I think you misread and/or misinterpreted OP's point and then jumped on a smug rant on a topic that was honestly quite irrelevant. Later came these repeated and almost manic allegations of some secret cabal of MODs (using your capitalization) who are after you. And then the repeated claims that the wretched lot of ungrateful CS profs should justly suffer, now that they do not have your help to drag them out of their wretched mess.
It would also help if you could be less dramatic please. No, even though you think so, it is not really a "scandal".
Though I downvoted you for your tone, for sounding too full of yourself, harping on personal issues that I think were irrelevant and for your unfounded insistence about personal persecution, I have to admit that the puerile delusion of grandeur on display was mildly amusing and continues to amuse me. FYI I am just a random unregular on HN. No MOD this. You complained that downvoters did not leave explanatory comments, well, your tone does not really encourage that behavior. Remember it is always a tradeoff. People will evaluate whether it is worth enough to engage in the discussion.
Your so called "help" amounted to a rant about your knowledge about measure theory and anecdotes about how you got yourself published, what I gather in journals, and the ignorance and/or the lack of background of the editors/reviewers (I gather) in continuous math.
Its great that you have learned some measure theory and real analysis. But assertions of the like, if I may put it in my own words, "I know measure theory. Learn about conditional expectation and Radon-Nikodym theorem and Shannon's work you bumbling fools" does not exactly constitute help or a contribution or as you put it "I did a great service to some lost CS profs".
On other hand if you can show that your favorite Neveu calculus can be proved sound according to some computable logic, that would indeed be helpful. Dont let your knowledge in continuous math let you believe that it has never occurred to computer theorists to "mathematize" CS. Computer science (as opposed to engineering or practice) is after all a branch of mathematics. The major chunk of real analysis cant be used in CS because no one yet has a proof that it is sound. Non standard analysis is field that is developing tools so that those concepts can be built ground up keeping computability and soundness in mind.
As you have passive aggressively conjectured, a lot indeed has changed in the last 5~6 years in CS publishing and publishing in journals and conferences are a lot different. For example, to follow up on your own example, you wouldn't have had a chance to address the editor or reviewers queries in a conference. This is regardless of whose deficiency it was, such a submission will just get dropped and in the competitive conferences it takes no more than one less than flattering review to ensure a rejection.
> I think you misread and/or misinterpreted OP's point
His "point" was not clear: What was more important in the article, that there was a Google+ community discussing some "problems" or the "problems" he listed of concern to that community?
The leading problem listed was difficulty in getting published, and I suggested a way to get published: Do well on "new, correct, and significant" and, in particular, 'mathematize' the field.
Responding to that "problem" was fully appropriate.
In more detail, one of the best ways to mathematize CS is more in probability, especially as it connects with 'information'. It does connect; trust me on that one.
That was a good and helpful suggestion and should have been welcome.
> Later came these repeated and almost manic allegations of some secret cabal of MODs (using your capitalization) who are after you.
There's a LOT of evidence that some MODs are angry with me and for the past month or so have been attacking me personally. For several reasons I've listed on this thread, much of the downvoting had to be from MODs. Apparently HN is a PG PC sandbox, and MODs will downvote anything they feel violates the PC norms of HN and do so without responding.
PG won't respond to deny this.
I would have been a fool to ignore the clear evidence that I was being attacked and a wuss not to defend myself. It's a scandal for HN, and PG has not responded.
On another user ID I was 'hell banned' here at HN.
Today I finally responded in plain terms to defend myself. If by defending myself I get banned from HN, then so be it. But for now the HN community will see that HN attacks some users personally.
I tried to help CS researchers get published. My claim, easy enough to understand, is that the research paradigm of CS is largely bankrupt, and my recommendation is to further mathematize the field. They are in a "wretched mess" if only from their statement of their "problem".
> puerile delusion of grandeur on display was mildly amusing and continues to amuse me
Insulting nonsense. There is no delusion involved. I was quite apparently attacked and have been several times for about a month now. It's personal, not technical or anything else.
> if I may put it in my own words
My own words for my own statement were much more appropriate: To repeat, CS is close to 'information technology', and there 'information' should be taken seriously mathematically. The R-N theorem is one important approach.
The "lack of background" of the Editors in Chief and chaired professors of computer science was surprising and shocking. I used some group theory and probability based on measure theory and got a new family of statistical hypothesis tests both multidimensional and distribution-free and applied them to ASAP detection of anomalies in server farms and networks, a good CS problem, and bluntly too much of the best of the CS community couldn't handle the math.
So, there is a big, huge gap between some of the best of current CS and what it would take to do at all well applying some 'modern probability' to some CS problems. Due to this gap, my suggestion to learn the math is appropriate and should be seen as helpful.
In simple terms, if a student wants a research career in CS, then as an undergraduate it is much more important for them to major in math than CS. And likely similarly at the Master's level. That is a surprising point but potentially quite helpful and should be welcome.
"On other hand if you can show that your favorite Neveu calculus can be proved sound according to some computable logic, that would indeed be helpful."
Nonsense. Neveu is based just on set theory, axiomatic set theory if you wish, the foundations as in Bourbaki if you wish, or P. Suppes, essentially the same as all of math for the past 100 years or so. For the importance of that material, there is nothing anyone should have to "prove". 'Computability' is not directly relevant.
