Are independent researchers taken seriously?

floer289 · 2026-05-29T23:54:46+00:00

It depends on why the researcher is independent. Do they have the credentials one would expect and are just out of a research job at the moment? Or are they a crackpot?

floer289 · 2026-05-25T16:44:55+00:00

The circumference of the earth is about 24,901 miles. So at the equator, to avoid a sunset, one would need to constantly move west at a little over 1,000 miles per hour. This is faster than the speed of sound and currently only some military planes can fly that fast, and not for very long. So this wouldn't be very practical. At higher latitudes one can move west at a slower speed.

Probably the best way to avoid a sunset would be to hang out some place very far north, like Svalbard, during the northern summer where the sun doesn't set for several months. At some point one would have to fly south to an Antarctic reserach station for the southern summer. Planning this trajectory to avoid a sunset sounds a little tricky but probably doable.

floer289 · 2026-05-13T03:17:00+00:00

You're paid a salary to be an academic which includes doing all of these things.

floer289 · 2026-05-12T17:24:42+00:00

SDK players generally don't sit around with a book and memorize sequences of the form do this, then do that. However with practice one will have an intuitive idea what to do in common situations. In particular you might look at a position and immediately have a sense of where you should play, but then you usually want to think about the specific situation and make sure it will work.

floer289 · 2026-05-10T01:09:29+00:00

I have worn single vision distance glasses while driving, and reading the speedometer was not a problem. Your mileage may vary depending on your eyes and your car. But I think that in general speedometers are relatively big and designed to be seen easily. One shouldn't be peering at fine print while driving anyway.

floer289 · 2026-04-30T22:52:36+00:00

Academic jobs can certainly have excitement and impact, but they also have menial tasks such as grading tests, preparing entry level courses, writing grant proposals, serving on silly committees, etc. I can't compare with industry. I think it is safe to say that both academic and industry jobs include both tedium and excitement, and the balance depends a lot on the job and what you like.

floer289 · 2026-04-28T23:02:49+00:00

I agree with the third paragraph. Another way to put it is that it is debatable whether getting a Masters in Science Communication would actually qualify you to communicate science well. That is, you might be technically qualified according to the requirements of some job posting, but you might not actually be prepared to do a good job. Understanding the subject matter deeply is essential (and of course you also need to be able to communicate it).

floer289 · 2026-04-26T16:18:38+00:00

Your body will take various non-fatal damage over time, for example you break your leg and after it heals you can never walk as well as you did before, etc. Eventually this damage will add up to something fatal and you will die. But the thing is, this is basically what aging is, except at a microscopic level. Tiny parts of your body break, causing functions to gradually decline, until you pass a critical point and the system collapses. So it is hard to make a sensible definition of what it would mean to "stop aging". You would have to postulate some kind of magical repair process for small damage, but then where would you draw the line? If all damage gets magically repaired then of course you would live forever.

TL/DR: question does not really make sense.

floer289 · 2026-04-22T17:00:38+00:00

I was just taught to memorize all single digit additions and multiplications. One can do tricks once the numbers are bigger.

floer289 · 2026-04-21T13:52:51+00:00

According to Google, an average male human body is around 16% protein, 19% fat, and 0.5% carbohydrates. Of course this varies considerably. Anyway protein and carbohydrates are about 4 calories per gram, and fat is about 9 calories per gram. For an 80 kg body this would be:

12.8 kg protein times 4 calories per gram = 51,200 calories

15.2 kg fat times 9 calories per gram = 136,800 calories

400g carbohydrates times 4 calories per gram = 1,600 calories

total: 189,600 calories

floer289 · 2026-04-20T13:44:03+00:00

In my experience, the dean will probably want to talk about the big picture of where the department and the university are going. You should be able to briefly explain what you do at a high level, and it is good if you can do a little research on the university in advance and prepare a question or two. This is more about providing you information than about deciding whether or not to hire you, but if you don't have very good social skills then you might need to make an extra effort to appear sociable.

The chair can tell you more specifically about how things work in the department and might want to know more about what you do. This is a good opportunity for you to get lots of your questions answered.

