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.
We gotta be more encouraging
Submitted 9 hours ago by Stamets@lemmy.dbzer0.com to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/b5fbbe47-52d3-4124-96c5-b64e749d9156.webp
Comments
Harvey656@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 8 hours 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
officermike@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Pretty close to zero multiplied by billions of people yields results sometimes.
smithsonianmag.com/…/this-17-year-old-scientist-i…
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 7 hours 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.
AlexLost@lemmy.world 8 hours 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.
Dasus@lemmy.world 8 hours 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.
AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 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.
OrganicMustard@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
They have some chance if they wrote code to find a counterexample to some obscure math conjecture
PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca 8 hours 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.
BananaOnionJuice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
Someone give them the Nobel price already!
rowrowrowyourboat@sh.itjust.works 8 hours 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.
howrar@lemmy.ca 2 hours ago
Depends if you count undergrad. One that comes to mind is the RWKV paper.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
It definitely happens.
Dasus@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
zxqwas@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
There are 99 crackpots for every genius without a degree.
Heliumfart@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
Probably more like 999.
Frozengyro@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
But that 1 in a billion could change the world
Luffy879@lemmy.ml 7 hours 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
optissima@lemmy.ml 7 hours ago
Lack intelligence, or lack education?
Luffy879@lemmy.ml 7 hours ago
Education.
IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org 7 hours ago
Knowing how to write a good study is a matter of experience more than intelligence.
shapis@lemmy.ml 2 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.
NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 7 hours ago
physics crackpots: a ‘theory’ - Angela Collier
Midnitte@beehaw.org 7 hours ago
Kolanaki@pawb.social 4 hours ago
The difference between genius and insanity is paper thin.
stevedice@sh.itjust.works 1 hour 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.