We need a universal basic income which would allow people to be creative, follow their interests, experiment and take risks without ruining their lives.
“The fact is that the work which improves the condition of mankind, the work which extends knowledge and increases power and enriches literature, and elevates thought, is not done to secure a living. It is not the work of slaves, driven to their task either by the lash of a master or by animal necessities. It is the work of men who perform it for their own sake, and not that they may get more to eat or drink, or wear, or display. In a state of society where want is abolished, work of this sort could be enormously increased.”
Your timing was great with the Stanford President, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, resigning yesterday for "research misconduct". Amateurs can't do worse than that.
A great example of a non-professional doing good science is the mycologist Paul Stamets. He's a major contributor to the field, written books and peer reviewed papers, discovered multiple new species of mushrooms, and helps run a company that does research on fungi and improving human health.
I've been a member of this secret society for quite a few years--without even knowing it!--and strongly encourage others to join. It's fun.
I have two quibbles (because what would science be without quibbles?):
1) Your belief that "good work travels" is probably due to confirmation bias. You see work that travels. You don't see work, like mine, that doesn't (although I once rather embarrassingly made the front page of Ann Coulter's site with a now-long-lost analysis of why the dosimetry used to declare x-ray backscatter detectors safe is bogus).
So people should be really prepared for their work to fall into the abyss, which doesn't mean they shouldn't do it.
Do it for love. Do it because you want to KNOW. I personally have the bad habit of never getting around to writing up a great deal of what I do, because once I've answered a question to my own satisfaction I tend to move on to the next question rather than writing it up properly. My substack is an attempt to remedy that to some degree, but the reality is there's not a big audience for a lot of what I do (currently writing about why perpetual motion machines don't work, as a platform to explicate how weird thermodynamics is.)
2) There's a place for the term "citizen science", which is the kind of large-scale data collection efforts that people engage in. We have a local wildlife count where I am, for example, and organizations like Purple Air dot com that collate the information from air quality sensors are engaged in this as well. The thing that makes these "citizen science" is that they are collaborative effort between citizens engaged in what amounts to an act of civic virtue. That's a different thing than me chipping away at the fundamental of quantum theory via numerical solutions to Schrodinger's equation or whatever.
I love that you're promoting this stuff, and really hope people answer your call.
This is fantastic. I am an avid gardener, and this reminds me of instances in gardening and agriculture where people will plant half an acre one way and half an acre another way, just to find out better ways to grow food and manage their operations.
Wow, this was fascinating. I'm a fellow who respects science more than I love it, but this post inspires me to enjoy the art of doing science. I work as a health coach, researcher, and writer, so there are plenty of opportunities. Often it's just a matter of emphasizing strongly the replicateable, objective truth of how our bodies work.
I'm getting involved with the experimental crop breeding community as a way to share the work on my experimental farm (zeroinputagriculture.substack.com). My hypothesis is that there are countless wild species that could be utilised in wide hybridisation (ala Luther Burbank, a perfect example of a self-trained scientist) to create new crops for a wide variety of purposes. With the climate shifting we may need to reinvent agriculture from the ground up.
When the pandemic forced me to do remote work, I mothballed my usual vaccine development research and started hunting for weird new viruses hidden in public sequence repositories (e.g., NCBI Sequence Read Archive). I made prodigous use of the campus supercomputer - as well as several very expensive software packages - but there's a huge amount of fundamental cataloging work left to do that wouldn't require fancy tools.
I can't understand the attraction of Sudoku. Finding viruses is about a bajillion times more gratifying. The pandemic remote-work project was so engrossing it felt like it might be giving me some insight into what gambling addiction might be like. If somebody could figure out how to democratize the sequence-gazing, I can guarantee there'd be gold in them thar hills.
Science isn't easily corruptible peer reviewed papers that cost millions of dollars. No, science is simply this: what is independently replicable.
We need the rise of the COWBOY SCIENTISTS again!
Want to see some easy science you can do at home? Know anyone with sever depression, anxiety, autoimmune diseases like MS, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, or type 2 diabetes? Do strict carnivore diet (lion diet - just beef alt and water) for 8 weeks and watch them cure themselves. Yes, CURE.
We need a universal basic income which would allow people to be creative, follow their interests, experiment and take risks without ruining their lives.
“The fact is that the work which improves the condition of mankind, the work which extends knowledge and increases power and enriches literature, and elevates thought, is not done to secure a living. It is not the work of slaves, driven to their task either by the lash of a master or by animal necessities. It is the work of men who perform it for their own sake, and not that they may get more to eat or drink, or wear, or display. In a state of society where want is abolished, work of this sort could be enormously increased.”
