Comments

• SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Hi. People contact me with theories all the time based on my published research. They tend to come from an oversimplified view of the problem.

  source

  • StarvingMartist@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Are there any exceptions to this rule?

    source

    • MycelialMass@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan

      source
    • Madison420@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      The plumber who told bp how to fix their well leak.

      csmonitor.com/…/Joe-the-Plumber-not-that-one-says…

      source
• ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  “I have theories” is great, everyone should have theories and ideas.

  But if you can’t connect them to understood, known physics and systems that have been demonstrated over and over again for centuries, you’re not really contributing anything.

  “I have ideas for a really cool race car shape. I don’t know anything about formula 1, I just have this neat idea. Why won’t professional teams who demonstrate their efforts daily take my design seriously?”

  Go to school, educate yourself with online courses, read every possible criticism or attack on theory, be your own worst critic and THEN if it survives knowledge and critique, you have a chance of being seen and noticed. This isn’t about “encouragement” or “making someone feel better” and it’s certainly not a plot by Big Science to keep the little man down, this is just how the process works and why you have phones and video games and soda dispensers.

  source

  • KelvarCherry@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    1705542 is a prime number. How can I get my proof published?

    source

    • JustAnotherRando@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I appreciate that you chose an even number to claim as prime so nobody even has to check it.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      You just did!

      source
• Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Easy. First you survey the existing literature for your theory. Chances are, somebody already came up with it, or, more likely, debunked it. If that’s not the case, you write up a paper, presenting your theory together with its supporting evidence and submit it through the usual channels. I know that sounds pretty discouraging, but the chance of some rando contributing something meaningful are pretty close to zero

  source

  • officermike@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Pretty close to zero multiplied by billions of people yields results sometimes.

    smithsonianmag.com/…/this-17-year-old-scientist-i…

    smithsonianmag.com/…/two-high-schoolers-found-an-…

    scientificamerican.com/…/how-teen-mathematician-h…

    source

    • Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      These people went through the process I described above. I’m not saying you need a degree to do scientific work. I’m saying you need to do scientific work to achieve scientifically relevant results.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • AlexLost@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      These aren’t coming out of nowhere however. They are obviously being exposed to new material through their education and then extrapolating into some new tangent. These aren’t epiphanies that just happen later in life unless you are working to understand these concepts. Not saying it can’t be done, it just hasn’t been done yet, and every generation builds upon the foundation of what came before it.

      source
    • Dasus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      And this would be larger with better education.

      Because it’s not always about the “potential of the student” if there’s no support or validation.

      Finland didn’t have a gifted program, you’re not supposed to be better at anything than others. Except in sports, where it’s the whole thing.

      There were special programs for slow kids. But none for fast ones.

      First grade teacher put me in an empty classroom to read by myself when everyone else was just learning what sounds different letters make.

      Image

      source
  • AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Nothing kills my motivation more than discovering something new in math and then finding out some dead guy beat me to the punch by several centuries lol

    Then again sometimes it’s worse when I expect there to be literature on a topic and then discovering there isn’t even a wiki page for it.

    Hell, most recently it was bi-intuitionistic logic. Originally studied in the 40s by one German guy who took bad notes. Main body of work done by a single math grad in the 70s (Rauszer) culminating in her PhD. Turns out there were errors discovered in her proofs and it was proven inconsistent in 2001. Only for two relatively young mathematicians to clear up that there are two separate versions of bi-intuitionistic logic which are consistent. This discovery and proof are found a paper that was published only this fucking year.

    I asked a simple question about dealing with uncertainty in a logical system and instead of finding a well studied foundation of knowledge I was yeeted to the bleeding edge of mathematics.

    source

    • chloroken@lemmy.ml ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Oh I remember you! You’re the guy who claimed to be an engineer working with “ocular algorithms” when it turned out you were an undergrad who read a Wikipedia article about cuttlefish.

      Now you’re discovering “new things” in math because you were thrust to the bleeding edge of mathematics. Incredible stuff. Completely 100% real stuff.

