TIL that Natalie Portman has had papers published in two scientific journals. While at Harvard, she co-authored a study called “Frontal Lobe Activation during Object Permanence: Data from Near-Infrared Spectroscopy.”
old.reddit.com
Posted in r/todayilearned by u/the_one_below • 17,540 points and 342 comments

When we have a critical mass of people, we can get random experts chiming in about interesting topics in an organic way.

  • @Anon518@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    44•1 month ago

    we can get random experts chiming in about interesting topics in an organic way

    1. In my experience, many of the people claiming to be experts on reddit are spreading misinformation. This goes for Twitter too, and probably most other large social media sites. People love to be seen as an authority on a topic.
    2. Reddit is anything but organic, and is getting worse and worse in this regard.
    • KeegenEnglish
      12•1 month ago

      The eye opening moment is when one of these threads touches on a subject you know a lot about and the top upvoted comment is spouting complete bullshit. See it once and you start to doubt the credibility of every other highly upvoted comment that looks legit but could be just as wrong, you simply don’t know enough to immediately disprove it.

      • @actually@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4•1 month ago

        I have a conspiracy theory that most users who are an expert don’t post much about that.

        For example I am an expert on two things most people find obscure; and for all my comments I just avoid talking about them. It’s too hard to wrap up an idea without lots of background information, there are no short posts or comments I can make about it.

        Almost all the highly upvoted stuff are short. Were I to try to make an expert post it would be totally ignored. So why bother for me when I can snarky about things I know nothing about ? More fun !

        I think experts who write short terse pithy comments that hit the mark, at a timely fashion, are rarer than hens teeth