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by escott, last edited in March 2024
angela collier (physicist) has this wonderful video about the book "love, theoretically" (romance book about physicists).
theoretical physicist reads: love, theoretically
i really like collier more for her style than her substance (which is great, too):
i like that her videos are lower production quality,
i like that her set up looks unprofessional,
i like that her audio isn't completely polished
(i have a strange pet peeve with video creators whose audio sounds so clean and smooth that it comes across as otherwordly to me)
most of all i like her balanced casualness:
she doesn't go too eccentric (which isn't bad)
and she isn't completely script-bound (which isn't bad either)
towards the end, she shifted focus to criticizing the physics field depicted in "love, theoretically".
not only does it depict physics researchers in a wildly illogical and unrealistic manner;
not only is its plot founded on the weird idea that theoretical physicists and experimental physicists are at odds with each other
(which collier emphasizes)
it also tends to rely on referencing random physics words and physics concepts for the sake of sounding smart.
it reminded me of a book i actually read for myself, that i didn't experience secondhand through a youtuber.
in my repressed trans teen boy phase, i read and enjoyed "ready player one" unironically. it is also a book that was so so focused on sounding smart and cool and gratuitously relied on referencing nostalgic 80s media. both "love, theoretically" (as collier explained to me) and "ready player one" are obsessed with listing things from a niche subculture, for audiences who are supposed to venerate said subculture.
"love, theoretically", to people who see stem and research as noble crusades, would feel like a peek into the humanity hidden in the divine. "ready player one", with its poisonous nostalgia and misogyny, took me, a teenage incel bro, gave me a taste of power.
i don't consider myself a scientist; yes i'm technically doing research and said research is computer science, but my work is bullshit and i don't want to be a scientist anymore and i want out. my friend in biology is doing research on the potential of a bacteria for the bioremediation of pesticides. the truth is her study has zero impact on its own. yes, it has significance in perhaps contributing to sustaining soil health in agriculture. but that effect only kicks in if:
(1) the bacteria he's studying does have potential
(2) the bacteria she's studying can actually be used on the ground, in actually remediating pesticide-ridden soil
(3) the process can be scaled to widespread use on agricultural lands
these things went unsaid in her presentation, of course, in this context, he's supposed to sell his research and make it look more important than it actually is. the truth is most of scientific research is unimportant, big innovations and big changes only happen after years and years of foundational unimpressive work. and that's how it should be, we shouldn't be pushing researchers to churn out new novel studies just to keep their jobs. it's not the novelty or the direct impact that counts. we need replication studies. we need more grants.
we need less technofetishist oh we'll use a.i. to recognize sign language alphabet to be more inclusive to sign language users like
shut up you didn't talk to any sign language users or anyone from the actual community,
even then machine learning is not the answer to that
your model is unusable in any real-world context
you don't contribute anything to machine learning at all,
you're just jumping on the a.i. bandwagon because it's hot.
anyway in my friend's presentation of her research, a layperson, someone also evaluating her presentation, asked him, which region of the country would benefit the most from this study?
i was perplexed. no one who understood the topic would say this. i thought it was obvious that this study was important yes but only in the grand scheme of things, it would not directly benefit anything at all. he couldn't give an answer so he just said oh it'll help all the regions because we live in an agricultural country.
the exchange pissed me off. i know i shouldn't be pissed off, the layperson had no idea and had been brainwashed that science and technology research are the key to developing our country and uplifting poverty yadda yadda yadda
(i am not being reactionary here with my use of the word "brainwash", it would take too long to explain how much my country and its politicians have slung around the word STEM and Development)
anyway yeah collier was right, big bang theory isn't good representation and ready player one sucks ass and please pay me a living wage for a whole year so i can produce a systematic review of an incredibly niche field which nevertheless acts as a starting point for future researchers. also communism not unabated industrial development, thanks.
(talk to me at escottronic dash mail at proton mail dot com)