      Please do future you a favor and stop presenting yourself as some intellectual giant. It’s not only cringe, but harmful to your actual academic growth. Some of the things you write are identifiable, what would happen if a professor for an undergrad lab you work at saw the way you write?

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Nothing kills my motivation more than discovering something new in math and then finding out some dead guy beat me to the punch by several centuries lol

      This is literally the heart of science and physics, it’s how every single great mind has made advancements and gotten recognized, by building on the works of those who came before them and finding new ways to connect and test models. If you’re “discovering” things that other people have before, that means you’re on the right track, now you just need to put the work in validating and verifying your model or expanding on the models that others have developed.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
  • ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Also, something that doesn’t get nearly enough attention is how every great scientist who has changed the world with their ideas… were usually working off the foundational ideas and experimental data of people who came before them. Einstein polished his theories from the work of others, who also worked off the ideas of those who came before them.

    A lot of Americans in particular have this individualist idea about science because that’s the way the stories have been presented, “lone geniuses fighting the world.”

    You simply don’t make advancements in science by yourself. Newton, famous isolationist, also worked from and with the work of others even when locked away inventing new kinds of physics and math.

    Everyone thinks their stoner ideas about how the universe works are going to make them rich and famous, even though largely most great minds have lived and died normal lives, or even suffered penniless and unrecognized until well after their deaths.

    source
  • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    submit it through the usual channels.

    Here is the problem. These channels are heavily gatekeeped. Non standard theories are pushed to fringe publications and not read.

    source
  • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    How is a lay person supposed to discover “the usual channels?” Or do you basically have to go to community college at least?

    source

    • ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      You will not learn everything about science that you need to criticize your own theories without navigating existing systems and channels. It’s a part of the process. Yes, start in a community college, get to know everyone there, learn all you can from every source you can, use the internet to research but also be social and reach out.

      Join math and physics forums, talk to people who know more than you, and every time someone knocks you on your ass, you reevaluate your ideas and sharpen them and present them again until people start seeing something and you will gain some level of support in academics and professors if your idea has merit.

      Making breakthroughs in physics is a lot of work. It’s not just pure ideas and theories, a lot of people with great ideas died poor and unknown. Like everything in life, success comes from navigating the hard paths that require socializing, reaching out to strangers, not being discouraged easily, and staying humble and passionate about the ideas, not the recognition.

      This is how every great physicist has done it. This is a system that has evolved both as a natural product of having to weigh all new ideas carefully against known, tested ideas, and from centuries of physics and math work that have picked off a lot of the “low hanging fruit.” IE: you’re not as likely to discover something as simultaneously obvious and relatively easy to test as say, electromagnetic theory. But even in that case, it took the idea guy, Michael Faraday, befriending someone who knew more about math, James Clerk Maxwell for Faraday’s ideas to be taken seriously.

      A lot of people think science is “good enough” on its own because they digest too many surface-level stories about science and great minds without being exposed to the lifetime of work those people had to do to have their ideas explored in enough rigor to be accepted as part of our understanding of the universe.

      source
  • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Yes but what if they feel REALLY clever??? U expect me 2 go thru all dat work? Ffs smh rn ngl u cap I swear.

    source

    • BananaOnionJuice@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Someone give them the Nobel price already!

      source

      • -> View More Comments
  • OrganicMustard@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    They have some chance if they wrote code to find a counterexample to some obscure math conjecture

    source
  • rowrowrowyourboat@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I would love to know how many peer-reviewed papers have been published from independent authors with no degree or university affiliation, if any.

    source

    • Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      It definitely happens.

      source
    • Dasus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Does this guy count? He’s been per-reviewed a bunch I reckon.

      source
    • howrar@lemmy.ca ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Depends if you count undergrad. One that comes to mind is the RWKV paper.

      source
• TheObviousSolution@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The biggest problem is that your theories are not going to equate to the depth, degree, and experience of people who’ve been over a decade in Universities studying their own, who receive grants and everything to do so. It may be a revolutionary theory, but every scientist has got their own. That’s what you are competing against. Hell, there are plenty of brainiacs at each other’s throats over whose theory they believe is right.