> For example, to follow up on your own example, ... such a submission will just get dropped
I never had a submission dropped in the sense of 'rejected'. For the paper in question, I sent copies to some journals and just asked if they would like a formal submission. Some journal Editors in Chief said that their journal couldn't review the math. With one such I wrote tutorials before he gave up. So, I didn't make a formal submission and, thus, never got rejected or "dropped".
One journal welcomed a formal submission, and we went forward. They had problems getting reviewers who could read the paper, and reluctantly I suggested a qualified friend who did a good review. Eventually the Editor gave up, and for more reviews apparently the Editor in Chief walked the paper around his campus, had the CS guys say the problem was good and had some math guys say the math was good, and the paper was accepted, in an archival journal. I was invited to present the paper at a conference but declined. I just wanted to publish the thing and be done with it; I had no desire to go to a conference.
It's clear: In being mathematized, the CS community is very short on the needed math. I'm sure it's happened before, e.g., Hamming and the start of coding theory based on finite field theory, likely poorly known in the CS community then. For a researcher with the math, there are important CS problems that can be solved fairly easily just sitting there and, thus, are good research opportunities.
E.g., in Feller II is renewal theory, and it has some obvious applications to a lot that goes on in a server farm or network. For more, in Neveu is martingale theory, and there is one of the strongest inequalities in math (knock off the strong law of large numbers in one line) and more, and it's easy to find martingales in nearly any stochastic system. Should be able to get some nice, new, strong inequalities in many algorithms and processes important in CS. There's plenty that can be done with stochastic optimal control. There are the applications of 'machine learning', that is, statistics done very badly, and can solve the problems much better with statistics done well.
For the paper I wrote, there's much more that could be done; one could run off a dozen or so papers as a 'stream' in roughly the same direction by changing some of the assumptions better to fit various real situations.
So, sure, I'm suggesting some 'field crossing', long known to be a good approach to 'innovation'.
Moreover I'm suggesting exploiting some of the best, rock solid math of the last century. So this is a very sound, conservative suggestion.
That the CS community is very short on this math is a big point and a good research direction for anyone wanting to publish in CS.
Indeed, as is painfully obvious, CS has been taking intuitive and heuristic approaches far too seriously and neglecting solid math approaches. This situation makes CS look dumb, but the flip side is a terrific opportunity.
Again, with the right math from the last century, now should be able to knock off important CS problems by the dozens like shooting fish in a barrel.
HN and you don't like this remark. Fine with me.
I tried to offer some help, but you don't want to hear it and want to criticize me for offering. Fine: I won't offer. I've already deleted the post.
With your remark on 'computability', there's no more reason to respond to you.
I wrote a good post. The CS community lost out.
Can lead a horse to water but can't make him drink.
To you perhaps. But others did not seem to have a problem with it. [1]
> PG won't respond to deny this.
I would hazard a guess that pg has better and more fulfilling things to do.
> That was a good and helpful suggestion
> I wrote a good post. The CS community lost out.
> my outline said to 'mathematize' CS. That suggestion is potentially earth shaking
The question is, is there anybody else who thinks so. The only praises, "earth shaking" or otherwise, that your comment got seems to be from you.
> CS profs can struggle on their own to get published without my help.
A delusion of grandeur couldn't be more apparent.
It is bit if of a bummer if in a discussion about CS theory you are not willing to address computability. Yes there are axiomatic basis to probability theory, but the question is: are those axioms sound, if so, then prove it. It will be a huge contribution and will have no trouble getting accepted if its correct.
No first order logic or equivalent and (axiomatic set theory is one) has the power to capture the whole real line. Non-standard analysis is the only one that tries to approach analysis with computable numbers.
Trust me, there is more to CS than real analysis and measure theory. I am sure you have heard of this aphorism about having one hammer and seeing only nails. Gratuitous unsolicited and smug advice that is not germane to the post, that too offered without understanding the field does no one any favors. If you delve into formal methods in CS you will actually encounter a lot of these methods that you are pointing to. Ask any CS theorist and they probably own the two volumes of Feller and will wax eloquently about them.
You are, yet, again extrapolating (to conferences) from your experiences with some journal. You are also contradicting yourself. If I understood you correctly, your main claim was that, what's stopping people from getting published is insufficient grounding in math. Then you give an example of your own submission that was mathematical but met resistance when you tried to publish it in a journal. Do remember journals have lower thresholds and higher acceptance rates than conferences.
1: Often the desire to push yourself on others can get in the way of comprehension.
All good advice - operator theory in various guises is ubiquitous in applications but certainly not something many discern even through grad school in CS.
Probably not much point trying to convince people on HN though - having perhaps suffered through an abysmal 'calculus' sequence they are not very receptive to the message that we have barely tapped practical consequences 50 year old mathematics.
You should perhaps do a stand alone blog - even on google plus!
This post has been downvoted because it is not relevant to the discussion started by the OP. Instead it addresses a minor detail found within that OP. Also, because it is so long and also discusses your relationship to the HN site moderators, it is very much off-topic.
Had you discussed the suitability of G+ for academic discourse or reasons why it is facilitating such discussion among CS researchers, then it would not have been downvoted.
>On another user ID I was 'hell banned' here at HN.
Clearly, you learned nothing. There just might have been a reason for that initial ban. As I've already stated, there's probably a good reason why PG doesn't reply to you (unfounded accusations, poor tone, being full of yourself and vaguely touting credentials while hiding behind anonymity), registering multiple accounts to evade a ban, etc.
