Author Topic: Would it be beneficial for SpaceX to take suggestions from members of the public  (Read 16325 times)

Offline Davidthefat

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I know I had a lot of misconceptions during my time as an engineering student due to misreading or coming to wrong conclusions about a lot of things. Even on forums, people corroborated my wrong information that sounded correct at the time. Often times that idea gets propagated as "truth" and often times, gets misconstrued even more as it gets repeated. I see a lot of "right information" being used to come to wrong conclusions due to being uninformed of the context.

edit: This isn't limited to the general public either. Engineers often suffer from the same thing. Engineers working on rocket engines. Some have uniformed conclusions about certain things and are simply wrong about things. I've seen engineers point to one thing and identifying it as something completely wrong. I'm not saying I know everything either. I've since learned to keep quiet more often than not and ask more questions instead.
« Last Edit: 05/14/2018 03:30 pm by Davidthefat »

Offline Slarty1080

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The kind of amounts they could make from that might be useful to a couple of guys in a garage trying to get their first VC funding round, but to SpaceX it wouldn't be material.

But they sell T shirts on their web site?
That's marketing, not fundraising.
Well why not sell rocket parts as marketing then?
My optimistic hope is that it will become cool to really think about things... rather than just doing reactive bullsh*t based on no knowledge (Brian Cox)

Offline mme

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The kind of amounts they could make from that might be useful to a couple of guys in a garage trying to get their first VC funding round, but to SpaceX it wouldn't be material.

But they sell T shirts on their web site?
That's marketing, not fundraising.
Well why not sell rocket parts as marketing then?
Because ITAR, because they want to reuse the rockets and they expend, cannibalize, or memorialize retired rockets.

Honestly I don't get what point you are trying to make. They sell SpaceX branded t-shirts, water bottles, patches, etc. because they want people excited about space in general and SpaceX in particular. They want to attract super motivated employees and they want to generate excitement for VCs willing to invest in the future rather than the next 3 months. They also want everyone to start thinking that throwing away a truck after a single delivery would be a really silly way to run UPS and maybe that's true for spaceflight too.
Space is not Highlander.  There can, and will, be more than one.

Offline jpo234

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Remember Boaty McBoatface...
You want to be inspired by things. You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great. That's what being a spacefaring civilization is all about. It's about believing in the future and believing the future will be better than the past. And I can't think of anything more exciting than being out there among the stars.

Offline Athrithalix

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Remember Boaty McBoatface...

I was more picturing Homer Simpson's power plant with the "racing stripe down the side, which is kinda neat".

Offline TomH

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I'm not going to address the suggestions part. I will remind everyone, however, that air-drone video of the first drone-ship landing attempt was awful. You couldn't see anything. Many people from this site put in a huge group effort at re-digitizing it, made the clip viewable, and gave it to SpaceX. Elon was very grateful.

So that WAS an example of help that came from outside the company. And it came from right here.
« Last Edit: 05/19/2018 07:48 am by TomH »

Offline LouScheffer

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No. No, no, no, no, and no. Also no. 

I'd say yes, on these lines of evidence:

a) Almost everything in rocketry was predicted by science fiction writers.  These were not experts, but came up with good ideas that were later implemented.  Amateurs have the advantage of looking further out than engineers, who need to obsess about the problems of today.

b) Even experts have blind spots and assumptions they did not know they made.  Often you don't need to be an expert, just a rational and skeptical observer.  Lots of folks here have the technical skill to make the same observations Feynman made during the Challenger investigation.

c) An interested amateur and a professional are not as far apart as you might think.   Lots of people on NSF have engineering degrees and/or decades of experience.  If they joined SpaceX they could contribute right away.  Their ideas are no worse from having originated from outside.  See also recent math developments, where amateurs and unknowns have made significant strides.

d) Learn from "Dark Star", the best movie ever per dollar spent.  As Lieutenant Doolittle tries to talk the bomb out of exploding, he teaches the bomb to be skeptical of any input, which could possibly be wrong and lead to a false impression.  The bomb then asks why he (it?) should pay attention to Lieutenant Doolittle himself, since he too may be false data.  Lieutenant Doolittle then correctly replies "A concept is valid no matter where it originates!"  The same is true here.

