Showing Me Your Amateur Breakthrough Is Evidence That It’s Wrong

Ok, people who read my post on the Anthropic science blog: we need to talk. It’s understandable. You saw me write about AI being used to tackle a serious, publishable physics problem. Naturally, some of you want to share that you accomplished something even more impressive with AI, something the scientific journals and arXiv moderators won’t acknowledge. Maybe you’re hoping I’ll write about it, maybe you want me to check your math. Maybe you just think it’s neat. But here’s the thing: most of the time, I’m not the right person to send those ideas to. And the fact that you didn’t figure that out is a bad sign. Outside of the movies, scientists are specialists. Not just “physics” or “particle physics” or “theoretical particle physics”, but so specific that they often focus on particular methods, or are geared around particular goals. For any idea you propose, if it’s good, there will be a small list of people who will be excited to see it and able to evaluate it. They’ll be people who…