MIT president: Why so many optimistic scientists are losing heart(www.bostonglobe.com)
41 pointsby andrewl9 hours ago3 comments
  • ktallett7 hours ago
    Working in academic research, I can say clearly that it can be hard to self motivate at times. Especially whereby everything is focused on IP and hence a profit. We have gone beyond the stage of science to widen our knowledge and we are moving closer to industry. On the whole we avoid letting each other get too far ahead by sharing enough to show off and get more funding but not enough that others can replicate it.

    In my view, you need to have two projects going on; one that satisfies funders and pays the bills, possibly the latest buzzword. Then alongside that a more theoretical project in an area that you are passionate about. Plod along in the background with the latter to make the former easier.

    Satisfying the task masters who are often very stuck in their ways and risk adverse is the hard part. Pushing the boundaries to give out a little more than they would like is essential.

    • metalman4 hours ago
      you can read(translations) of Davinci's note books where notes in the margins are to make more convex mirrors, which he sold for proffit to wealthy household, and to give money to his housekeeper and pay employees and buy all the things needed for his research, and all kinds of trials and tribulations involved in what was a wholely self funded operation. Yes, he had patrons, but many of them were fickle and didn't follow through,while taking up a lot of time, and then as now, the bills keep comming, and more than once he barely avoided destitution.
    • aaron6954 hours ago
      [dead]
  • rramadass5 hours ago
    Also see; Why science is becoming less innovative - https://archive.ph/juk53
    • adrian_b4 hours ago
      I call that completely BS.

      Of course, if you make a statistics over a very large number of people, then you will get that on average the older people will be more conservative and less likely to come with revolutionary theories.

      The problem is that such statistics are absolutely useless, because they do not provide any kind of predictive ability that could lead to correct actions in concrete cases, i.e. when discussing individuals or teams of a typical size, because the variance and the number of outliers are too great.

      There are an extremely large number of older people who can come with much more revolutionary ideas than the vast majority of younger people. I have seen far less cases of young people with revolutionary ideas than old people.

      One reason is that young people are still under the strong influence of what they have learned in schools or other such environments, and they are still not aware that many things among what they have learned are actually wrong. Typically only after many years of practical experience they learn to become more skeptical and to question everything that they have learned and everything that happens to be widely considered as true. Most people never reach this stage.

      There are many people who learn something new every day of their life, until they might be a century old, while the majority of people, regardless of their academic qualifications and how young they may be, are reluctant to learn anything that appears to contradict what they already believe.

      Therefore, anyone who encounters two unknown people, one young and one old, and who believes that the young one has more chances to create a revolutionary theory than the other, is just stupid.