So should SpaceX read the ideas proposed here and see if any make sense?  Absolutely - it's a cheap way to look at a vast and broad set of suggestions.   Should anyone here expect any credit, should some idea pan out?  Of course not...


Offline jpfulton314

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The sticky word here is 'public.'

When I think of public, it's more along the lines of NSF members.  For the most part, those who post here have a pretty decent level of knowledge in one field or another.  So, at the very least we would expect a registered member to do the posting. 

After all, there is a section for L2 members to answer questions that arise in the public forums.  One would hope that the nuttier material would find itself whisked away through moderation, etc.  However, it may be the type of thing where someone fairly knowledgeable posts an idea that makes sense.  I would say to just let SpaceX decide.  If the idea is a waste, you'll, more than likely will see no reply.  If it's good then there will be a discussion in L2, or it will pop up a few months later, again, either in L2 or on the Reddit forums.

In any case, if such a forum comes into existence the ground rules will have to be clearly defined.

Offline vaporcobra

Oh my god. Mods: please, please lock this unproductive and circular thread before I lose my last modicums of faith in humanity :-[

To anyone who genuinely believes that forums chatter (L2 or not) is a significant influence on companies on the envelope of technological systems development, please read this paper on the Dunning-Kruger Effect. And then read it a second, third, fourth, and fifth time. If, after five reads, you are still keen to conclude that you are a functional expert (and have not designed and/or built functional tech with tiny margins more or less from scratch), you are quite literally a dictionary definition of Dunning-Kruger.

I'm not trying to be mean or to personally attack anyone. It's just a simple reality of human cognition that unless you assume you are layperson (as I personally do), you will inevitably wind up inflating personal perceptions of expertise. In all aspects of life (not simply being a spaceflight fan on forums), assume you know nothing until you have incontrovertible, empirical evidence showing otherwise.

Do not assume - as many of you clearly do by arguing/implying that SpaceX actions and your forum comments are in any sense connected - that correlation has ANYTHING to do with causation unless you have direct, repeatable evidence.





For those of you that have not read any of the links/papers I've posted about the Dunning-Kruger effect (originally published in 1999), I'll copy the abstract of the 2008 replication and meta-analysis below.

Quote
People are typically overly optimistic when evaluating the quality of their performance on social and intellectual tasks. In particular, poor performers grossly overestimate their performances because their incompetence deprives them of the skills needed to recognize their deficits. Five studies demonstrated that poor performers lack insight into their shortcomings even in real world settings and when given incentives to be accurate. An additional meta-analysis showed that it was lack of insight into their own errors (and not mistaken assessments of their peers) that led to overly optimistic estimates among poor performers. Along the way, these studies ruled out recent alternative accounts that have been proposed to explain why poor performers hold such positive impressions of their performance.

Mods: I know this is only tangentially related to spaceflight, but it is explicitly related to this thread and to how users interact on public/private forums dedicated to technology. If you think this comment should be removed, I'd argue that the thread should commensurately be locked or removed.
« Last Edit: 05/20/2018 09:00 pm by vaporcobra »

Offline envy887

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...conclude that you are a functional expert (and have not designed and/or built functional tech with tiny margins more or less from scratch)...
Many people who comment here are experts in the field and do, or have done, exactly that (not me though).

And performance in the field of rocketry is not measured in terms of good ideas. Having an idea and executing on it takes entirely different levels of expertise and performance.

Offline RonM

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Any experts on NSF, including individuals currently working in aerospace who are not working for SpaceX, do not have access to SpaceX meetings and plans. Maybe NASA staff working with SpaceX, but posting based on that information could be hazardous to their career. Without inside knowledge, probably no one outside of SpaceX is going to come up with a useful suggestion that SpaceX has not already considered.

An important reason for SpaceX not to take suggestions is legal liability. When SpaceX introduces something new and it accidentally matches an internet suggestion, the individual who first came up with the suggestion could demand payment. The court case wouldn't go far unless SpaceX was taking suggestions from members of the public. Taking public suggestions for any for profit operation is a bad idea.

