I love that video because until I watched it, I didn’t realise how much of a thing it was. Physics seems to be a magnet for the “iamverysmart” types; I feel sorry for actual physicists
Remember that actual physicists can fall into the same trap, and believe themselves to be very smart too. Plenty suffer an irresistible urge to fix every other field that’s doing it wrong.
As an alternative to the various xkcds on the subject, have an smbc instead.
Yes, quite. As a scientist (biochemistry), I sometimes have to catch myself on this too.
A tension that I see within the sciences and beyond is not sufficiently factoring in how good communication is essential to good research. Some of my peers disagree with me vehemently here, arguing that good research is good research regardless of one’s ability (or willingness) to dress up said research with pretty words, but I argue that the whole point of publishing papers or going to conferences is because science relies on communicating our research. I see a weird amount of hostility directed towards scientists who branch out into science communication. I speculate that an analogue of the “physicist instinct” is at the core of this — a disregard of the skill involved in interdisciplinary research, and an unwillingness to recognise how situated one’s own knowledge is.
It is a field that attracts a lot of cranks (who are pretty recognizable as being cranks via various patterns). Being a well known physicist must be hell.
Back when I was an undergrad I saw a letter addressed to the department from a German gentleman who claimed to have invented a perpetual motion machine (this was the department of mechanics). I remember the letter being quite typographically florid and especially the author’s likeness in silhouette.
My advisor had fun finding the flaw in the proposal. Took a few minutes.
I often wondered if demolishing a PM suggestion would be a good extra credit question on an exam.
One time I tried explaining to a colleague that a particular paper using an ML model to determine sexual orientation based on selfies was stupid as shit. Sexual orientation is not something you can confirm (gender is a social construct and sexual orientation is self-reported), nor it it encoded in a person’s face, so hello ontological error[1].
This colleague’s response was “that’s how science works.” Assuming that he knew that computer science isn’t really a science[2], I told him it suggested a fundamental misunderstanding of science, which resulted in the following exchange:
Colleague: Well, I have a PhD in Computer Science
Me: I basically do too[3] and Computer Science is not a science. You could argue that it’s a branch of math
Colleague: OK, but my undergrad was in Physics
It’s like these dorks saw this one amusing xckd comic, missed the point entirely, and then decided they wanted to be the physicist in the panel?
[1]: The model is also less accurate than
defsexual_orientation(person):
return"straight"
ignoring the ontological error.
[2]: I have never once heard a single part of the scientific method brought up since I started computer science. When I was hanging out with the pure mathematicians, they seemed to generally get this: A formal system alone is not fucking science, even if you’re using it to model the real world.
[3]: I was at the “all but dissertation” stage of my PhD. Now I’m at the “starting from scratch” phase.
I love that video because until I watched it, I didn’t realise how much of a thing it was. Physics seems to be a magnet for the “iamverysmart” types; I feel sorry for actual physicists
Remember that actual physicists can fall into the same trap, and believe themselves to be very smart too. Plenty suffer an irresistible urge to fix every other field that’s doing it wrong.
As an alternative to the various xkcds on the subject, have an smbc instead.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-03-21
Yes, quite. As a scientist (biochemistry), I sometimes have to catch myself on this too.
A tension that I see within the sciences and beyond is not sufficiently factoring in how good communication is essential to good research. Some of my peers disagree with me vehemently here, arguing that good research is good research regardless of one’s ability (or willingness) to dress up said research with pretty words, but I argue that the whole point of publishing papers or going to conferences is because science relies on communicating our research. I see a weird amount of hostility directed towards scientists who branch out into science communication. I speculate that an analogue of the “physicist instinct” is at the core of this — a disregard of the skill involved in interdisciplinary research, and an unwillingness to recognise how situated one’s own knowledge is.
It is a field that attracts a lot of cranks (who are pretty recognizable as being cranks via various patterns). Being a well known physicist must be hell.
You don’t even have to be well-known to get crank attention. Post anything with “quantum” in the title on the arXiv and they’ll find your e-mail.
Source: this is one of the few times when I can say “trust me, bro” and be entirely sincere about it
Had no idea it was worse. Damn.
Back when I was an undergrad I saw a letter addressed to the department from a German gentleman who claimed to have invented a perpetual motion machine (this was the department of mechanics). I remember the letter being quite typographically florid and especially the author’s likeness in silhouette.
My advisor had fun finding the flaw in the proposal. Took a few minutes.
I often wondered if demolishing a PM suggestion would be a good extra credit question on an exam.
One time I tried explaining to a colleague that a particular paper using an ML model to determine sexual orientation based on selfies was stupid as shit. Sexual orientation is not something you can confirm (gender is a social construct and sexual orientation is self-reported), nor it it encoded in a person’s face, so hello ontological error[1].
This colleague’s response was “that’s how science works.” Assuming that he knew that computer science isn’t really a science[2], I told him it suggested a fundamental misunderstanding of science, which resulted in the following exchange:
It’s like these dorks saw this one amusing xckd comic, missed the point entirely, and then decided they wanted to be the physicist in the panel?
[1]: The model is also less accurate than
def sexual_orientation(person): return "straight"ignoring the ontological error.
[2]: I have never once heard a single part of the scientific method brought up since I started computer science. When I was hanging out with the pure mathematicians, they seemed to generally get this: A formal system alone is not fucking science, even if you’re using it to model the real world.
[3]: I was at the “all but dissertation” stage of my PhD. Now I’m at the “starting from scratch” phase.