If your submissions are so awesome, submit them here and let them stand on their own. At this point, you're screaming "I AM RIGHT" and are failing to articulate either your point, or any believability for your credentials (I suspect in part it's because you recognize that your brash attitude may not be winning you friends).
How can anyone be attacking you personally? No one knows who you are. You're being judged on the tone of your posts. Everyone here is telling you that, yet you have your fingers in your ears and you're yelling "I'm being persecuted". No one here is feeling sorry for you.
That lament was one of the leading topics in the Google+ community that was the the subject of the article.
Yes, the article was mostly about the community and not the issues of the community. But the article did list some of the leading issues of the community, and I responded to one of them. Uh, the issues of that community are more important than just the existence of the community! So it should have been appropriate for me to have commented on one of the issues of the community.
Thanks for that clarification. If I may trouble you once more,
I do see a list of the issues of the community in that article, set apart in slanted font. As far as I can see, the issue which you highlighted in your comment here is not present in that list. Which among the listed issues, in your opinion, implies that they "can't get their research papers published" ?
"I can’t speak for other disciplines, but within computer science, I’ve always felt that these meta discussions were inadequate — in terms of volume, vigor, and format. They happened mostly at conferences were largely limited to more senior/well-connected researchers, and lagged behind some of the serious problems that have accumulated such as restrictive publisher copyrights and very low acceptance rates at journals and conferences."
So, the claim here I noticed was:
"some of the serious problems that have accumulated such as ... very low acceptance rates at journals and conferences."
So, a big topic in that community was a "serious" problem getting published. So, I outlined how to get published. Simple.
In a word, my outline said to 'mathematize' CS. That suggestion is potentially earth shaking, likely not already in the community, and should be a welcome contribution.
So you read "very low acceptance rates" to mean : "Alas, very few of our papers meet the criteria for publication". And hence the exhortation to produce novel, correct, and significant work if they want to get published.
You couldn't be more wrong.
The "very low acceptance rate" which the OP laments means the exact opposite of what you seem to have understood. Namely: In most of the better CS conferences and journals, the number of submissions which make or exceed the grade is so _large_ compared to the number of available slots for publication that a significant amount of "novel, correct, and significant" work has to be routinely rejected. Just because the conference/journal has its physical limitations. It is a problem of plenty, not of scarcity. As an example, see the Forward of the proceedings of last year's STACS [1] :
"The STACS 2011 call for papers led to 271 submissions from 45 countries. ... there were intense and interesting discussions. The overall very high quality of the submissions made the selection a difficult task."
And no, they are not saying this for form's sake. The story is similar for the other highly rated conferences. This is common knowledge in the respective communities, and often mentioned in the prefaces to their proceedings.
This difficulty in getting _good_ work published of course has a deleterious impact on research and on the growth of the community, and the OP was lamenting _this_. At least this is the impression I got from reading "low acceptance rates".
Off topic: STACS is one of the few CS conferences which publish their proceedings free online under a Creative Commons license.
It's also not only scarcity, but academic-incentives-driven artificial scarcity: in the U.S. especially, many advancement committees have started using acceptance rate as a misguided proxy for "conference quality". So if you want people to see publishing in your conference as a valuable addition to their CVs, you need to have a <30% acceptance rate, preferably more like 10-15%, so you can be counted as a "very selective" conference. This is a bit silly, because acceptance rates are hugely influenced by submission pool, but it's how the institutional system currently works.
> The main criteria for research work are "new, correct, and significant". Do well on all three of these and have NO PROBLEMS getting reviewed and published.
So, I said that have to "do well".
So your
> You couldn't be more wrong.
is a bit strong.
I've published maybe a dozen papers, and I've never had a paper rejected or needing significant revision.
I've never been interested in publishing, and maybe the situation has changed a lot in the last few years while I've being doing other things.
Whatever, my original post to help CS profs get published was not wanted, and I've deleted it. The CS profs can struggle on their own.
I've had my fair share of comments being downmodded without any retort, meaningful or no, and have edited those posts asking for retorts as well in the past.
However, I have no illusion of a conspiracy against me. I'm not an "HN Mod" - in fact, I'm a very lightweight contributor. I've posted a handful of stories, but mostly just comment on things -- and my comments are often against the current here -- but I have the ability to downvote. Oh, and I can change the color of the bar at the top of the HN front page. It's not some elevated privilege enjoyed by the few.
You're being downvoted into oblivion because you're over-reacting, to the point where not knowing you outside these posts you've made now, I suggest you take a little walk away from the computer/internet. It's really not that important dude.
For what its worth, downvotes aren't undoable here, and I've fat fingered the button a few times when meaning to upvote on touch screen devices. If you're getting random unexplained single downvotes, its possible someone else did that and didn't realise. I'd imagine such issues explain a significant number of cases where people go from 1 to 0 without anything downvote worthy.
It'd be nice if I could disable the downvote button while on my phone, as I've given almost as many unintentional downvotes as intentional ones. Or at least have a minute to change the vote after submitting.
(Obviously this doesn't explain bulk downvotes or anything of that kind)
This is NOT nearly the first time. There is a pattern, and the only reasonable explanation is that one or more HN MODs just do NOT like a lot of my posts and jump to downvote ASAP with anger.
A guess that fits the facts of what they don't like is anything critical of any other media outlet, anything about CS, or anything about venture capital. But it is necessary to guess since the downvoters essentially never respond to the substance of my posts. The situation has clearly become personal for them and, then, me.