  I have a personal theory that I believe can encompass a lot of phenomenon, but I lack the graduate level experience or the extraordinary intelligence to raise eyebrows, so it has to remain largely faith based. There are much more knowledgeable people who dismiss the basic core tenets of it. And unless you map it out onto some real math and start making predictions that can raise eyebrows, it will remain that, faith-based. Society doesn’t give a shit about ideas, they give a shit about implementations of those ideas.

  source
• Hupf@feddit.org ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Oh you’re a programmer? I have this app idea…

  source

  • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    No! I’ve seen this Rick and Morty episode!

    source
  • 87Six@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    This but my boss is talking to me without passing through management

    source
• Starski@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  It’s a special kind of stupid to be too stupid to understand that you’re stupid, to be so stupid you think you’re smart. Man, what a life that must be, blissful ignorance.

  source

  • markstos@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    But you haven’t even heard the theories!

    source
• Hazmatastic@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Write letters to the press. Ripped from Control:

  Dear New York Tribune,

  Airplanes aren’t real. I figured out how they do it.

  The windows are TV screens. The whole thing moves on big tracks like a rollercoaster that moves through underground tunnels in the Earth. Airports are more like train stations.

  They do this because the sky is full of monsters that they don’t want us to know about. The planes we see in the sky are the monsters. The government made the Earth-trains look like the monsters so they could lie to us better.

  Don’t contact me.

  Not real, obviously, but clearly the most effective tactic when no one takes your 100% legit theories seriously.

  source

  • bitjunkie@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    All the flavor text in Control is fantastic.

    source

    • Hazmatastic@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I’m a plaid suit in a pinstripe world. I’m a plaid suit in a pinstripe world. I’m a plaid suit in a pinstripe world. I’m a plaid suit in a pinstripe world. I’m a plaid suit in a pinstripe world. I’m a plaid suit in a pinstripe world. I’m a plaid suit in a pinstripe world. I’m a plaid suit in a pinstripe world. ███ █ █████ ████ ██ █ █████████ █████ I’m a plaid suit in a pinstripe world. I’m a plaid suit in a pinstripe world. I’m a plaid suit in a pinstripe world. I’m a plaid suit in a pinstripe world. I’m a plaid suit in a pinstripe world. I’m a plaid suit in a pinstripe world. I’m a plaid suit in a pinstripe world. I’m a plaid suit in a pinstripe world.

      source
  • pulsey@feddit.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    You convinced me.

    source
  • Stamets@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    AMAZING game. The Dead Letters department might be my favorite section of The Oldest House

    source

    • Hazmatastic@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Absolutely, although I’m a Containment/Panopticon fan myself. Langston’s dialogue is great, especially in the AWE dlc. Dead Letters is close behind though. The fish letter is excellent.

      Playing AW2 right now after having watched a Quantum Break playthrough, so I’ve got the Remedyverse on my mind constantly and see it in everything. Such a dope company, can’t wait for the next control. I think it’s next on their development list, so hopefully soon!

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • buttnugget@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      That makes me want to go listen to REM.

      source
• tetris11@feddit.uk ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  ITT: Science and Engineering users debunking others attempts to contribute from an entry level

  And then there’s Maths where all you need is a fresh pair of eyes.

  source

  • bitjunkie@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Operative word “attempts”

    source

    • Devjavu@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Please do not downplay attemps.

      source
  • Devjavu@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    “I failed school, can I still study maths?” His voice echoed across the empty lecture hall.

    source
• Harvey656@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  First of all, if you have a theory they rejected, clearly its because they are afraid of your massive intellect, pure jealousy to the point of refusing you entirely. So that means your theory is 100% fact, and you should write a book all about how you are a genius ahead of their time, and sell it on Amazon becoming a number 1 best seller and use that to propel you into micro-celebrity status and live off the royalties because thats what smart people do. Duh.

