TED Talk: Adam Savage on scientific discovery
I love this guy. So much enthusiasm in what he does.
(
dirtyscarab intends to live forever. So far, so good..., Wed 14 Mar 2012, 0:23,
Reply)
Bloody loverly
in times past we all had a role and we're defined in it by birth, only the rich had the time to 'waste' on discovery, nowadays a lot of us have all the time in the world but no money to do anything with it, and the vast majority, I think, choose to waste that time, but now we pretty much all have access to the entirety of human knowledge at our finger tips and pretty much anyone with a brain and the inclination can choose to be a scientist and gather that knowledge into their brain and go one step further with it in theory or practise, making that creative leap to another level.
The only problem then is getting the still-insular and superior, almost to the point of religious secularism, scientific community to listen to them, unfortunately all social networks online still seem to to pander solely to the most bland and mindless social norms so getting some means of meaningful discussion and positive supportive feedback for your scientific thoughts is an issue, but I think in a few years we HAVE to start seeing some 'home thinkers' achieving great things online!
Unless these fecking 'bought rights we demand legal support for' corporation fuckwits fuck up the whole interwebs and progress generally of course...
(
..wil, Wed 14 Mar 2012, 6:29,
Reply)
This is a nice thing to read in the morning
I'm off to buy a cap so's I can doff it to you
(, Wed 14 Mar 2012, 8:37, Reply)
That's a nice romantic notion you've got going there but
I think you really don't understand how science operates. It is not about "intuition", and "eureka" moments*, it is about combining the sum total of a lot of very intelligent people's hard work into a coherent whole. To paraphrase Einstein: "Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration".
*These epiphanies occasionally can, and do, happen but only usually after the studying something so well that you can do it in you sleep.
(
P-MONKE We're all fucked, Wed 14 Mar 2012, 8:44,
Reply)
Well if you put it that way
an electronic media that combines the entire planet's content into a digestible structure and provides people with the opportunity to learn it and discuss it couldn't possibly be used for advancing science!
(
..wil, Wed 14 Mar 2012, 10:13,
Reply)
Mudface (below) makes a good point - there are plenty of "amateur" scientists out there
see also "galaxy zoo" www.galaxyzoo.org/
But again, the ultimate value is derived from the sum product of many contributors. The "free thinkers" tend to be the over-unity machine inventors and the ilk.
I also use the knowledge collecting power of the 'net for many things from fixing my car to getting soup recipes.
On top of that, ARPANET was originally developed for scientist to collaborate, and the end result: Nyan Cat.
(
P-MONKE We're all fucked, Wed 14 Mar 2012, 10:35,
Reply)