You can be critical of things without being irrational about it. As an example, note my edit your post:
"This isn't the first time. One or more people at HN do not like my posts and downvote them. I can only guess at why I'm downvoted, since often times the downvoters do not respond my posts."
It's concise, does not make any assumptions, avoids CAPS LOCK except where abbreviating, doesn't call anyone a chickenshit, and otherwise gets right to the point. I'm pretty sure that if your replies were more like that than "MYSTERIOUS SITE MODERATORS ARE CHICKENSHITS WHO ARE OUT TO GET ME" you would end up with less downvotes.
I'm with you - it can feel frustrating when you post something, and then lose karma without any rhetorical exchange about why. Sometimes you can ask for an explanation and actually get a response, but sometimes you're just left hanging. Don't sweat it, and keep moving.
I always know when my posts will be downvoted, and I don't understand why anyone else would have trouble identifying the same. The community here has its norms of behavior. When you violate one of them, expect to get the karma smacked out of you.
I doubt it's personal. Most of us upvote useful signal (like http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3420657, which has not been grayed out by a negative score) and downvote useless noise (like any yelling about voting) regardless of who wrote it.
The attacks are from downvoting, not upvoting. Only a small fraction of HN users can downvote. With so much downvoting, it has to be the MODs who are doing it. It's so consistent that it's a personal attack on me.
What personal mod attacks are you talking about? You come across as schizophrenic. Users with enough karma can downvote posts. I downvoted your sub-replies because they lack a point or relevancy, you're attacking users and overall being belligerent.
Not only that, but you demand coherent replies, yet failed to respond to the top comment reply that was courteous enough to reply to you.
My original post was downvoted within minutes of when I posted it, and there was no reply. This is NOT nearly the first time. There is a pattern, and I'd be a fool not to conclude that one or more HN MODS are personally angry at me.
"schizophrenic"? Total nonsense; look up the meaning of the word, a very specific medical term. Not even paranoid. I'm just defending myself against a pattern over the past few months at HN. There is a pattern of my being attacked, and this one post is just the most recent example.
As far as I can tell, I'm responding to every response that can use a response.
I've more than once asked PG to correct this. We will see what he does. This situation is a scandal at HN.
The post you just replied to (my post, that is) has been to -2 and back. I have posts downvoted all of the time. I think you severely underestimate the number of active users with the ability to downvote.
There's probably a reason that PG hasn't replied to you.
Perhaps you should look up the term rant as it's used in the CS community. It's hardly an insult.
You didn't seem to respond to my point. This article is largely about Google+'s anti-pseudonymity and its effect on the CS academic community. I dunno if I buy all that, but there's a certain irony to you claiming to have the CS cred to dis this guy while speaking under a pseudonym. Come out of the closet!
IAAI, JOTA, and JIS are a far cry from AAAI, PAMI, and JMLR. I've published in like venues: but citing them doesn't help your Mr. Big Shot stance all that much. :-)
"Far cry" in what sense? The AAAI IAAI conference was about the best could expect from the AAAI.
I published in JIS because it has a wider audience than, say, another Elsevier journal on 'theoretical computer scince' or some such, which I did consider.
For JOTA, I contend that such applied math is closer to the important future of CS than nearly any journal in CS. If I am correct here, and my theme in my post was that CS needs to 'mathematize', then I have been helpful.
There's no "Big Shot", another insult, involved. I just listed where I got published. From the article, one of the leading topics on the Google+ community was the difficulty of getting CS published, and I indicated that I had essentially been successful even though I wasn't much interested.
For the academic 'pecking order' of the journals, I have never cared since I've never had any academic aspirations.
But for someone having trouble getting published, the journals I listed are a big step up from no publications. So, if they can do what I did, then they would be ahead. So, my advice should have been seen as helpful, which was clearly the intention.
I'm just a random reader and member of the community, and I haven't consciously down-voted you in the past, but I absolutely down-voted and flagged this comment, and the one in response to Knieveltech.
I don't know who you are, I don't have anything against you, and I haven't voted either way on your main comment, but I really don't think such name-calling and vitriol are appropriate or have any place in a community I would want to be a part of. I don't think such comments add to the discussion, or are in line with the guidelines linked in the site's footer. So I've voted according.
Hopefully that helps explain where some of the down-votes are coming from.
I was attacked, downvoted, for my main comment, and then defended myself. This is NOT nearly the first time for such. Usually the result of the downvote is to send my comment to the end of the thread where it is effectively lost, which is clearly the intention of the MOD.
Why a MOD? Because only a small fraction of the users can downvote, and users instead of the MOD attacking me personally write rebuttals. So far I have not a single rebuttal to any of the content of my original post. I did a great service to some lost CS profs -- outlined for them how to publish and, then, got attacked by a MOD.
Then I defended myself. You found my defense offensive. It was, but not nearly as much as that of the attack of the MOD.
I've never ever heard of a "mod" affecting comments or somehow modifying the karma of a given comment. I'm sure that PG would not give a mod that power (though, he does alone hell-bans which I find in poor taste considering how many legitimate comments I've seen dead-on-arrival).
Because there is a pattern that would not apply to the relatively random users and needs a very persistent user, that is, a MOD. Because the downvotes happen QUICKLY, as if from a MOD. Because the downvotes don't come with replies. Because only a small fraction of users can downvote. Because part of the pattern of what gets downvoted is material that is relatively advanced technically and, really, a challenge to CS.
