What does it feel like to have an answer collapsed for the first time?
I can't say how it is for everyone, but it has been a wonderfully liberating experience for me.
I have been troubled in recent years by the claim emanating from social media circles that crowds are intrinsically wise and that 'big data' has made theory (and theorists) largely irrelevant. Despite the fact that this seems like nonsense to me, many people that I respect (in particular, my friend the ever insightful Seb Paquet) have lead me to seriously question my position.
It was against this backdrop of intellectual soul searching that I submitted an answer to the question What is Gauge Theory (intuitively)? Unlike the other well considered, but somewhat more involved, answers there, I decided to try giving an unconventional explanation in a single line. If, as many mathematicians and physicists say, Gauge Theory is the theory of covariant derivatives, why not radically demystify the subject for non-experts?
So I went with the following:
"A gauge theory is a geometric theory of differentiation in which the rise in Rise/Run is computed as the rise above a reference level determined endogenously within the theory."
I was actually pretty pleased because I had not seen such a radically concise description anywhere. Additionally, I believe that one day applications of Gauge Theory may spread throughout the sciences and could be recognized by something like the above definition.
But when I checked back, I noticed that the answer was collapsed. That's when I finally realized what crowds may be expected to do well and what they may do poorly. Whether or not my answer turns out to be a good or bad answer, I could easily understand why it could be an unpopular and risky answer. It doesn't look remotely like the other answers and was in fact meant to diversify them. It was meant to suggest 'just maybe, we the expert community are doing scientific outreach in a way that is hopelessly technical and counterproductive'. While I find that to be an interesting idea, I also know it to go against the grain.
So I think that being down-voted and collapsed was entirely consistent with the spirit of Quora and social media, as well as being a good experience at a personal level. I had given an idiosyncratic reply and the system worked to route around a high risk answer for having low expected value. But it made me better appreciate that the 'wisdom of crowds' and the 'power of data' aren't yet likely to be as threatening to idiosyncratic theorists as I might have feared.
- Eric Weinstein on Quora