In any case, the episode has given me a mini-crisis of faith, and a new appreciation of academia.
What can one say? Academia is terrible at marketing, so you have to exercise http://lesswrong.com/lw/3m3/the_neglected_virtue_of_scholarship/ yourself. This is far from a new idea to me, which is why I find the occasional realization like this amusing. (Well, yeah. Why do you think people keep getting told to use Google or do some research? NIH indeed.)
The illustrations I find most vivid are from the past. Pick some particular technical idea that seems like a “big deal” to you, and then look at its penetration into academic and popular consciousness over time. Diagonalization arguments are a reasonable example. Cantor published over a century ago. The argument is simple enough to explain to an interested 11 year old in less than two hours and repairs basic confusions that many reasonably smart people have about “infinity”… and it remains nearly unknown among non-mathematicians to the present day.
Now imagine the tiny fraction of the population in 1910, 1930, and 1950 who knew about it, and the tricks they could do that “mere mortals” could not. That kind of stuff propagates slowly. Maybe faster now, what with the internet and paywalls slowly coming down and Wikipedia and so on? But still pretty slowly. Kolmogorov complexity has been an available thought for half a century already!
It would not surprise me if every insight needed for AGI had already been published somewhere already, but the separate ideas have just not yet been noticed, collated, synthesized, and reduced to practice. I find this thought sobering.
One of the real tricks is to know what the keywords are, and the best way I know to do that is to participate in academic specialties enough to pick up the “chalk board culture” of a new research group. Grad school (in addition to all the other stuff) is, in some sense, joining a research group and hanging out with them enough to pick up their chalk board culture. Not having access to this is one of the problems that an autodidact trying to make it with book learning and nothing but book learning can run into. Access to the chalk board cultures is partly valuable for helping you see what other smart people think are important things to have read. There’s other value as well (like the way a chalk board culture is sometimes a locus of knowledge production), but the advice on keywords and authors is a good chunk of the value.
It would not surprise me if every insight needed for AGI had already been published somewhere already, but the separate ideas have just not yet been noticed, collated, synthesized, and reduced to practice. I find this thought sobering.
Actually, I had one just last night. I was starting an anthology on Buddhist philosophy (Empty Words) which I had downloaded from library.nu, and the very first essay was arguing that Nagarjuna’s Verses on the Heart of the Middle Way and Sextus Empiricus’s Against books espoused a similar skeptical approach to metaphysical commitments (drawing on Kripke & Wittgenstein) - the exact approach I had mused upon at length before, with some of the same passages I would have chosen.
‘Huh’, I thought, ‘I really should have expected someone to have thought that before, but I guess I didn’t because I was surprised and angered (since “my” idea had been stolen) to realize where this essay was going.’
Fortunately, I hadn’t gotten around to carefully studying and making notes towards an essay, so I didn’t lose too much time to my failure to check whether the idea had already been done. (Unlike the time I re-invented longevity insurance, eg.)
I was surprised and angered (since “my” idea had been stolen)
My feelings are the opposite. I become exceedingly pleased and amused to find that someone else did it first. Aside from it being instant vindication, it just makes me happy. I feel a sense of kinship knowing that someone, somewhere, had the same data I had and came to the same exact logical leap that I did. It’s like we’re research buddies across time.
Though I do feel silly and a little mad at myself when I’ve wasted a lot of time synthesizing something could have just researched instead.
That’s what I figured, but I hoped I was wrong, and there’s still a super-secret beer-lovers’ club which opens if you say “iftahh ya simsim” thrice or something. Assuming you would let me in on a secret, of course.
Unfortunately, if there was such a secret beer-lovers’ club, I couldn’t tell a relative stranger like you about it. (Ironically, this is also what I would say if there was no such thing.)
Me too. Without library.nu, research is significantly harder. If any LWer has an invite to a private repository/tracker for scholarly books/textbooks, please share with me.
You seem to have quite good research skills, do you have any advice for someone trying to find out if academia has considered something already? Especially if that someone doesn’t know that much about the field in question.
Try a bunch of queries; read good-looking papers, not for their results, but their discussion of background information. There’s no real good solution to the problem of known unknowns: “I’m sure this has been researched, but what’s the exact phrase or name it’s been given in academia?” I suspect this is one of the benefits of being in the community—when you discuss something or mention an idea, they can say ‘ah yes, X’ and now you have not the problem of an unknown known but the much much easier problem of a known unknown which you can just punch into Google Scholar and get to work.
read good-looking papers, not for their results, but their discussion of background information.
That’s a really good idea! I usually skip introductions and go for the “meat” of the results, just realized that it’s bitten me several times already, guess it’s time to unlearn that habit.