My original post was a nice contribution to CS people having trouble getting published. But, if people don't like such a contribution, then they won't have it. So, I deleted it. It's gone. The CS profs can continue to struggle to publish without my help.
You dismiss the possibility that your tone is consistently offensive. Also, you perhaps underestimate the amount of traffic HN generates.
"The CS profs can continue to struggle to publish without my help."
This is emblematic of what I find grating in your writing style (and why I downvoted the parent post). In a single sentence you have managed to communicate (intentionally or otherwise) a sense of hubris and entitlement.
I'm sorry to hear this, but it's possible that the mods aren't doing this out of malice.
I used to help out HN by going to the new page and flagging what I thought was off topic content. My reward for this was to have my flagging privliges taken away :)
The unfortunate reality is that when you are a mod it's far easier to punish than it is to educate, especially when you're a volunteer.
early in the article was that the 'community' had a "serious problem" which was getting published. So I outlined how to get published, and that should have been a welcome contribution.
It wasn't very clear in the article if the article was mostly about the community or the 'problems' of the community. Whatever, I gave a solution to what seemed in the article to be the most important "problem" of the community.
But my solution wasn't welcome, so I deleted it. CS profs can struggle on their own to get published without my help.
On close examination, you may find that their Research Division is mostly just a patent shop.
Likely their 'services' work is mostly just 'help desk'.
Likely much of what they are doing is what they did decades ago called 'facilities management' or 'service bureau'.
Likely for new products, they find a small company with a good customer list, buy the company, and have the IBM sales force include that company's products in the list of products available. That is, they don't really try to 'develop' such products on their own.
So, in many companies, the CIO can 'bring in IBM' and go play golf.
Likely a good CIO could give faster results, more innovative and valuable results, at lower cost. But not all CIOs are good.
Don't you think it's a bit silly that you didn't even bother to include anecdotal data, let alone something more? As it is, it's just worthless unsubstantiated allegations. You could be right, you could be wrong, but your post adds not a single thing to the discussion.
Yup. But in this case I know all too well just what the heck I'm talking about, unfortunately. Hint: I live in Dutchess County, NY and for years worked in Westchester Country, NY.
Besides, the NYT wrote just a puff piece. Now just why would the highly self-esteemed, formerly highly revered, long pseudo-objective NYT do that?
In the US, for Web 2.0 projects, mostly can boil down to just one question: Do you have traction that is significantly high, say, over 100,000 unique visitors a month, and growing rapidly?
> "But what would be better? How can we create a better system? And if there's such an obvious better answer, why doesn't someone do it?"
Here's a simple answer: The better system exists, but people overlook it.
As a student, first get a Bachelor's degree.
Second, pick a field and be sure have learned it well at at least the Bachelor's level. Do this learning independently if necessary. A Bachelor's degree is supposed to teach you how to do at least this much learning independently.
Third, from that learning about the field you selected, learn some more, to 'the next level'. Likely do this independently.
Fourth, show up at any one of the better research universities and take the Ph.D. qualifying exams based on what you learned.
Fifth, stick around that university and attend some seminars and courses that are introductions to research given by experts in research. Here your work is largely independent.
Sixth, pick a research problem and get some good results, independently or nearly so. If there is any doubt about the significance of your research, then publish it.
Seventh, submit your research as your Ph.D. dissertation.
Congratulations: You are now out of school; you went all the way; you are educated. Done.
Hmm. I would love to follow this course of action. Can you point to evidence that schools will allow you to take their qualifying exams and let you get a PhD based on your independent research without being formally enrolled?
Also, as far as I can tell, most of the article is complaining about the bachelor's level, which you assume as a given. For those who haven't done that, do you have an alternative for that level?
As a math professor: why would you not formally enroll?
We have formal admissions procedures and the like, but this is not to screen out by arbitrary criteria. Grad applications are screened by math professors, not some stuffed suits somewhere who can't do trigonometry, and if you are well prepared for grad study then it will show and you will be admitted. And, typically, funded with a stipend (usually there are 10-20 hours of teaching a week you have to do, depending on institution).
I think most professors would be happy to let you sit in on an advanced class without enrolling. But doing a whole Ph.D. that way? Perhaps it is possible, but I can't imagine why anyone would, and I don't know of anyone that has.
The question was, could a student without a Bachelor's just show up at a grad school, offering to take the Ph.D. qualifying exams and believing that they are well prepared, AND, without a Bachelor's degree, be permitted to do so? In particular, to take the qualifying exams, would they have to be 'enrolled' and would that be possible without a Bachelor's degree? And, although not said, maybe the student needs financial aid and hopes to get it based on their good qualifying exam performance.
So, they are ready to take the exams. But they have no Bachelor's, are not enrolled, without a Bachelor's would likely not be accepted or enrolled, and need financial aid. So, can they take the quals? If so, then how? That was the question. I suggested maybe an Associates degree, some really good GRE scores, and offering to take the quals BEFORE applying for admission.
I didn't cover getting "enrolled", but usually that won't be much of a problem: Even the top graduate programs are hungry for good students. If you are ready for their qualifying exams when you show up, then SAY SO. And/or submit a stack of nicely done, hard exercises from a well known, challenging text. Then being enrolled and able to take the exams should be routine.
For an alternative to the Bachelor's, mostly graduate schools will expect a student to have that degree. But, a graduate school doesn't have to care very much about where a student got a Bachelor's. That is, nearly everyone in serious academics knows that a student who shows up ready for the qualifying exams deserves the credit themselves, that is, the school didn't deserve the credit. The US is awash in relatively inexpensive Bachelor's programs, coast to coast, border to border.