Offline LouScheffer

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Dunning-Kruger specifically applies to imcompetent, poor performers.  While that might apply to some here, saying it applies to all seems like an unsupported generalization.  Many of the posters here are quite successful in various technical fields.  I've re-bolded your quote differently, to emphasize that DK applies to poor performers:

For those of you that have not read any of the links/papers I've posted about the Dunning-Kruger effect (originally published in 1999), I'll copy the abstract of the 2008 replication and meta-analysis below.

Quote
People are typically overly optimistic when evaluating the quality of their performance on social and intellectual tasks. In particular, poor performers grossly overestimate their performances because their incompetence deprives them of the skills needed to recognize their deficits.  Five studies demonstrated that poor performers lack insight into their shortcomings even in real world settings and when given incentives to be accurate. An additional meta-analysis showed that it was lack of insight into their own errors (and not mistaken assessments of their peers) that led to overly optimistic estimates among poor performers. Along the way, these studies ruled out recent alternative accounts that have been proposed to explain why poor performers hold such positive impressions of their performance.
If you are going to quote Dunning-Kruger, you also need to quote the opposite Imposter Syndrome.  This is where people who are actually competent doubt their own ability.  It can be defined as 'a feeling of “phoniness in people who believe that they are not intelligent, capable or creative despite evidence of high achievement.”'  They ascribe their own success to luck, or people somehow overlooking their obvious flaws.

Neither of these is a new observation.  As Yeats said in 1919, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."


Offline vaporcobra

Dunning-Kruger specifically applies to imcompetent, poor performers.  While that might apply to some here, saying it applies to all seems like an unsupported generalization.  Many of the posters here are quite successful in various technical fields.  I've re-bolded your quote differently, to emphasize that DK applies to poor performers:

For those of you that have not read any of the links/papers I've posted about the Dunning-Kruger effect (originally published in 1999), I'll copy the abstract of the 2008 replication and meta-analysis below.

Quote
People are typically overly optimistic when evaluating the quality of their performance on social and intellectual tasks. In particular, poor performers grossly overestimate their performances because their incompetence deprives them of the skills needed to recognize their deficits.  Five studies demonstrated that poor performers lack insight into their shortcomings even in real world settings and when given incentives to be accurate. An additional meta-analysis showed that it was lack of insight into their own errors (and not mistaken assessments of their peers) that led to overly optimistic estimates among poor performers. Along the way, these studies ruled out recent alternative accounts that have been proposed to explain why poor performers hold such positive impressions of their performance.
If you are going to quote Dunning-Kruger, you also need to quote the opposite Imposter Syndrome.  This is where people who are actually competent doubt their own ability.  It can be defined as 'a feeling of “phoniness in people who believe that they are not intelligent, capable or creative despite evidence of high achievement.”'  They ascribe their own success to luck, or people somehow overlooking their obvious flaws.

Neither of these is a new observation.  As Yeats said in 1919, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

I see your intent, but you are misapprehending their studies by extrapolating expertise somewhere to expertise everywhere. I can all but guarantee you that even the most expert of experts readily (and perhaps even more easily) suffer from Dunning-Kruger in areas outside of their expertise. One step further, being aware that one is an expert in certain subjects can effortlessly and unconsciously inflate self-confidence in ways that irrationally extend beyond the reaches of one's actual expertise. It's pretty easy to observe (very ironically) in terms of technical and engineering-minded folks' understandings of the humanities and social sciences more generally.

For those forum members that have intensively engaged in aerospace design, engineering, manufacturing, and operations, I fully agree. I'm not trying to detract from the awesome variety of brilliant humans NSF's forums play host to, nor am I trying to argue that the opinions of the forums ought to be entirely discounted. The point is that if someone in any way believes they can help SpaceX, the only reasonable way to do so is to become an employee. If they fear they wouldn't be hired, then that is about as conclusive a refutation as one could ever hope to get.

If, after the above, one still believes they have valuable ideas to offer SpaceX and simply can't upend their current life to get hired (or something), then their only hope is to subtly and indirectly make a coherent, empirical argument somewhere on NSF or elsewhere, as SpaceX almost certainly surveys forums in some capacity (predominately checking for leaks, as any large and competitive corporation does). Maybe your idea will be adopted or trigger thought processes that wind up benefiting SpaceX or other companies/agencies. Probably not, but maybe.

