I think the problem is that science today, in many fields, is slower and requires more work than it used to.
With physics in particular there’s a perception that science should progress fast in spectacular breakthroughs. But the 1900s was a very unique time. It’s not like that anymore. We’ve figured out the “easy” things (relatively speaking), most things left to discover are probably far harder.
So we need to get used to paying scientists and researchers to just play around with whatever they feel like, over long stretches of time. There’s no guarantee that a breakthrough will come from someone strongly embedded in the science mainstream writing lots of articles with tons of citation. And there’s no guarantee that breakthroughs will happen in any reasonable time.
I think we also need a shift from documenting/publishing the results, to documenting/publishing the process. YouTube is interesting in that regard. A lot of creators there doing very interesting and unique work.. and even if they don’t get great results, people still watch it if the process is interesting, and/or if the creator teaches their techniques, what they’re learning, how they failed, etc.
With physics in particular there’s a perception that science should progress fast in spectacular breakthroughs. But the 1900s was a very unique time. It’s not like that anymore. We’ve figured out the “easy” things (relatively speaking), most things left to discover are probably far harder.
So we need to get used to paying scientists and researchers to just play around with whatever they feel like, over long stretches of time. There’s no guarantee that a breakthrough will come from someone strongly embedded in the science mainstream writing lots of articles with tons of citation. And there’s no guarantee that breakthroughs will happen in any reasonable time.
I think we also need a shift from documenting/publishing the results, to documenting/publishing the process. YouTube is interesting in that regard. A lot of creators there doing very interesting and unique work.. and even if they don’t get great results, people still watch it if the process is interesting, and/or if the creator teaches their techniques, what they’re learning, how they failed, etc.