There is a hidden point going for a graduate student who can do research: At the top schools, especially Harvard, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, the emphasis in graduate school, for both the profs and the students, is just RESEARCH. In particular, commonly there is no coursework requirement. Princeton has been known to state on their Web site that grad students are expected to prepare for the qualifying exams on their own, that the courses given are for introductions to research, and that there are no courses for preparation for the quals. So, this stuff about independent work to get ready for the quals is mostly what have to do anyway. Some schools publish copies of their old qualifying exams and have lists of references for preparation for the quals. So if you are good with the references and the old exams, then you have a good shot.
All those things said, ugrad school is usually more strict about courses, credits, and grades. Still, there may be some full or partial ways around the time and expense of a full ugrad program: First, it may be possible to impress a grad school just with GRE scores. So, if you are well prepared, then see if you can take the GRE without a Bachelor's. Second, the US is also just awash in junior or community colleges. Since their student quality is usually low, they would be thrilled to have a good student with a shot at getting a Ph.D. These colleges are usually just for two years and give only an Associates degree. These colleges are uaually quite inexpensive. But, then, the last two years of a four year program are mostly just in the major subject, anyway. So, a grad school MIGHT be willing to accept just an Associates degree. Third, there is a fairly strong but rarely written principle in US higher education: Really good students are wanted and go for free or nearly so! If you are ready for Ph.D. quals, then the money for a Bachelor's should be no big problem, even at Harvard. And once you get at a really good school, say, Harvard, you mostly won't be held back. E.g., I knew a bright student who at Harvard as a sophmore took a reading course with A. Gleason, right, who solved one of Hilbert's problems. And Gleason never got his Ph.D.: His work was so good Harvard made him a Harvard Fellow and put him on the faculty. James Simons was an ugrad at MIT and in his senior year took a reading course from Singer, right, as in the Atiyah-Singer index theorem -- watch the video of Simon's talk on YouTube or some such. Simons? Right, he is as in the Chern-Simons result (try Wikipedia), was Chair at Stony Brook, started a hedge fund, for some years paid himself $2 billion a year, and, net, is likely the most successful hedge fund guy.
Yes, the field where this independent study works best is math. In physics, chemistry, or biology, a ugrad program will typically have a lot of lab work can't do independently and some lecture courses with material difficult to get independently. But math remains the most powerful major, maybe even for physics and biology. Even biology? Look up Eric Lander! But, again, for a really good student, ugrad can be for free or nearly so.
You mentioned the GRE, and I assume you mean the famous GRE general test. But another option to look at to prove mastery of material is the GRE subject test. While the GRE General is mostly an IQ test, GRE subject tests have a knowledge component to them. And, they are quite challenging: for the GRE CS test less than 1% of the test takers in the past 3 years achieved score above 900 (maximum score possible is 990).
EDIT: anyone interested can download the test booklet here which has an example test:
I meant both tests but definitely the subject tests.
Usually the CEEB, SAT, and GRE tests are designed to have Gaussian distribution with mean 500 and standard deviation 100. So, can get a table of the cumulative Gaussian distribution and see what percentile 4 standard deviations above the mean is; I would guess less than 1%.
I got 800 on the GRE subject math test, the only 800 I got on any of those tests, and that 800 always intimidated my wife, MUCH smarter than I am, PBK, etc.
Why especially the subject tests? Because the question was how to skip a Bachelor's degree and do not pass GO, do not collect $100, and go directly to grad school. There the grad school may still want a Bachelor's but for anything less really good scores on the relevant GRE subject tests may be the difference. Show up with 750 or better on GRE subject math, physics, and computer science, and offer to take the Ph.D. quals right away, and may, just MAY, be permitted to 'enroll'. Blow away the quals, publish a paper or two, even in a conference, maybe knock out some code just to prove are not all theory, and may be regarded as a good student. Then will be closer to the front of the line for various kinds of financial aid.
How to skip a Bachelor's is chancy. For the importance and potential of good independent work, at the best research universities that's rock solid. Read the story of the guy who gave the name a 'good' algorithm, Jack Edmonds. Read what Feynman did at Princeton. Read what Gleason did at Harvard. Independent work was just crucial in how I got my Ph.D.: It helped that I did the research for my dissertation independently in my first summer and worte a 50 page manuscript. Then it helped that took a 'reading course', selected a long outstanding problem, and found a solution which also solved a problem in a famous paper by Arrow, Hurwicz, and Uzawa (poor Uzawa was left out of the prize). It helped that the department chair taught a flunk out course, an advanced, second, course in linear algebra and I took it as my first course in linear algebra and blew everyone else away. How? I'd done a LOT in linear algebra independently and in my career in 'scientific programming' before grad school. It even helped that I was the only student that year who showed that there are no countably infinite sigma algebras. That's the kind of stuff that can help one get through grad school.
Skipping the Bachelor entirely might be one use case for the GRE subject test, but I think a more common use case is where the applicant to grad school has a Bachelor is a different field (Math grad going to CS school). I imagine one wouldn't need blow out grades in that case.
Also, I don't think what you're saying about the Gaussian distribution is true for GRE Subject tests as they have significantly varying distributions. Check out this table:
I had a 'qualification': "Usually the CEEB, SAT, and GRE", and with that we both can be right!
For those tests, at the level of detail of the distribution of the scores, it can be tough to get solid data.