Either way, they'll never know because they have no explicit right to credit, nor would SpaceX ever adopt crowdsource suggestions expecting credit, in which case this subject is null and void in the sense that the best route to helping SpaceX as a nonemployee is to humbly engage in rational and empirical (or as close as any human can get to it) debate/discussion/authorship/peer-review/etc on public forums.

Every human (experts even more so) ought to always doubt their assumptions of expertise within their subject(s) of choice, and doubt it even more outside of those subjects of probable expertise. There is a vast chasm of a difference between imposter syndrome and self-directed pragmatic skepticism and critical thinking at the cost of sowing uncertainty and protecting against inflated self-confidence.

Online Semmel

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I see your intent, but you are misapprehending their studies by extrapolating expertise somewhere to expertise everywhere. I can all but guarantee you that even the most expert of experts readily (and perhaps even more easily) suffer from Dunning-Kruger in areas outside of their expertise. One step further, being aware that one is an expert in certain subjects can effortlessly and unconsciously inflate self-confidence in ways that irrationally extend beyond the reaches of one's actual expertise. It's pretty easy to observe (very ironically) in terms of technical and engineering-minded folks' understandings of the humanities and social sciences more generally.

I fully agree with you on your wider point. However its quite funny, given that you (and I take a guess here) are not an expert on the Dunning-Kruger effect, how do you know that your layman opinion that the Dunnning-Kruger effect is actually applicable is not suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect? A nice circular problem here :)

Back to topic. In various interviews, Elon Musk and I guess also Gwynne Shotwell responded to the question "how to help SpaceX" with something along the lines: Talk to friends and politicians and make them aware that a spacefaring future and a Human occupation of Mars is a fight-worthy goal for our society. Why dont we take their advise and do just that, shell we?

Offline vaporcobra

I see your intent, but you are misapprehending their studies by extrapolating expertise somewhere to expertise everywhere. I can all but guarantee you that even the most expert of experts readily (and perhaps even more easily) suffer from Dunning-Kruger in areas outside of their expertise. One step further, being aware that one is an expert in certain subjects can effortlessly and unconsciously inflate self-confidence in ways that irrationally extend beyond the reaches of one's actual expertise. It's pretty easy to observe (very ironically) in terms of technical and engineering-minded folks' understandings of the humanities and social sciences more generally.

I fully agree with you on your wider point. However its quite funny, given that you (and I take a guess here) are not an expert on the Dunning-Kruger effect, how do you know that your layman opinion that the Dunnning-Kruger effect is actually applicable is not suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect? A nice circular problem here :)

Back to topic. In various interviews, Elon Musk and I guess also Gwynne Shotwell responded to the question "how to help SpaceX" with something along the lines: Talk to friends and politicians and make them aware that a spacefaring future and a Human occupation of Mars is a fight-worthy goal for our society. Why dont we take their advise and do just that, shell we?

You don't even know the half of it... It's one hell of a roller-coaster to read cutting-edge cognitive and evolutionary psych research because so much of it creates circular problems like the one you mention, basically soft paradoxes :-X If one can't trust one's own cognitive tendencies because human cognition tends to be irrational, deceptive, and untrustworthy, how can one ever confidently conclude that skeptically interrogating one's own cognitive tendencies is a good idea? It's a nightmare lol ;D

But yes, that sounds like the best possible answer. Support the cause of spaceflight (albeit rationally and critically...) as best you can, ranging from getting friends excited to working for the companies that make it real.
« Last Edit: 05/22/2018 06:41 am by vaporcobra »

Offline TomH

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probably no one outside of SpaceX is going to come up with a useful suggestion that SpaceX has not already considered.

That word probably is key here. Probably not and absolutely not have far different meanings mathematically.

