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Scientist vs science fan (HEY GUESS WHAT THIS ISN'T A LINK!!!!)
Hi guys! I was just thinking about the difference between being a scientist and a science fan. I'm a senior in high school, and I realized that while my grades in AP science classes are just ok (B range, usually,) I love reading about the sort of thing posted here. Sometimes after I share a fun fact I read somewhere, I feel like I should ammend it with, "but I'm not actually that good at science. I just read this stuff". Does anyone else feel this way? How many of you are actualy proffesional scientists, and how many are fans? Do you fans ever feel like a poser?




I have a degree in Zoology but have never worked in a science field so feel more like a science fan than a scientist as such. Certainly anything in fields I don't have much knowledge in like physics and astronomy etc I am definitely a lay person, but I come from a family where I feel that sharing cool and interesting facts about things has been encouraged so I don't feel I need to put a disclaimer that it's just something I read/heard about if I tell someone something interesting!
Yeah, my family doesn't know much about science, but they try to smile and nod when I go on a monologue :-) Most of my friends are the same way. It's so refreshing when I run across someone who already knows some stuff. Like, I don't have to explain what a black hole is and we can jump straight to wormholes and time travel? Heck yes!
I have a phd in maths and worked as an analyst and museum demonstrator for a while...and still feel like a fake sometimes :) Especially when I was teaching kids about biology, which I haven't studied beyond the compulsory classes in highschool. But even during my Phd I was surrounded by people who all seemed way smarter and more driven than me, and I felt like the maths I understood was a tiny fraction of All The Maths.
Even "real scientists" probably only know about their specific area of expertise, and will have other areas they think are cool but don't actually have any training in. Science is huge and ever changing and we are all tiny specks by comparison. I guess there are times where it's good to acknowledge that you're not an expert in something (I've had a few people arrogantly "explain" maths to me they clearly didn't understand (%) ) but like... we are all finite and flawed, and stumbling along the best we can.
Science is big and beautiful enough to contain all sorts of approaches to it. The joy you're experiencing is exactly what drives scientists, and one of the things I loved about working as a museum demonstrator was meeting enthusiastic young people like you who loved science as much as I do. Whether you pursue it professionally or not, keep having fun!
(%) like the surprising number of people with VERY STRONG but provably false opinions on the nature of infinity.
Thanks, that's nice to hear, and really well put! Side note, how do you have opinions on... infinity? I mean, I guess people can have "opinions" on climate science now, but infinity is just a math concept. I guess my only opinion on infinity is that it's insanely big... maybe too big. Like, tone it down mathematicians, I have a hard enough time conceiving of a finite universe, stop bringing endlessness into things! XD
What wrong-headed conceptions of infinity have you encountered? I'm curious.
Have you ever read the graphic novel Logicomix? It's about Bertrand Russell and his work to find the logical foundations of mathematics. It delves into the sometimes counter-intuitive properties of infinity.
Some people, when confronted with a well established scientific fact they find counterintuitive, prefer to decide that Science Is Wrong rather than accept that their intuitions about the universe might be false. I've encountered this a lot around stuff like quantum mechanics/relativity etc. The infinity example involves pagans, but afaict pagans aren't especially bad about this stuff in general.
Anyway! In paganism (or at least some forms of it) there's a spiritual concept called The Infinite which is The One Thing Which Is Bigger Than Everything, kind of like God I guess.
The problem is that in mathematics there is more than one kind of infinity. Afaict most pagans, when they learn this, go "Well that's fine for mathematicians, but the spiritual Infinite I care about is bigger than that" and there's no need for argument.
But I have twice encountered very academically minded pagans who don't see this as a spiritual question so much as a matter of PROVEN TRUTH, evident to anyone who has studied the right texts. They got offended that mathematicians dare think we understand infinity better than them, the Real Experts On The Infinite, and once they found out I studied maths started lecturing me about my "ignorance" out of the blue. Instead of admitting that they were evangelising with religious arguments they took a More Rational And Educated Than Thou approach, claiming to understand things like limits and number theory better than me when they really didn't.
For really wacky dogmatic theories about maths noone beats the Lyndon Larouche people though. They're like some weird cult with a bizarre grudge against Newton and Euclid.
Also: I've read Logicomix, though I remember having mixed feelings for reasons I can't remember. I read Goedel Escher Bach as a teen and it BLEW MY MIND, apparently the neuroscience is bunk but it has some cool maths in it.
Well that's hilarious. I never would have thought that people had religious dogma about infinity. I can't imagine being so absurdly fixated on such a provably wrong idea.
Pretty much anyone who knows me know that I am not in any way a scientist or a mathematician, but am a big fan of Reading Interesting Things - so for me no, I just say "I read this thing somewhere the other day that said..." etc and that's enough. If anything I probably underplay my (genuinely negligible) abilities so people (including myself) are surprised when I actually know a thing, rather than having expectations that are too high😂
I'm studying palaeontology academically, but I've got a pretty good grasp of the science used to study related fields and a decent body of general scientific knowledge.
I'm a PhD student in electrical engineering. Not quite a scientist, but pretty close. My parents are scientists, though. My dad is a professor in molecular biology and my mom is a research assistant in the same field. As @sqbr mentioned, most scientists only have expertise in a specific field. I obviously know quite a bit about computers and electronics, but even within electrical engineering, there are some sub-fields I'm not that knowledgeable about (like device physics and RF engineering).
Well i'm not sure what you mean by "good in science" i study physics but I've never been good at math before calculus. Loving it is the only way to be good at it, I think.
I work at a university, supporting primary investigators in their research, on a daily basis. Primarily within earth sciences, but also quite a few biologists. One thing sets them all apart: their burning curiosity about everything. They want to know "why" more than my daughter did when she was four.
i'm not a scientist, i like science magazines though and i didn't fall asleep during Hidden Figures despite not understanding maths