But it is easy and common in educational testing to scale 'raw' scores so that the 'scaled scores' are Gaussian.
Also in educational testing, it is easy and common to have enough data on individual questions so that the distribution will be known fairly accurately for a test made of such questions -- my father did that for years as the main 'educational architect' at one of the world's largest and most important technical schools, with 40,000 students there at any one time.
Having those tests be accurately Gaussian more than
2.5 standard deviations away from the mean is likely challenging. I've often suspected that on some of the SAT tests they didn't give any 800 scores.
There have been suggestions that those testing companies have not always been very open about just what they were doing in their details!
Possible answer: First nearly every civilization that mastered, say, radio, did it millions of years ago. Second, nearly every such civilization long ago found much better means of communications than we know about. Third, they realize that trying to communicate via radio is silly and use much better means we don't know about. Net, they are out there and communicating, but we don't hear them and they don't hear us or bother with us. To hear us, they would have to be within 100 light years, and that's not far enough to cover many candidate planets.
That is my preferred explanation as well. A caveman would not notice a WiFi signal even if it was blasting right through the cave; he would probably be looking for smoke signals or something.
Also, a huge intelligence gap makes communication uninteresting. e.g. we know a little bit about how ants communicate via pheromones, but we're not trying to send "messages" to them; what would it possibly be useful to say?
> First nearly every civilization that mastered, say, radio, did it millions of years ago
So then we'd expect to receive signals from civilizations that are a few million light years away. Yet we don't see those signals.
We're too young a civilization to be spotted by other life forms (as you said, they'd have to be within a 100 light years or so). But when we look at space in any direction it looks dead. Just background radiation.
A point in my guess is that an old civilization won't be trying to use radio to communicate with us and will be using something better than radio we don't know about. Next, for communications over 1000 light years with just radio, there can be some issues of signal to noise ratio!
Sure, we can see a star 1000 light years away, a galaxy 1 billion light years away, and a quasar 10 billion light years away, but a signal from a planet over 1000 light years away? Besides, 1000 light years may not be far enough to cover many planets transmitting. Our galaxy is, what, 100,000 light years across? So, just for our galaxy, might want to think about distances of 50,000 light years or so. The nearest ordinary galaxy is the one in Andromeda, and that's about 1.5 million light years away.
Those are long distances for a radio signal from a planet.
"A point in my guess is that an old civilization won't be trying to use radio to communicate with us and will be using something better than radio we don't know about."
While a popular conjecture in this recurring debate, over the decades we've built up an awful lot of evidence that there really is no better mechanism for distance communication than electromagnetic radiation. We're running out of places for such putatively better mechanisms to hide.
I dislike this line of argument in the modern time, because it conflates two discussions, "what we scientifically know about the universe", and "could conceivable be true even though we have no evidence for our conjectures". While the second may be superficially more fun, it's ultimately a waste of time for any sort of serious discussion because you can hypothesize anything you want. It's content-free, despite the haze of words you can throw up. The first is much more interesting, and while 50 years ago one could still hypothesize better communication mechanisms, I think the argument when used in a serious discussion is out of date. We can name some non-EM communication mechanisms (neutrino beams, for instance), but they all suck horribly by comparison.
That we don't know everything is scientifically rock solid!
Your point is mostly that the stuff we don't know is bad science; I agree.
Still, this thread is to try to answer the question, where is ET?
Historically it would have been better to assume that there was stuff unknown that was better as an explanation than the stuff we did know, going WAY back: The Earth is a ball riding on the back of a turtle? We understood balls and turtles but not gravity of spheres! The earth is a ball held up by Hercules? Similar. To keep the sun moving across the sky we have to pour blood on this special rock? The planets are from wheels rolling in wheels? The stars are light coming through holes in ths sky? The sun is a fire based on coal? The Milky Way is all of the universe? The universe is expanding so there are just three cases, (1) keep expanding but more and more slowly, (2) stop expanding and reach 'steady state', (3) quit expanding and contract into a big crunch. It was ALL wrong! And in all cases the right answer was from things we didn't know yet!
For "We're running out of places for such putatively better mechanisms to hide". Ah, it's always been such! Where was Newton going to look for a solution to the orbit of Mercury? Where was Newton going to look for why he couldn't make gold with chemical reactions? The big bang seems to have things moving faster than the speed of light; where to look? We're not getting the right flow rate of neutrinos from the sun; where to look? Essentially all life on earth is just from DNA; so where to look for the reason there is no other mechanism?
But just now we have at least two biggie places to look: Dark matter and dark energy. About both, we don't have hardly a clue. We are unsure about the Higgs field. We haven't unified gravity. We haven't detected gravitational waves. We're unsure about why galaxies have black holes at their centers. There remain questiona about the 'size' of our universe, especially given the evidence about the flatness of the geometry. We're really mixed up about EPR.
But not all is lost! Some of the new telescopes on the way into orbit are amazing, maybe count the hairs on the back of ETs head! Maybe!
So, why haven't we heard from ET? My guess, stated as just a guess, is that ET communicates by means we don't understand yet. Is this answer solid science? Nope! Might it be correct? Yup! Is there some historical, circumstantial evidence for it? Yup. Are we still in the dark? Yup.
I just want you to be clear on the fact that you are deliberately choosing to leave science behind and have entered the realm of science fiction. It used to be a lot more sensible to speculate that way, but the thing is, if there is some 'mysterious' way to communicate we can say with great confidence that it probably isn't useful from an engineering standpoint.