― Henry George, Progress and Poverty (1879)
Your timing was great with the Stanford President, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, resigning yesterday for "research misconduct". Amateurs can't do worse than that.
A great example of a non-professional doing good science is the mycologist Paul Stamets. He's a major contributor to the field, written books and peer reviewed papers, discovered multiple new species of mushrooms, and helps run a company that does research on fungi and improving human health.
I've been a member of this secret society for quite a few years--without even knowing it!--and strongly encourage others to join. It's fun.
I have two quibbles (because what would science be without quibbles?):
1) Your belief that "good work travels" is probably due to confirmation bias. You see work that travels. You don't see work, like mine, that doesn't (although I once rather embarrassingly made the front page of Ann Coulter's site with a now-long-lost analysis of why the dosimetry used to declare x-ray backscatter detectors safe is bogus).
So people should be really prepared for their work to fall into the abyss, which doesn't mean they shouldn't do it.
Do it for love. Do it because you want to KNOW. I personally have the bad habit of never getting around to writing up a great deal of what I do, because once I've answered a question to my own satisfaction I tend to move on to the next question rather than writing it up properly. My substack is an attempt to remedy that to some degree, but the reality is there's not a big audience for a lot of what I do (currently writing about why perpetual motion machines don't work, as a platform to explicate how weird thermodynamics is.)
2) There's a place for the term "citizen science", which is the kind of large-scale data collection efforts that people engage in. We have a local wildlife count where I am, for example, and organizations like Purple Air dot com that collate the information from air quality sensors are engaged in this as well. The thing that makes these "citizen science" is that they are collaborative effort between citizens engaged in what amounts to an act of civic virtue. That's a different thing than me chipping away at the fundamental of quantum theory via numerical solutions to Schrodinger's equation or whatever.
I love that you're promoting this stuff, and really hope people answer your call.
This is fantastic. I am an avid gardener, and this reminds me of instances in gardening and agriculture where people will plant half an acre one way and half an acre another way, just to find out better ways to grow food and manage their operations.
Wow, this was fascinating. I'm a fellow who respects science more than I love it, but this post inspires me to enjoy the art of doing science. I work as a health coach, researcher, and writer, so there are plenty of opportunities. Often it's just a matter of emphasizing strongly the replicateable, objective truth of how our bodies work.
I'm getting involved with the experimental crop breeding community as a way to share the work on my experimental farm (zeroinputagriculture.substack.com). My hypothesis is that there are countless wild species that could be utilised in wide hybridisation (ala Luther Burbank, a perfect example of a self-trained scientist) to create new crops for a wide variety of purposes. With the climate shifting we may need to reinvent agriculture from the ground up.
When the pandemic forced me to do remote work, I mothballed my usual vaccine development research and started hunting for weird new viruses hidden in public sequence repositories (e.g., NCBI Sequence Read Archive). I made prodigous use of the campus supercomputer - as well as several very expensive software packages - but there's a huge amount of fundamental cataloging work left to do that wouldn't require fancy tools.
I can't understand the attraction of Sudoku. Finding viruses is about a bajillion times more gratifying. The pandemic remote-work project was so engrossing it felt like it might be giving me some insight into what gambling addiction might be like. If somebody could figure out how to democratize the sequence-gazing, I can guarantee there'd be gold in them thar hills.
I’m a PhD candidate who is interested in joining the discord! What’s the best way of giving you info to get in?
I'd love an invite to your super-secret-science-discord!
Damn, this is sharp!! Thank you so much for putting this into writing.
If I translate/localize that to Portuguese and repost with due credit will you be mad at me?
Also: have you heard about https://ronininstitute.org/? Basically a way of getting together and providing support for independent scientists.
Cheers and congrats on the writing!
100%
Science isn't easily corruptible peer reviewed papers that cost millions of dollars. No, science is simply this: what is independently replicable.
We need the rise of the COWBOY SCIENTISTS again!
Want to see some easy science you can do at home? Know anyone with sever depression, anxiety, autoimmune diseases like MS, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, or type 2 diabetes? Do strict carnivore diet (lion diet - just beef alt and water) for 8 weeks and watch them cure themselves. Yes, CURE.
Look: https://joshketry.substack.com/p/carnivore-diet-saved-me-from-autoimmune
Qualified food scientist here: I am so IN! Standing by to assist with whacky food science ideas from dabblers and lizards :)
Also, by the way, check this kind of discussions that go on on iNaturalist by folks who are identifying a bug just because it is awesome
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/141415760
Way ahead of you: original research on substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/thefrontierpsychiatrists/p/i-did-not-want-to-be-angry-all-the?r=1ct8f&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web