科学与数学aeon.co
作为自学物理学家的付费顾问，我学到了什么（2016）
What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physicists (2016)
2016 — 2022，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
作者以受雇顾问的身份，讲述自己如何帮助一些自学物理的爱好者：这些人往往缺少数学工具，却把科普文章和示意图中的隐喻当成字面事实，进而高估了独立做出物理发现的可能性。文章既反思科学写作与插图在简化时造成的误导，也讨论专家应如何更诚实、更有同理心地与业余爱好者交流。
为什么经久不衰：它触及科学传播的长期难题——简化何时变成误导、专家该如何面对热情但缺乏训练的自学者；这些问题在信息更碎片化的今天反而更值得读。
HN 评论精选
科普的简化与隐喻若不加标注，会让读者误以为自己理解了 physics 并低估其门槛。
这段真的让我印象深刻：典型问题是，在没有方程的情况下，他们会把“时空颗粒”或粒子“凭空出现又消失”这类词按字面理解。科学作者应更注意指出我们何时在使用隐喻；插画师也应说明哪些是相关信息、哪些是艺术自由。但作者最重要的体会是：记者太成功地让物理显得不那么复杂，以至于许多读者以为自己也能轻松做到。如果我们从不告诉他们需要什么，又怎能怪他们不知道呢？
overthemoon查看英文原文
Wow, I love this. What a thoughtful, empathetic project. This passage really stuck out to me-- "A typical problem is that, in the absence of equations, they project literal meanings onto words such as ‘grains’ of space-time or particles ‘popping’ in and out of existence. Science writers should be more careful to point out when we are using metaphors. My clients read way too much into pictures, measuring every angle, scrutinising every colour, counting every dash. Illustrators should be more careful to point out what is relevant information and what is artistic freedom. But the most important lesson I’ve learned is that journalists are so successful at making physics seem not so complicated that many readers come away with the impression that they can easily do it themselves. How can we blame them for not knowing what it takes if we never tell them?" Of course, this writing often isn't for the layperson, it's for an audience who can tell the difference between diagram, artistic license, and metaphor, but even so, it's good to think about, especially when communicating science to the general public.
误导不只来自科普作家，物理学家本人也应说明自己讲的是模型而非实在。
我认为作者应把“科学作者”换成“物理学家”。依我的经验，物理学家作为权威给出过度华丽、冗余的解释时危害最大，比如 Tyson、Kaku、Greene 和 PBS Space Time 等。物理学家也没能很好说明他们做的是模型建构：模型不是现实，现实是什么目前属于哲学讨论；模型只是基于观测的最佳描述。
bmitc查看英文原文
> Science writers should be more careful to point out when we are using metaphors. I think she should replace "science writers" with physicists. In my experience, it's when physicists give overflowing and superfluous explanations of things that cause the most trouble, because they are viewed as authorities. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michio Kaku, Brian Greene, PBS Space Time, and many others. It's interesting, because I once read an interview with Brian Green, and the question was: what career would you have chosen if you weren't a physicist? His answer was both surprising and unsurprising: a Baptist preacher. One should note that he actually has the speaking style of one. It brings up an interesting point in that physics at the highest level sounds almost like what ill-informed amateurs produce. I have degrees in mathematics and some understanding of physics, but I've watched a few lectures of Ed Witten before, and he might as well be just making it all up. I know, it can all be backed out such that it all follows from known mathematics and physics, but one does have to marvel at the similarity, and I think this is what so-called cranks get emboldened by. It makes it worse when physicists use words like "believe". I think physicists have done a poor job explaining that what they do is model building. The models are not reality. What reality is currently lies in the realm of philosophy. The models physicists build are simply our best descriptions based on what we observe (string theory aside). The article gets at this a bit with mentioning metaphors, but it still doesn't drive home the point because she's referring to metaphors of metaphors (i.e., metaphors for the physical models). Once you understanding that physics is about building models that describes what we observe in physical reality, it lowers the barrier of "authority". In that, in some sense, the entire point of physics is often to find out how we're wrong just as much as it is to clarify where we're right. I think many don't understand that when "is" is used in physics, it really means "is modeled by" (or something to that effect). I'm reminded of this scene from one of my favorite movies, A Serious Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbzWYjVrvpI
