Comment on We gotta be more encouraging

• ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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  • AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You’re right, we build on the backs of giants. The issue is, typically, anything I discover myself is typically very far below the level where new science can be done OR it is far enough above my current knowledge that I just don’t even know where I’d begin.

    Bi intuitionistic logic is the latter category. I was expecting truth tables and instead had to add a ton of words to my vocabulary like “Heyting Algebra” and “Kripke Frame” etc. just to understand what the paper was saying (not that I do fully understand what the papers are saying lol)

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• chloroken@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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?

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  • AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    First, I said the “new things” were already discovered by dead guys. They’re new to me, not to the world. That’s the point of the comment.

    Secondly, I am an engineering undergrad and I don’t think I ever claimed to be working with “ocular algorithms.” I had been experimenting with spiking neural networks and was replicating a research paper on using a two layer inhibition structure to recognize MNIST numbers.

    That lead me to question how images were processed in the brain which lead me to read up on the structure of the eye (which you tried to call me out on previously) as well as the structure of the neocortex and the supposed function of each of the visual processing areas of the neocortex.

    I’m sorry if I’m coming off as condescending or as “an intellectual giant” I’m a kid with ADHD and curiosity. I like explaining the cool things I’ve recently learned.

    As for “what would happen if a professor for an undergrad lab you work at saw the way you write” they definitely already know. In fact my supervisor is pretty supportive of my random tangents into other kinds of science (so long as it doesn’t distract from the work I need to get done). Oh and remember how I said there might be an application for spiking neural nets in one of the grad students projects? My supervisor thinks so too! (though it’s not the one I was thinking of lol)

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  • zea_64@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I didn’t get the impression reading that that they’re presenting themselves as an intellectual or a researcher, just that they’re a nerd going down rabbit holes.

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    • chloroken@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That’s because you haven’t worked in academia and haven’t seen undergrads fantasize like this with regularity.

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      • zea_64@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        You sure you’re not just oversensitized to it? This feels like a false positive.

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      • AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Ah yes my wildest fantasy: to find out that the ideas I think are new and original have been studied well beyond my level of understanding by other people lol

        I hope you’ve never worked in academia. You sound like you really like discouraging people from enjoying science unless they meet your arbitrary education standards.

        Anyone can do science. Sure, sometimes people who don’t know a lot learn a little and think they know a lot, but you shouldn’t just shut them down. If someone has a passion for exploration you should encourage them to keep going, catch their mistakes sure, help them question their thought process, but remind them that making mistakes or thinking an idea is novel when it isn’t is something everyone does and they shouldn’t be ashamed for it.

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    • AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yeah I am an undergrad in engineering not math or physics or bio or anything like that. I just get curious and end up going down rabbit holes of niche science.

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