I find the degree of arrogance here astounding. Anyone who believes that a person with less training than him/herself in a specialty field has absolutely nothing to teach him is a foolish person. I remember the day my physician suggested adding hot tea to the list of things I was using for my cold and sore throat. I noted that tea is a member of the camellia family and noted some of its chemical properties. He said, "Wow, I did not know that." The same physician (also a med school professor) had to refreeze several of my skin tags repeatedly over a period of months with liquid nitrogen to kill them. I noted that they lay limp and that you can't get much pressure on them. I suggested he take two Q-tips and apply pincer pressure from both sides, insuring a more effective thermal sink into which to draw heat out of the thing. His statement was, "Wow, you really taught me something today."

After the invasion of Normandy, allied generals discovered the impenetrable centuries old hedgerows around which the Nazis had planned their defenses. Sherman tanks drove up these embankments, exposing their bellies to German heavy guns inside concrete bunkers built into the hedgerows, and were being slaughtered by the dozens. Allied officers were beside themselves. Of the thousands of trained officers now ashore, not a single one had any idea what to do. Fortunately, the US chain of command has a system which allows innovative military solutions to be quickly forwarded up the chain of command to top brass.  There was a farm boy named Curtis Culin who was very familiar with heavy farm equipment and methods of ripping dense brush. He immediately realized that taking the underwater metal obstacles from Omaha Beach, modifying them, and welding them to the front of the Sherman tanks would turn them into rippers which could simply drive into the hedgerow with these heavy pitchfork-like projections in the front, rip the hedgerows apart, turn the main gun point blank into the German fortifications, and blow them instantly to Hell. It took two hours for this suggestion to go from a sergeant up to the commanding general on the ground, and a couple of more hours for engineers to weld up one of these things and try it. It worked like a charm and the general ordered all available personnel to begin modifying tanks. The German officer ranks had the belief that they had nothing to learn from the non-officers. There was no Nazi suggestion box. The US military teaches its personnel to innovate, to think on their feet, while remaining within rules of engagement, etc. For all the years the German officers had been building fortifications around those hedgerows, not a single one ever saw this vulnerability. After the allies landed, not a single officer could think of a solution. It was the quick thinking of a simple New Jersey farm boy who saw the solution. Within four hours of his suggestion, M4A1 tanks were shredding German defenses and turning a years old defense strategy on its head.

Augusto and Michaela Odone were told by doctors that there was no cure or treatment for their son, Lorenzo's, adrenoleukodystrophy. Augusto was a banker, not chemist, not a physician. Nevertheless, his own research as a non-specialist brought about the discovery of a therapy known as Lorenzo's Oil, now a well known movie. It was not a physician, not an organic chemist, not a biochemist, not a pharmacologist, but a banker who found the therapy that his own son needed.

It may be true that most non-specialists will never find a key breakthrough in a specialty field. But that does not mean that it will never happen. Low probability ≠ impossibility. Amateur geologists, astronomers, and archaeologists make new finds, unseen by the pros, all the time. At West Point, they teach the story of Curtis Culin....and they teach it for a reason. These calls to even ban the possibility of lesser trained minds being able to make suggestions are haughty and arrogant. Issues around patents and liability are legitimate issues. But only a fool thinks he has nothing to learn from a less educated person.
« Last Edit: 05/22/2018 08:08 am by TomH »

Offline hkultala

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No. No, no, no, no, and no. Also no. 

I'd say yes, on these lines of evidence:

a) Almost everything in rocketry was predicted by science fiction writers. 

.. after being first invented by scientists / engineers.

Quote
These were not experts, but came up with good ideas that were later implemented.  Amateurs have the advantage of looking further out than engineers, who need to obsess about the problems of today.

... in most cases, they did not came up with the idea. They just made the idea KNOWN by the general public.

Or, the "science fiction writer" was also a scientist in the same area.

Quote
c) An interested amateur and a professional are not as far apart as you might think.   Lots of people on NSF have engineering degrees and/or decades of experience.  If they joined SpaceX they could contribute right away.  Their ideas are no worse from having originated from outside.  See also recent math developments, where amateurs and unknowns have made significant strides.

Performing basic engineering work and inventing new ideas for general architecture of the device are totally different things. Most mechanical engineers could design some pipes that could be used inside a spaceX craft, but that's far from being to contribute a new idea that makes the craft really better.

