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Comment by the_omegist | Hacker News Reader

That's a noble practice but I think everyone should stick at what he does best, for a better overall efficiency. As long as you make your paper easily available, as another commenter said, another person can make it more comprehensible for the general public.

One of the causes of the slowdown (even if marginal) of science and research in general is the administrative and social media overlays that were added to them.

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A typical computer systems research project takes two years, though many take a lot more. After several years research, we write a paper like it's 1920, spend a day knocking together some powerpoint slides, and give a 20-minute presentation at some conference (and those are the successful projects). Science, whether pure or applied, is about pushing forward the bounds of knowledge and then, crucially, communicating those insights. There are so many papers published these days - one of my papers has been cited over 10,000 times - that's an average of 1.5 times a day for 19 years straight. Seems unlikely most of those papers ever get read. If you still believe in the work once it's published, you really should do your best to communicate your excitement to others. Unless you made a huge breakthough (unlikely in any field), no-one else is going to learn from your insights otherwise.

> As long as you make your paper easily available, as another commenter said, another person can make it more comprehensible for the general public.

I'm not sure you appreciate how hard this might be for someone who is not closely connected to a project.

The people who can do that reliably will have: a) the academic chops on a similar level of a peer reviewer b) social media skills. a) puts them back in the bracket of people you don't want to 'slow down'.

Well I agree but I see it like a pyramid. You don't have to worry about people at the bottom of the knowledge pyramid getting access to the last breakthrough in some field if they don't already know the basics about that field. They will naturally access it when they "climb" this pyramid of knowledge through more specialized sources or studies.

More over : the population of people who are good at doing something isn't necessarily the same as the one good at explaining it.

It's like saying Newton would have to spend 20% of his time explaining to 14yrs old kids what he's doing when someone less capable than him would do it as good but would leave Newton free for what he does best.

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