<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>bee_rider</author><text>I also liked:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I still get the occasional joke from colleagues about my ‘crackpot consultant business’, but I’ve stopped thinking of our clients that way. They are driven by the same desire to understand nature and make a contribution to science as we are. They just weren’t lucky enough to get the required education early in life, and now they have a hard time figuring out where to even begin.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;In some sense, labeling somebody a &amp;quot;crackpot&amp;quot; assigns a sort of malicious wrongness to them. It is interesting to see somebody who&amp;#x27;s dealt with a significant subset of these people and discovered more actual, honest misunderstanding than we (or at least I) would have expected.</text><parent_chain><item><author>overthemoon</author><text>Wow, I love this. What a thoughtful, empathetic project. This passage really stuck out to me--&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;A typical problem is that, in the absence of equations, they project literal meanings onto words such as ‘grains’ of space-time or particles ‘popping’ in and out of existence. Science writers should be more careful to point out when we are using metaphors. My clients read way too much into pictures, measuring every angle, scrutinising every colour, counting every dash. Illustrators should be more careful to point out what is relevant information and what is artistic freedom. But the most important lesson I’ve learned is that journalists are so successful at making physics seem not so complicated that many readers come away with the impression that they can easily do it themselves. How can we blame them for not knowing what it takes if we never tell them?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this writing often isn&amp;#x27;t for the layperson, it&amp;#x27;s for an audience who can tell the difference between diagram, artistic license, and metaphor, but even so, it&amp;#x27;s good to think about, especially when communicating science to the general public.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physicists (2016)</title><url>https://aeon.co/ideas/what-i-learned-as-a-hired-consultant-for-autodidact-physicists</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>buescher</author><text>Most impressive: &amp;quot;One of them might even publish a paper soon. Not a proposal for a theory of everything, mind you, but a new way to look at a known effect. A first step on a long journey.&amp;quot; Hossenfelder must have the patience of Job and a deep teaching vocation.&lt;p&gt;If you are ever even around physics or math at all, you will see the crackpot letters.  I was a little surprised engineers are largely unaware of the phenomenon and are shocked, for example, that anyone seriously tries to make perpetual motion machines at all.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s a couple links about the mathematical equivalent:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.laphamsquarterly.org&amp;#x2F;roundtable&amp;#x2F;beware-cranks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.laphamsquarterly.org&amp;#x2F;roundtable&amp;#x2F;beware-cranks&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;web.mst.edu&amp;#x2F;~lmhall&amp;#x2F;whattodowhentrisectorcomes.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;web.mst.edu&amp;#x2F;~lmhall&amp;#x2F;whattodowhentrisectorcomes.pdf&lt;/a&gt;</text><parent_chain><item><author>overthemoon</author><text>Wow, I love this. What a thoughtful, empathetic project. This passage really stuck out to me--&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;A typical problem is that, in the absence of equations, they project literal meanings onto words such as ‘grains’ of space-time or particles ‘popping’ in and out of existence. Science writers should be more careful to point out when we are using metaphors. My clients read way too much into pictures, measuring every angle, scrutinising every colour, counting every dash. Illustrators should be more careful to point out what is relevant information and what is artistic freedom. But the most important lesson I’ve learned is that journalists are so successful at making physics seem not so complicated that many readers come away with the impression that they can easily do it themselves. How can we blame them for not knowing what it takes if we never tell them?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this writing often isn&amp;#x27;t for the layperson, it&amp;#x27;s for an audience who can tell the difference between diagram, artistic license, and metaphor, but even so, it&amp;#x27;s good to think about, especially when communicating science to the general public.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physicists (2016)</title><url>https://aeon.co/ideas/what-i-learned-as-a-hired-consultant-for-autodidact-physicists</url></story>