And most embedded software engineers could quite fast start writing some pieces of software needed by spaceX rockets, but that's very far from creating the control algorithms needed for landing the rocket stage with positive T/W.

Offline Bananas_on_Mars

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Coming back on topic, there's absolutely a way to contribute to SpaceX mission: Do work/research in a relevant field, publish it independently, and they might approach you if your work might have an application within their scope of work.

For example, i think i read somewhere they approached someone doing a PhD or similar on transsonic flow simulations/validation for gridfins. They are definitely researching the work that others did in relevant fields. If your ideas are groundbreaking enough for yourself to get out of your armchair and follow up on them on your own, chances are there might be someone looking into them at SpaceX at some point.

Edit: SpaceX and the other Musk ventures are not so much about big inventions, but combining the state of the art for real innovations. So if you further the state of the art in any given field, chances are it might be useful for SpaceX. And if it isn't, you might have still advanced another venture or simply mankind itself.
« Last Edit: 05/22/2018 10:10 am by Bananas_on_Mars »

Offline francesco nicoli

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Oh my god. Mods: please, please lock this unproductive and circular thread before I lose my last modicums of faith in humanity :-[

To anyone who genuinely believes that forums chatter (L2 or not) is a significant influence on companies on the envelope of technological systems development, please read this paper on the Dunning-Kruger Effect. And then read it a second, third, fourth, and fifth time. If, after five reads, you are still keen to conclude that you are a functional expert (and have not designed and/or built functional tech with tiny margins more or less from scratch), you are quite literally a dictionary definition of Dunning-Kruger.

I'm not trying to be mean or to personally attack anyone. It's just a simple reality of human cognition that unless you assume you are layperson (as I personally do), you will inevitably wind up inflating personal perceptions of expertise. In all aspects of life (not simply being a spaceflight fan on forums), assume you know nothing until you have incontrovertible, empirical evidence showing otherwise.

Do not assume - as many of you clearly do by arguing/implying that SpaceX actions and your forum comments are in any sense connected - that correlation has ANYTHING to do with causation unless you have direct, repeatable evidence.





For those of you that have not read any of the links/papers I've posted about the Dunning-Kruger effect (originally published in 1999), I'll copy the abstract of the 2008 replication and meta-analysis below.

Quote
People are typically overly optimistic when evaluating the quality of their performance on social and intellectual tasks. In particular, poor performers grossly overestimate their performances because their incompetence deprives them of the skills needed to recognize their deficits. Five studies demonstrated that poor performers lack insight into their shortcomings even in real world settings and when given incentives to be accurate. An additional meta-analysis showed that it was lack of insight into their own errors (and not mistaken assessments of their peers) that led to overly optimistic estimates among poor performers. Along the way, these studies ruled out recent alternative accounts that have been proposed to explain why poor performers hold such positive impressions of their performance.

Mods: I know this is only tangentially related to spaceflight, but it is explicitly related to this thread and to how users interact on public/private forums dedicated to technology. If you think this comment should be removed, I'd argue that the thread should commensurately be locked or removed.

Interesting reference.I assume you are a TRUE EXPERT in social psychology?

because if not... well, the risk you might have overstated, or misunderstood, the results of the latest DK paper are non-zero, according with your reading of DK; hence, we should not take your reading of DK seriously unless you are a professional social psychologist.

I will add: amateur astronomers, occasionally, observe new things and contribute to science. of course, they remain ameteurs, and their conjectures need to be verified by professionals.
If we take today's professional standards as sole definition of expertise, we would quickly find out that the large majority of scientists in history were not expert at all. So either your implicit definition of expertise is wrong, or history abundantly shows that great discoveries can arise from (according to today's eyes) unscientific or metascientific method (or pure luck).
Of course, this to say that the more people think, reflect,try out about science, the better. in the great majority of cases, it will lead to nothing. So what? :)
« Last Edit: 05/22/2018 10:31 am by francesco nicoli »

Online Semmel

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The discussion should not be about CAN armchair engineers make useful suggestions. The discussion should be how can you implement a cost effective filter to find the gem within the garbage. The signal to noise is just too low for being useful.

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