Manfred comments on Open thread, Oct. 03 - Oct. 09, 2016 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: MrMind 03 October 2016 06:59AM

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Comment author: Florian_Dietz 03 October 2016 08:22:13PM *  3 points [-]

Is there an effective way for a layman to get serious feedback on scientific theories?

I have a weird theory about physics. I know that my theory will most likely be wrong, but I expect that some of its ideas could be useful and it will be an interesting learning experience even in the worst case. Due to the prevalence of crackpots on the internet, nobody will spare it a glance on physics forums because it is assumed out of hand that I am one of the crazy people (to be fair, the theory does sound pretty unusual).

Comment author: Manfred 03 October 2016 09:59:41PM *  2 points [-]

It depends on your level of connection to current work. If you're genuinely doing something similar to something you've seen in some journal articles you've read, you can contact the authors of those journal articles and try to convince them to talk with you - probably via claiming some sort of reasonable result and asking politely.

On the other hand, you can always just ask about it in various places. Even if people think your idea is sure to be wrong they can still provide useful feedback. I'd be happy to hear you out, though if your "weird theory" isn't about condensed matter physics I'll be of limited expertise.