推荐一本认真的入门书，并区分出于兴趣的自学与妄称颠覆学科的民科。
这些人或许可以读读《理论最小值》。它相对易懂，但建立在真实的物理原理和数学上。作者之一是 Leonard Susskind，比较可信；还有一本配套的量子力学卷。不过也要强调：自学不等于民科。很多自学者只是出于兴趣学习物理，清楚自己的局限，不会假装有逃避了物理学界几十年的惊人新洞见；受过正规教育的人里同样有民科。
mindcrime查看英文原文
Some of these folks could probably benefit from reading a book that I just bought: The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need To Know To Start Doing Physics. https://www.amazon.com/Theoretical-Minimum-Start-Doing-Physics/dp/0465075681 It's a cool book... written to be relatively accessible, but is actually grounded in the real principles and math used in physics. As somebody who considers himself an autodidact of sorts (in that I'm as much self-taught as formally educated), but who has some awareness of "what I don't know" (and therefore doesn't sit around coming up with crackpot theories about quantum mechanics and what-not), I love this kind of stuff. One of the authors is Leonard Susskind who is pretty credible. This is a book that is serious, but succinct (as you might guess from the title). Note that there is also a companion volume that is specifically about Quantum Mechanics. https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Mechanics-Theoretical-Leonard-Susskind/dp/0465062903/ All of that said, I do think it's important to note (as others already have) that "autodidact != crank". Plenty of autodidacts are just people who study physics (or whatever) because they find it interesting, but they are aware of their limitations and don't pretend to have amazing new insights that have escaped physics for decades, etc. Likewise I'm pretty sure you can find cranks who have a formal education as well.
数学民科常高估自己、低估证明标准，和文中物理自学者的误解相呼应。
我负责处理 EFF 协作计算奖的邮件，所以尽管做了很多努力避免虚假声称，还是会收到大量数学民科来信。两点很突出：许多人极度自信能“解决这个问题”（比如发明数学界几十年没找到的素数公式），以及许多人不知道一个解决方案需要什么——不知道数学证明存在，也分不清自己有的是定理还是猜想。
schoen查看英文原文
I get the e-mail for the EFF Cooperative Computing Awards https://www.eff.org/awards/coop so, despite having put lots of effort into not having people make spurious claims, I hear from a whole lot of math cranks. Two things that I find striking are many people's level of confidence that they can personally "solve the problem" (in this case, by inventing some kind of "formula for primes" that has eluded the organized mathematics world for decades), and many people's lack of understanding of what a solution would consist of (in terms of knowing that mathematical proofs exist, and being able to understand whether they have a theorem or just a conjecture). Our situation is especially tricky because we chose a problem that experts said would require lots of computational resources and couldn't be solved by new mathematical insight, but then we didn't outright forbid people from trying to solve it by insight. So a lot of people see an exciting challenge, like "they think it will take a lot of computer time, but if I can just see the pattern, I can skip all of that!". Also, we have a large monetary reward for solutions and so people are excited by the idea that they have them and are about to receive a bunch of money. I think it's true that many of the people who contact me about this are excited about mathematics in the way that people who contacted Dr. Hossenfelder were excited about physics (and, as pdkl95 said, that Carl Sagan's cab driver was excited about science). But it's still frustrating that, after we've gone to some lengths to say that you need a proof and not just a guess, and that decades of research indicate that you can't find primes of this size without significant computer time, people are still so confident that their guesses are right and so resistant to accepting that they haven't met the awards criteria. It would be interesting to see an equivalent service for talking to mathematicians and to see what some of the people who contact us might get out of it, and whether it might inspire them to pursue more constructive things. (I always wish that our awards would motivate someone to start doing Project Euler problems or something...) If someone set up that "talk to a mathematician" service, I would probably try to send lots of people their way.
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