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On September 07 2013 02:31 ZenithM wrote:
It's generally considered good practice to keep up with the latest state of the art research though ;D Yet he's simply masturbating if he's honestly going to pretend that a scientist has a duty to read every new paper, as he put it. I had an email correspondence with David Deutsch in which he admitted that he only has time to read only a fraction of the papers in his own field. It's not for want of commitment on his part, but merely because there's so many papers coming out and he was being honest (unlike many of these snobbish types of which Ender985 is a sterling example).
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On September 07 2013 02:54 sam!zdat wrote:
you're not really helping your case bro, you just sound defensive. Just read Ender's post again. Imagine if you or any normal human being had to put up with that level of profound condescension. Would you get "defensive"?
(No more derail from me. This will be my last post on the subject.)
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Not every paper indeed, but you can check out the list of the new papers published at the top conferences of your field each year, and then among those, you fully read the ones with a title (or reading further, the abstract) that relate to your research. I mean, it doesn't take that much time either, and after a while you start to develop some kind of "flair" for the good important articles, if I may say so. Maybe it doesn't work that way in every field though, I don't know...
As a PhD student with a thesis relating to natural language processing, information retrieval, semantics and more generally artificial intelligence, I find myself also following closely what happens in the industry and keeping up to the best of my ability with what the tech giants seem to be up to (Google, Microsoft, IBM, etc...) with the problems that I'm concerned with. This is something that few of my colleagues do, and I think it should be done more. You know, just to remember what the real world is like :D
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On September 07 2013 03:02 GhastlyUprising wrote:Show nested quote +On September 07 2013 02:54 sam!zdat wrote:
you're not really helping your case bro, you just sound defensive. Just read Ender's post again. Imagine if you or any normal human being had to put up with that level of profound condescension. Would you get "defensive"? (No more derail from me. This will be my last post on the subject.)
Profound condescension? I'm not seeing it. Maybe he's just giving general advice and isn't aware of your situation. He's trying to be helpful, not a prick. Just assume a benign tolerance if he's getting everything wrong in his assumptions as they pertain to you.
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So I try to give you my oppinion based on my 5 years of doing actual research, and you not only completely misinterpret my words (where did I say to read every paper that ever comes out?), but also attack my intelligence and call me snob and masturbatory. I will read that as a thank you then.
Good luck with your endeavours. When you succeed, please make fun of me in every single one of your conferences. I will be very glad to be proven wrong.
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On September 07 2013 03:30 Subversive wrote:Show nested quote +On September 07 2013 03:02 GhastlyUprising wrote:On September 07 2013 02:54 sam!zdat wrote:
you're not really helping your case bro, you just sound defensive. Just read Ender's post again. Imagine if you or any normal human being had to put up with that level of profound condescension. Would you get "defensive"? (No more derail from me. This will be my last post on the subject.) Profound condescension? I'm not seeing it. Maybe he's just giving general advice and isn't aware of your situation. He's trying to be helpful, not a prick. Just assume a benign tolerance if he's getting everything wrong in his assumptions as they pertain to you. If he was so concerned about intervening on my behalf, you'd imagine he would have bothered to skim a few of my various posts in the thread or at least would have taken a few moments to wonder whether I'm not a complete idiot, and might have given some thought to this matter, before he wrote all those dubious and self-serving statements.
I was too prickly toward one other guy, who turned out to be really nice and offered numerous helpful comments. On Ender we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Okay...this is REALLY my last post on the subject. Sorry for the derail, all.
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On September 07 2013 02:58 GhastlyUprising wrote:Show nested quote +On September 07 2013 02:31 ZenithM wrote:
It's generally considered good practice to keep up with the latest state of the art research though ;D Yet he's simply masturbating if he's honestly going to pretend that a scientist has a duty to read every new paper, as he put it. I had an email correspondence with David Deutsch in which he admitted that he only has time to read only a fraction of the papers in his own field. It's not for want of commitment on his part, but merely because there's so many papers coming out and he was being honest (unlike many of these snobbish types of which Ender985 is a sterling example).
Ghastly, you're really the only one sounding like a dick in this thread (aside from Sam, who has his irrational and ill-informed hatred of all humanities).
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I hate the humanities? How does that even make sense
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I'm only 19 and things might change, but at the core I am a perfectionist. That is my reason to strive for it. I don't know if I am going to do it, but it only seems logical to me.
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On September 07 2013 04:34 GhastlyUprising wrote:Show nested quote +On September 07 2013 03:30 Subversive wrote:On September 07 2013 03:02 GhastlyUprising wrote:On September 07 2013 02:54 sam!zdat wrote:
you're not really helping your case bro, you just sound defensive. Just read Ender's post again. Imagine if you or any normal human being had to put up with that level of profound condescension. Would you get "defensive"? (No more derail from me. This will be my last post on the subject.) Profound condescension? I'm not seeing it. Maybe he's just giving general advice and isn't aware of your situation. He's trying to be helpful, not a prick. Just assume a benign tolerance if he's getting everything wrong in his assumptions as they pertain to you. If he was so concerned about intervening on my behalf, you'd imagine he would have bothered to skim a few of my various posts in the thread or at least would have taken a few moments to wonder whether I'm not a complete idiot, and might have given some thought to this matter, before he wrote all those dubious and self-serving statements. I was too prickly toward one other guy, who turned out to be really nice and offered numerous helpful comments. On Ender we'll just have to agree to disagree. Okay...this is REALLY my last post on the subject. Sorry for the derail, all.