What can one say? Academia is terrible at marketing, so you have to exercise http://lesswrong.com/lw/3m3/the_neglected_virtue_of_scholarship/ yourself. This is far from a new idea to me, which is why I find the occasional realization like this amusing. (Well, yeah. Why do you think people keep getting told to use Google or do some research? NIH indeed.)
Good point, I’ll keep it in mind.
Can you give some examples of your recent realizations like that? ETA: oh wait, maybe you meant other people’s realizations, in which case never mind.
The illustrations I find most vivid are from the past. Pick some particular technical idea that seems like a “big deal” to you, and then look at its penetration into academic and popular consciousness over time. Diagonalization arguments are a reasonable example. Cantor published over a century ago. The argument is simple enough to explain to an interested 11 year old in less than two hours and repairs basic confusions that many reasonably smart people have about “infinity”… and it remains nearly unknown among non-mathematicians to the present day.
Now imagine the tiny fraction of the population in 1910, 1930, and 1950 who knew about it, and the tricks they could do that “mere mortals” could not. That kind of stuff propagates slowly. Maybe faster now, what with the internet and paywalls slowly coming down and Wikipedia and so on? But still pretty slowly. Kolmogorov complexity has been an available thought for half a century already!
It would not surprise me if every insight needed for AGI had already been published somewhere already, but the separate ideas have just not yet been noticed, collated, synthesized, and reduced to practice. I find this thought sobering.
One of the real tricks is to know what the keywords are, and the best way I know to do that is to participate in academic specialties enough to pick up the “chalk board culture” of a new research group. Grad school (in addition to all the other stuff) is, in some sense, joining a research group and hanging out with them enough to pick up their chalk board culture. Not having access to this is one of the problems that an autodidact trying to make it with book learning and nothing but book learning can run into. Access to the chalk board cultures is partly valuable for helping you see what other smart people think are important things to have read. There’s other value as well (like the way a chalk board culture is sometimes a locus of knowledge production), but the advice on keywords and authors is a good chunk of the value.
My question was more about examples of unwitting rediscovery, like those described by gwern. Good point about knowing the keywords :-)
John Sowa 2012
The Goal of Language UnderstandingQuote:
All logic is a disciplined special case of analogical reasoning(page 128)He knows ;)
Actually, I had one just last night. I was starting an anthology on Buddhist philosophy (Empty Words) which I had downloaded from library.nu, and the very first essay was arguing that Nagarjuna’s Verses on the Heart of the Middle Way and Sextus Empiricus’s Against books espoused a similar skeptical approach to metaphysical commitments (drawing on Kripke & Wittgenstein) - the exact approach I had mused upon at length before, with some of the same passages I would have chosen.
‘Huh’, I thought, ‘I really should have expected someone to have thought that before, but I guess I didn’t because I was surprised and angered (since “my” idea had been stolen) to realize where this essay was going.’
Fortunately, I hadn’t gotten around to carefully studying and making notes towards an essay, so I didn’t lose too much time to my failure to check whether the idea had already been done. (Unlike the time I re-invented longevity insurance, eg.)
My feelings are the opposite. I become exceedingly pleased and amused to find that someone else did it first. Aside from it being instant vindication, it just makes me happy. I feel a sense of kinship knowing that someone, somewhere, had the same data I had and came to the same exact logical leap that I did. It’s like we’re research buddies across time.
Though I do feel silly and a little mad at myself when I’ve wasted a lot of time synthesizing something could have just researched instead.
Thanks for the examples! And also for the footnote about Feynman and Hillis reinventing Kimura’s work on population genetics.
Wait, I thought that library.nu was shut down back in the spring. What am I missing?
I never said when I downloaded it.
That’s what I figured, but I hoped I was wrong, and there’s still a super-secret beer-lovers’ club which opens if you say “iftahh ya simsim” thrice or something. Assuming you would let me in on a secret, of course.
Unfortunately, if there was such a secret beer-lovers’ club, I couldn’t tell a relative stranger like you about it. (Ironically, this is also what I would say if there was no such thing.)
Me too. Without library.nu, research is significantly harder. If any LWer has an invite to a private repository/tracker for scholarly books/textbooks, please share with me.
Library Genesis.
You seem to have quite good research skills, do you have any advice for someone trying to find out if academia has considered something already? Especially if that someone doesn’t know that much about the field in question.
Try a bunch of queries; read good-looking papers, not for their results, but their discussion of background information. There’s no real good solution to the problem of known unknowns: “I’m sure this has been researched, but what’s the exact phrase or name it’s been given in academia?” I suspect this is one of the benefits of being in the community—when you discuss something or mention an idea, they can say ‘ah yes, X’ and now you have not the problem of an unknown known but the much much easier problem of a known unknown which you can just punch into Google Scholar and get to work.
That’s a really good idea! I usually skip introductions and go for the “meat” of the results, just realized that it’s bitten me several times already, guess it’s time to unlearn that habit.