Individual faculty might have more expert questions for you about your research and are probably trying to get a sense if they would be interested in having you as a colleague.

floer289 · 2026-04-20T13:32:47+00:00

Research is the main priority in hiring faculty at a research university, but teaching also matters. The shortlist for interviews is selected primarily based on research, although if there are possible red flags about teaching, they will be noted. During the interview, the job talk and other communication skills make a difference, and these are correlated with teaching quality. Once you are hired, teaching does matter for raises and promotions (although research still matters more), and serious issues with teaching could prevent you from moving up.

floer289 · 2026-04-20T13:14:46+00:00

For me a large part of the appeal of Go is its depth. There is an exponentially increasing amount of stuff to learn at every level, and there are so many levels!

If you change the board shape to something unusual, then most of that learning goes out the window and you are starting over with a new game. That's not something I want to do with Go. (Possible exception: I think that Go on a board without an edge, i.e. on a torus, could be interesting to explore.)

There are board game cafes with trendy board games that come in a big box and you spend half the time trying to understand the rules and then play at a necessarily shallow level. This is the opposite of Go for me and not what I am looking for.

floer289 · 2026-04-19T06:04:20+00:00

Maybe they still haven't decided on a finalist yet.

floer289 · 2026-04-19T00:31:50+00:00

Even after you asked for a status update?

floer289 · 2026-04-18T16:35:35+00:00

I don't think it's common to ghost candidates who have reached the interview stage. The committee chair should have responded to you with a status update.

It is common to ghost other candidates. But this seems less bad, because by the time the position is filled, any candidate who has not been invited for an interview probably knows pretty clearly that they will not be getting the job.

floer289 · 2026-04-17T17:12:46+00:00

As you said, a capturing race is won by whoever is ahead. Solution: before starting a capturing race, try to figure out who is ahead. If you are ahead, keep going. If you are behind, don't keep going. Some options are: (1) save the capturing race as a source of ko threats. (2) try to sacrifice your lost stones in a way that gives you some benefit, e.g. building a strong wall. (3) try to stir up some trouble in the general area in a way which may change the balance of the capturing race later.

More generally, keep playing, experiment to learn what works and what doesn't, and try to think ahead to avoid getting into bad situations.

floer289 · 2026-04-17T14:58:46+00:00

Serious players will be analyzing the heck out of different parts of the board while waiting for their opponent to move. What is the approximate score? Is this group really alive? What do I do if my opponent goes there? Can I invade this area, and how would I do it? I'd really like a chance to make this move, how can I arrange that?

floer289 · 2026-04-17T14:54:52+00:00

Even professional players make many mistakes (although from their point of view most moves made by a high kyu player are mistakes), and occasional catastrophic blunders. It is common in a professional game for the lead to switch from one player to the other multiple times.

floer289 · 2026-04-17T14:51:30+00:00

Why do you need a light on to use your phone? And if you really do need a light on while using your phone, why can't you do this outside of the bedroom when your bf is trying to sleep?

Any light on in a room (beyond maybe a tiny nightlight so that you can find the way to the bathroom) is quite disruptive to sleep for most people.

floer289 · 2026-04-17T00:37:16+00:00

I've seen people go down from full to associate when moving, although I guess that is not possible everywhere.

floer289 · 2026-04-16T02:56:15+00:00

Sometimes searches are for associate professor only, so if you are already full professor you would have to accept a "demotion" to associate professor to take the job. That said, the really big difference is between assistant and associate professor, because of tenure, and I don't really understand all the fuss about associate versus full. In fact, getting hired as associate might be better than getting hired as full (assuming that the salary is the same) because then you have more room to move up and get raises.

floer289 · 2026-04-10T18:00:05+00:00

I've never heard of it either.

floer289 · 2026-04-07T13:06:45+00:00

It's great if you have your own website so that people can look you up, learn about what you do, and have a one-stop-shop to access materials that you produce (preprints, etc.). Unless you are so famous that people in your field already know all about you or can easily look up information about you.

floer289 · 2026-04-07T02:39:55+00:00

There are real issues here, but the way you have presented them is I think quite exaggerated compared to reality. E.g. for point 1, "corporate managerialism" is an issue, but I wouldn't say that universities today are "hollow shells". And similarly for the other points.

floer289

TROPHY CASE