AI Researcher Blasts Autodidact Culture: 'Self-Taught Wanking Has Made This Field Intolerable'
Apoorva__Lal · x · 2026-10-16
Researcher Apoorva Lal argues that while Alec Radford may not have needed grad school, most people do — if only to learn what came before and how to write scientific documents. He says autodidacts praising each other for prosaic insights has made the field intolerable.
The quoted post says the author gave up reading and handed the material to an AI assistant, which produced a distilled version with 10x fewer words and seemingly infinite more equations — described as the right and morally correct way to discuss such matters. The original, they add, has something to it, but it's incremental and just fine.
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