Yes, distractions are there, and the internet is the big one, far worse now than three or four channels of TV was (back in the 70s and early 80s before video recorders and computer games took off). TV back then was often so boring, that you were forced to do other things like go outside or read books. Now I have to unplug the router to avoid distraction and spend time on priority projects. Distractions are inevitable if the project is particularly difficult and stressful.
Distractions and a slow-down can be helpful, though, in some kinds of problems where a lot of research or critical thinking is needed before assembling material. I think most of the reasons mainstream fundamental theoretical physics has reached a dead end (M theory, the cosmic landscape problem, etc.) are related to people being in too much of a rush 50 years ago, when the standard model was rapidly turned into a dogma of orthodoxy.
If you know exactly what to do, you can progress really fast, staying up all night in excitement, typing out ideas. But the whole academic experience seems keyed into project management simplicity. You have to produce work to deadlines, as you would for a weekly or monthly journal or magazine. Once people are indoctrinated in "time management" this way, it stops revolutions which are very complex, intricated and unpredictable. You can't get funding for such revolutions.
Also, on “time-management” indoctrination and the project as deadline (after which comes the next project) it’s outwith your field but I appreciated Bojana Kunst’s Artist at Work, Proximity of Art and Capitalism.
Thanks for the reference to Artist at Work. I have ordered it. I think there are two stages to science, first digging up reality, and then presenting it. The second stage, which I'm trying to come to terms with, is about art. Even trying to get scientific diagrams right is an artistic challenge. Strangely, I wanted to be an artist and loved drawing as a kid but was persuaded to (try to) go into science instead by parents, plus an unfortunate accident (was left handed and fell breaking left arm, forcing change to right handedness, which proved a disaster)!
Sorry to hear that. Artists too are digging up reality and presenting it, right? Or even transforming it. Perhaps there’s not much difference. Artists experiment, as do scientists. Even songs can be ‘reality tests’!
Yes, but artists are far more connected to reality than superstring theorists who claim their uncheckable equations are beautiful, with their anthropic landscape of 10^500 different compactifications of 6-dimensional Calabi-Yau manifolds. It's not objective science (as Dr Woit has pointed out for 20 years on his Not Even Wrong blog at Columbia Uni, NY), and if it's "art", then it's not based on reality! Are equations art? If so, how should they be evaluated when they can't be tested scientifically? Is more mathematical complexity, more sophistication?
My feeling at present is that there are multiple criteria for fashionability, which always includes some kind of aesthetics. String theory became fashionable partly because of celebrity endorsement (Witten and Weinberg), and partly because it claimed to be the only theory which offered the possibility of spin-2 gravitons and unification of force couplings. Overthrowing this hardened dogma is hard, on many levels, including the issue of presenting an attractive alternative theory.
Planck (creator of the quantum revolution) said that science is like fashion, where old theories die off slowly. It's not quite the picture popularized by the mass media. What happens in science is far more like the development of art movements or even political movements, than scientists admit.
I guess it’s about making yourself inaccessible, when needed. Easier said than done though, like you say. Although we had crap TV, for sure, I’m so glad to have known life without this screen glued to my palm.
Yes, distractions are there, and the internet is the big one, far worse now than three or four channels of TV was (back in the 70s and early 80s before video recorders and computer games took off). TV back then was often so boring, that you were forced to do other things like go outside or read books. Now I have to unplug the router to avoid distraction and spend time on priority projects. Distractions are inevitable if the project is particularly difficult and stressful.
Distractions and a slow-down can be helpful, though, in some kinds of problems where a lot of research or critical thinking is needed before assembling material. I think most of the reasons mainstream fundamental theoretical physics has reached a dead end (M theory, the cosmic landscape problem, etc.) are related to people being in too much of a rush 50 years ago, when the standard model was rapidly turned into a dogma of orthodoxy.
If you know exactly what to do, you can progress really fast, staying up all night in excitement, typing out ideas. But the whole academic experience seems keyed into project management simplicity. You have to produce work to deadlines, as you would for a weekly or monthly journal or magazine. Once people are indoctrinated in "time management" this way, it stops revolutions which are very complex, intricated and unpredictable. You can't get funding for such revolutions.
Also, on “time-management” indoctrination and the project as deadline (after which comes the next project) it’s outwith your field but I appreciated Bojana Kunst’s Artist at Work, Proximity of Art and Capitalism.
Thanks for the reference to Artist at Work. I have ordered it. I think there are two stages to science, first digging up reality, and then presenting it. The second stage, which I'm trying to come to terms with, is about art. Even trying to get scientific diagrams right is an artistic challenge. Strangely, I wanted to be an artist and loved drawing as a kid but was persuaded to (try to) go into science instead by parents, plus an unfortunate accident (was left handed and fell breaking left arm, forcing change to right handedness, which proved a disaster)!
Sorry to hear that. Artists too are digging up reality and presenting it, right? Or even transforming it. Perhaps there’s not much difference. Artists experiment, as do scientists. Even songs can be ‘reality tests’!
Yes, but artists are far more connected to reality than superstring theorists who claim their uncheckable equations are beautiful, with their anthropic landscape of 10^500 different compactifications of 6-dimensional Calabi-Yau manifolds. It's not objective science (as Dr Woit has pointed out for 20 years on his Not Even Wrong blog at Columbia Uni, NY), and if it's "art", then it's not based on reality! Are equations art? If so, how should they be evaluated when they can't be tested scientifically? Is more mathematical complexity, more sophistication?
Well, I guess an equation can be art, or ‘beautiful’, even if not true. Like pointless art. Some of which is beautiful.
My feeling at present is that there are multiple criteria for fashionability, which always includes some kind of aesthetics. String theory became fashionable partly because of celebrity endorsement (Witten and Weinberg), and partly because it claimed to be the only theory which offered the possibility of spin-2 gravitons and unification of force couplings. Overthrowing this hardened dogma is hard, on many levels, including the issue of presenting an attractive alternative theory.
Planck (creator of the quantum revolution) said that science is like fashion, where old theories die off slowly. It's not quite the picture popularized by the mass media. What happens in science is far more like the development of art movements or even political movements, than scientists admit.
I guess it’s about making yourself inaccessible, when needed. Easier said than done though, like you say. Although we had crap TV, for sure, I’m so glad to have known life without this screen glued to my palm.