Even in the most technically demanding and theoretical of disciplines (and in some sense, perhaps especially so) it is creativity and an ability (instinct?) to see possibilities that others don't that distinguish the best researchers. This is a wonderful example of that.
I have immense respect for researchers who venture in these type of disciplines. I don't think I would be able to do it. I do have a bit of a daring question: isn't there a slightly more fine-grained way to quantify that every nook and cranny of such a problem has indeed be researched by researchers? I simply assume that a rigorous research by the best minds of the world has happened, but I never see any data on it, not even anecdata.
I mean, I remember a post from Julia Evans, making a Ruby profiler, where she was astonished on how few people were actually working on it [1].
I suspect that in some cases, probably not this one, but in similar theoretical fields, a similar thing might be occuring. And if not, how do we test that? I'm probably not the only one who's curious.
[1] I found a talk of her in which she emphasizes on it:
> So the three myths that I want to start out by talking about are myth one-- to do something new and innovative you need to be an expert-- myth two-- if it were possible and worthwhile, someone would have done it already so you probably shouldn't try-- and three-- if you want to do a new open source project, you need to code a lot on the weekend and your evenings.
An interesting thought. My understanding is that the library science community has been investigating this for some time in terms of the development of ontologies and libraries to try to categorize research output. Here's a random paper I found on the broader topic: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3129146/
I suspect that this field is vastly under-studied and investigated relative to what it ideally should be.
Generally speaking, it is easier in more theory-driven sub-fields to probe new areas. And indeed it is often rewarded. It's harder when $ is needed for experiments since that becomes more grant process-driven (something which is inherently more risk-averse).
My observation is that usually a few pioneering people push out into a new topic area. Then, whether a community forms around it and starts getting excited about it depends a lot on timing, luck and also resources. Sometimes nothing happens for decades until the stars align and people realize that there's something there.
> isn't there a slightly more fine-grained way to quantify that every nook and cranny of such a problem has indeed be researched by researchers?
Sometimes there is (the map coloring theorem), sometimes there isn't (the rest of math.)
> I simply assume that a rigorous research by the best minds of the world has happened, but I never see any data on it, not even anecdata.
Most mathematicians work on areas that interest them, ie. alone or with a colleague in another university.
Never heard of anything systematic involving "the best minds of the world" outside perhaps military projects, and some cooperative research is being done on forums now.
Comparing math and Open Source software development is kind of strange and not helpful.
Anybody can expend a lot of time and effort and successfully write a profiler, if they wanted to. Few people make a career in math.
If you're not a native English speaker, you might want to get checked for ADHD, since your post wasn't very coherent.
> Anybody can expend a lot of time and effort and successfully write a profiler, if they wanted to. Few people make a career in math.
Anybody can expend a lot of time and effort to write a profiler... but few people make a career of it. Anybody can expend a lot of time and effort on math... but few people make a career of it.
> If you're not a native English speaker, you might want to get checked for ADHD, since your post wasn't very coherent.
That's a strange suggestion to make after reading a single HN comment, especially when you're basing it off of your own subjective interpretation of said comment.
I thought the parent made a coherent point that people may avoid hard problems because of the assumption that 1) they need expertise that they don't have and 2) someone else is already working on it. The question raised was: how, in general, do we verify those assumptions?
> I thought the parent made a coherent point that people may avoid hard problems because of the assumption that 1) they need expertise that they don't have and 2) someone else is already working on it. The question raised was: how, in general, do we verify those assumptions?
This is what I meant. Though, I do remember I was a bit fuzzy on how to phrase things and opted for a conversational style instead.