Believe me, the first lesson anyone doing a PhD learns is that their work is of questionable value, questionable quality and is questionably funded. I've learned it, and am still learning it. I'm fairly sure everyone here who has one will have learned it as well.
A PhD teaches you, first and foremost, how to fail. That is a hard lesson, and you might need to make some adjustments to the way you respond to criticism if you want to try it.
EDIT: + Show Spoiler +and that was my 2k. Good....
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On September 07 2013 02:25 GhastlyUprising wrote:
As one example, Richard Feynman arrived at his "sum over histories" formulation by digging up a paper of Dirac's that was 15 years old and noticing a passage in which Dirac said that one expression can be regarded as "analogous" to a Lagrangian. He didn't have to attend conferences or stay abreast of recent papers. (Yes, he had a lot of help from Wheeler with his early work, but he probably would have done good work even without that collaboration, and what's more, he didn't have the Internet and all the other advantages that the modern age brings.)
I've been starting to skim this thread now, so my apologies if this is no longer relevant.
Are you saying that the sum over histories formulation (one of my favourites!) could have been found 15 years earlier if Feynman had kept himself up to date on relevant papers?? 
Jokes aside, I am fine with people working by themselves, in the sense of not the usual academic route, but surely it must be relevant for any researcher to keep him/herself up to date on work by others in fields of interest. Otherwise we will have a lot of people (some of which possibly very talented) that will sit at home by themselves wasting years of their talent rediscovering things they could have read up on in an afternoon, and then furthered on those ideas. And possibly worse, people sitting home and wrestling with important problems that they could have solved if they had all the existing tools (like Einstein, differential geometry and GR).
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On September 07 2013 07:36 Cascade wrote:
Jokes aside, I am fine with people working by themselves, in the sense of not the usual academic route, but surely it must be relevant for any researcher to keep him/herself up to date on work by others in fields of interest. Otherwise we will have a lot of people (some of which possibly very talented) that will sit at home by themselves wasting years of their talent rediscovering things they could have read up on in an afternoon, and then furthered on those ideas. And possibly worse, people sitting home and wrestling with important problems that they could have solved if they had all the existing tools (like Einstein, differential geometry and GR). Well, a lot of the time what happens (probably to most scientists at some point in their career) is you're thinking about something that arouses your curiosity and you get the thought: "Why couldn't it be this way?" Then you try and find a reason why it couldn't be that way. After satisfying yourself that it could be that way, you then have to check whether someone else has thought of it before. If they haven't, then double, triple and quadruple check whether you've done something stupid. If you still don't believe you have, then you're ready to submit.
That is one way you can make a contribution to a literature without being up to date on that literature beforehand. You just need the minimum amount of knowledge required to know, to a pretty high degree of certainty, that you're not doing something stupid. (Unfortunately, this is what most cranks believe they're doing. What separates a crank from an honest practitioner of the method is little more than the Dunning-Kruger effect.)
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the other option is that a chariot takes you into heaven and reveals the truth. Good enough for parmenides, good enough for me
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Doing PhD is a great way to not have a paying job. Most importantly not having a paying job usually continues after PhD is granted, often for many years 
On the brighter side PhDs are among the most valuable members of our society, because they are the ones who expand our understanding of the universe and make life better for future generations =)
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
tbh if you've already done good work, as you say. then first step would be to reach out to physicists who can vouch for you. look at who's working on teh same problem as you and strike up a discussion. you'll have to be tactful though
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yes tactful. Say, 'can you help me with this problem' and then 'gee, might this be a solution?'
I knew a math savant in high school who is now at mit, apparently he walked into his advisor's life and instantly solved a problem the poor guy had been working on for 20 years. If it were me I would have murdered the kid probably
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
tactful because otherwise the guy won't even look at your work...
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I know, I just wanted to tell my story
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Almost everybody, this thread included, gets a Ph.D to validate they're otherwise meaningless existence and to give them a higher position to shit on those with less education than themselves.
When you're done, try to be less of a dick than most others who get one. Knowing a shit-ton about some stupidly precise subject does not make you as special as you think, and your precious discoveries are not going to be of any use, to anyone, ever. It just makes you feel good about yourself.
I have a Ph.D.
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On September 07 2013 10:40 stuneedsfood wrote:
Almost everybody, this thread included, gets a Ph.D to validate they're otherwise meaningless existence and to give them a higher position to shit on those with less education than themselves.
Or to teach at the university level, where a doctorate is preferred by many colleges... >.>
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EPT