  source

  • ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Slow down there, we can’t ALL get cabinet positions in the current US presidential administration.

    source
  • GandalftheBlack@feddit.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Graham Hancock moment

    source
  • Goodman@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    And go on the Joe Organ podcast ofc

    source

    • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      No no no you don’t understand, lobsters get a massive jolt of oxytocin after fighting cause men are supposed to fight! Or whatever the fuck Xanax Peterson was going on about.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• zxqwas@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  There are 99 crackpots for every genius without a degree.

  source

  • Heliumfart@sh.itjust.works ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Probably more like 999.

    source

    • Frozengyro@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      But that 1 in a billion could change the world

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• Buddahriffic@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  You’ve gotta either interest someone with the knowledge to pursue it or actually go to the college and gain the knowledge yourself. Because the truth is, unless you can motivate someone to do your thing, your thing isn’t going to be as interesting to others as it is to you, even if it would be revolutionary. There’s a good chance the idea relies on phenomena that only exist because of a lack of understanding (if you aren’t able to go from idea to proof of concept), or maybe require a solution to a very hard problem just hiding below the surface.

  Plus, even with the motivation, if you don’t know enough to do the thing and aren’t in a financial position to control the operation’s finances, there’s a good chance you’ll be discarded once you are no longer needed, which in this case is once they understand your idea. That “sorry, not interested” might actually be a “go away, this is interesting but I don’t think you’ll add anything more to this, so I’ll do it alone”.

  So instead of thinking “this is cool but I have no idea how”, think, “what do I need to learn to better understand my idea and its execution?” Hell, even being able to break it up into discrete and complete steps would be a great start because then you can start hiring out those different steps if you can’t do them, without having to give away the whole thing.

  source
• stevedice@sh.itjust.works ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The maths department in my uni receives (or did when I was there) several proofs every year on general formulas to solve equations of degree >5.

  source
• Nomorereddit@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Here go do this instead www.ildu.com.ua

  source
• MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Fuck Reddit and Fuck Spez.

  source

  • REDACTED@infosec.pub ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Jesus calm down… reddit sucks, but it’s not anywhere close to the evilness of other platforms or corpos, so just enjoy the fucking memes

    source

    • MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Fuck Reddit and Fuck Spez.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• Luffy879@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  This is actually a pretty good parallel to programming

  With an open source project, you gotta know how to clone a git repo and create a pull request

  With such an advanced field as Physics, you need to have read other studies at a basic level. If you don’t know how to write a basic study, you clearly lack the intelligence to talk about such things at a professional level

  source

  • optissima@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Lack intelligence, or lack education?

    source

    • Luffy879@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Education.

      source
  • IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Knowing how to write a good study is a matter of experience more than intelligence.

    source

    • shapis@lemmy.ml ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      It’s both really.

      When I was publishing my first paper after sending it in to a professor for review a few times he called me in and went line through line of the whole paper for about 4 hours explaining to me what I needed to fix and why.

      A lot of it were things that came down to experience and that no book education could have given me.

      People that believe they can make significant contributions need to go through the proper process. But ridiculing them before they even attempt is not the way to go.

      A good point that Angela made in her video from what. I remember. I watched it a while ago was that these crackpots always have grand theories. It’s never a small contribution. In that sense. A good filter is just asking them to show why we should listen to them before putting effort into it.

      You think you found a way to make warp drives work ? Show us a prototype.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • balsoft@lemmy.ml ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Nowadays it’s more a matter of asking ChatGPT

      source
• NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  physics crackpots: a ‘theory’ - Angela Collier

  source
• Midnitte@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  The theory? 1x1=2

  source
• Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The difference between genius and insanity is paper thin.

  source

  • ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    People love to repeat this as a way to self-validate feelings of being rejected or less educated than people who put in the commitment and time and energy to learning actual science.

    Everyone rather be Rick Sanchez than Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar because it seems more fun.

    source