"Dark matter and dark energy."
We aren't as ignorant about them as you might think. For them to be useful for communication would require them to also not have the properties that they appear to have.
This fashionable claiming of extreme ignorance isn't quite as silly as the fashionable affectation of self-species-loathing in this debate, but it's only slightly more sensible...
... of course, part of it is that few people have learned enough math or the relevant science to actually understand just how thoroughly, for instance, FTL really isn't going to happen, or understand enough information theory to understand why communication channels must actually have certain properties to be useful, regardless of their form.
> I just want you to be clear on the fact that you are deliberately choosing to leave science behind and have entered the realm of science fiction.
Not really: I'm guessing. Or in more erudite terms, I'm conjecturing.
You seem to be saying that science is what is all wrapped up and solid and that anything else is "science fiction". That's a bit rigid! Also that view would keep us from ever discussing the unknown before it becomes known, and science is a long march through millions of small and dozens of huge cases of the unknown becoming known.
Indeed, if read Einstein's special relativity paper, it reads like conjecture or guessing. That is, when he wrote the paper it was not at all clear that the Lorentz transformation had any physical reality. That paper became accepted as the real physics only later.
There's no solid proof that we can't go faster than light (FTL), and I have much more than enough math and plenty of science to have seen the arguments.
Sure, for any particle with ordinary mass as we know it, as it goes faster through space and approaches light speed, its mass increases and at the speed of light would be infinitely large. Right. So, for that case, FTL would be impossible.
But we don't really know the deeper mechanism for this mass increase. Thus we are like someone in the 18th century saying that travel faster than 60 MPH would be impossible because no horse could move its legs fast enough. That is, once we understand the deeper mechanism that establishes the speed of light speed limit, maybe we could find a way around the mechanism and the limit. The mechanism seems likely connected with the Higgs field, and we don't understand that very well yet.
E.g., we know so little about dark matter we can't be very sure it can't go faster than the speed of light.
For dark energy, we are assuming conservation of energy much as we understand it, estimating the energy of dark energy, assuming that E = mc^2 also applies there, assuming that how matter and energy curve space in general relativity continues to apply, and then concluding the huge mass of dark energy. That's a lot of assumptions from extrapolations. We're assuming that what we see for ordinary matter in accelerators applies to dark energy; that's a GUESS.
So, in science we need to be able to talk about possibilities not yet established. Such "talk" is not the best science, but it's also not "science fiction".
I wish this had been a root level comment (so it would be more visible). I think this is by far the most plausible explanation especially if you think about human history and technology differences.
Imagine our current spy agencies with bleeding edge technology spying on the Romans. Its only a two thousand year difference, but there's absolutely no way they could detect our signals and/or equipment (unless we made a serious mistake).
It seems entirely reasonable that another civilization may be tens of thousands of years ahead of us in technological advancement. If you consider the increasing growth rate of technological advancement, its easy to see your explanation.
The issue is not radio waves--it's Dyson spheres (look it up). It does not take very long at all for a space-faring civilization to advance to such a point that it's artifacts would be (spectrographically) visible from our telescopes today.
It doesn't have to be Dyson spheres either. A large object moving near the speed of light through the interstellar medium would give off one of a few very specific and very strong spectral lines. Now there hasn't been a concerted effort to look for interstellar travelers, but nevertheless in all our years of searching such oddities haven't shown up.
Our nearest other star is 4 light years away. 1000 light years away may still not cover many planets good for ET to colonize. But for us now to see evidence of a colony on a planet 1000 light years away or more would be TOUGH.
Note: The planet hunters mostly don't actually see the planets but just shadows or evidence in star wobbles, etc.
But we are putting up some new telescopes with some astounding resolution, etc.
But if they're so advanced, they probably still have radio receivers somewhere though. They should be able to receive our signals and reply with some sort of super advanced method that appears as radio waves so that we can receive them, but that travel much faster so it doesn't take a thousand years to reach us.
I like the idea that these advanced civilizations are actually all around us and just don't interact with us at all because we are too stupid/too boring/not ready/etc.
They're all down there thinking "why aren't there any alien bacteria sending us some chemical messages already? It's clearly the best way to communicate"
Then we presume that all these advanced civilizations are somehow living peacefully together AND that they all agree not to mess with earth. That's extraordinarily unlikely. Evolution isn't good at producing life forms that peacefully co-exist.
Let's see: We've been okay with radio for less than 200 years so far. The earth was formed ballpark 4.5 billion years ago. The big bang was about 13.7 billion years ago.
Assume that to get a civilization need a planet and, thus, elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. Those heavier elements are created in big stars that supernova, that is, have their cores collapse under gravity and blow off their outer layers where during the explosion all the heavier elements in the periodic table are created by fusing together lighter elements. So to get a planet, have to have a star form, burn out, and supernova. So, assume that are getting candidate planets 3.7 billion years after the big bang. Then have been forming candidate planets for 10 billion years.
Now take the planets that have achieved mastry of radio (i.e., working with photons from 60 Hz up to gamma rays). Take the date when they first made this progress with radio. Take the distribution of those dates over the planets. That distribution is 'concentrated' on the last 10 billion years. Now in that distribution spread out over 10 billion years, what is the probability mass of the last million years? It's TINY. Maybe it's 0.01%. Then 99.99% of the civilizations that mastered radio did it over one million years ago and, thus, are a million years or more ahead of us. Done.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3421033
below.