Long-time listener, first-time caller here! I think this is an interesting viewpoint, and I wonder how you decide if you’re making forward progress. With standard publications, media presentations, or whatever, you can identify that you’ve contributed Idea X to Field Y when you’re published, but it seems harder to know that for yourself when the main contribution is forum posts. I’m interested in your views on this.
On a forum you can judge other people’s opinions of your contributions by the karma (or the equivalent) of your posts, and by their comments. Of course there’s a risk that people on some forum liking your posts might represent groupthink instead of genuine intellectual progress, but the same risk exists with academic peer review, and one simply has to keep this risk/uncertainty in mind.
Long-time listener, first-time caller here! I think this is an interesting viewpoint, and I wonder how you decide if you’re making forward progress. With standard publications, media presentations, or whatever, you can identify that you’ve contributed Idea X to Field Y when you’re published, but it seems harder to know that for yourself when the main contribution is forum posts. I’m interested in your views on this.
On a forum you can judge other people’s opinions of your contributions by the karma (or the equivalent) of your posts, and by their comments. Of course there’s a risk that people on some forum liking your posts might represent groupthink instead of genuine intellectual progress, but the same risk exists with academic peer review, and one simply has to keep this risk/uncertainty in mind.