable in importance to any of the fields you've mentioned.
- aswanson 17y ago
  Modern financial engineering is only about 30 years old. That's easily comparable to the fundamental works of physics, biology and computing What?!?
  - yummyfajitas 17y ago
    I take it you disagree, but could you explain why?
    - aswanson 17y ago
      As an experiment, compare the relative merits of statistical arbitrage, black-scholes, and the gaussian copula (of mortgage backed securities fame) to Newtonian and quantum mechanics, general relativity, the germ theory of disease, DNA research, and any number of seminal papers in computing from the time of Turing to now. It seems fairly obvious to me that financial engineering is not in the same league.
      - yummyfajitas 17y ago
        I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "in the same league". Statistical arbitrage, BS, etc form the fundamental theory of finance. It's certainly as fundamental to finance as DNA is to biology. In terms of real world impact, financial engineering is definitely greater than knowledge of DNA. So far genetics has gotten us very little in terms practical outcomes. Maybe you are just making a judgment that finance is less valuable than other fields? If so, I can't really argue with that.

by smanek 17y ago

calambrac 17y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model

smanek 17y ago
Fine, you got me - that was 40 years ago, not 50 like I said ;-)
- calambrac 17y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project (for the list of interesting contemporary scientists, I'll nominate Venter. That guy is a trip.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanning_tunneling_microscope http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanning_tunneling_microscope http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractals All since 1970, is that recent enough? And, ya know, sometimes it does actually take a little time for major achievements to be recognized as such.
  - apu 17y ago
    As well as the fact that sometimes entire new fields open up in very short periods of time -- for example, physicists thought at the end of the 19th century that they were basically just tying up loose ends, when relativity and quantum mechanics burst on the scene (in a relatively short time span).
  - smanek 17y ago
    I don't know - Id on't consider those to be that significant. The Human Genome project was a fairly natural extension of the discovery of DNA 50+ years ago, the DARPA Grand Challenge is a pretty natural extension of Turing, Von Neumann, etc.'s works 50+ years ago. I'm not saying the things you list weren't hugely important, I'm just saying that they weren't as fundamental as the entirely new fields that were developed earlier (relativity, quantum mechanics, theory of computation, etc).
    - calambrac 17y ago
      That the HGP isn't as significant as the discovery of DNA is pretty obvious - DNA ranks with fire and the atom as the most important discoveries in human history. But it (or, more precisely, the science and techniques developed to accomplish it) is easily as important as the other things you listed. The HGP is to the discovery of DNA as quantum mechanics is to the discovery of the atom. And you're being overly reductive when you say the Grand Challenge is a "pretty natural extension of Turing, Von Neumann, etc.'s". I'm pretty sure the physicists that you've mentioned would take exception to the idea that their work didn't have a clear lineage of its own.
      - smanek 17y ago
        Of course no idea appears ex nihlio - but I think certain ideas are just so novel and groundbreaking that they mark a qualitative change in humanity (I would include, for example, newtonian physics, relativistic physics, or quantum mechanics.) I just feel like their were are far fewer (if any) of those truly ground breaking discoveries now than there were in the early 20th century. This might just be perspective bias, but it seems like scientific progress was being made much more quickly from, say, 1850-1950 than any other time in human history. We still have a lot of big open questions, but progress seems to have slowed down. Hopefully the LHC will change that ... As for the Grand Challenge, I work in the AI field myself (I'm engaged in some work for DARPA right now, and I know several people who were on Grand Challenge teams), and we're still basically stuck in turing/von-neumann paradigms. In my opinion, most of what we've done in the last 50 years in AI is come up with better search heuristics. It makes AI/ML much more useful - but it's nothing really paradigm shifting. I will of course grant this could all be in my head, since I haven't, and probably couldn't, define a metric that measures the 'significance' of theory (maybe something about marginal information-theoretic predictive power, but that's difficult to measure and still not quite right).

yummyfajitas 17y ago

Modern financial engineering is only about 30 years old. That's easily comparable to the fundamental works of physics, biology and computing. As for the next big thing? My guess is that the field of high dimensional analysis (encompassing machine learning, compressed sensing, etc) will be comparable in importance to any of the fields you've mentioned.

aswanson 17y ago
Modern financial engineering is only about 30 years old. That's easily comparable to the fundamental works of physics, biology and computing What?!?
- yummyfajitas 17y ago
  I take it you disagree, but could you explain why?
  - aswanson 17y ago
    As an experiment, compare the relative merits of statistical arbitrage, black-scholes, and the gaussian copula (of mortgage backed securities fame) to Newtonian and quantum mechanics, general relativity, the germ theory of disease, DNA research, and any number of seminal papers in computing from the time of Turing to now. It seems fairly obvious to me that financial engineering is not in the same league.
    - yummyfajitas 17y ago
      I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "in the same league". Statistical arbitrage, BS, etc form the fundamental theory of finance. It's certainly as fundamental to finance as DNA is to biology. In terms of real world impact, financial engineering is definitely greater than knowledge of DNA. So far genetics has gotten us very little in terms practical outcomes. Maybe you are just making a judgment that finance is less valuable than other fields? If so, I can't really argue with that.