The Myth Of The Lone Genius Scientist

This is one of my shorter and less dense posts, skippable, only important if you wish to pursue a career in research or believe in myths like Science is something that only makes progress when we get a once-in-a-generation genius like Einstein.

I seemed to know it but recently I have realized more intuitively and understood how science is actually a collaborative effort and it is impossible to do it any other way. Because once I started looking at the topics and disciplines I'd be required to master to solve my research questions, investigate topics I'm interested in and develop my projects, I realized it's very unrealistic and impossible to learn it all and also gain mastery over all the skills and topics all by myself.

The more realistic plan seems to be to focus on what I'm interested in and good at, and later collaborate with people who spend their own limited time and resources on topics and skills they're interested in and good at, and this way I'd be more likely to achieve my goals than going solo, which seemed alluring at first because of my experiences with school team projects and the difficulty I still have finding people with the same levels of motivation and interests but now I understand that the lone scientist isn't just a myth, it's impossible to pull off in real life, and even though many great scientists have taken retreats from humanity and work solitarily closed off from everyone- Dr. Karl Friston, Dr. Stephen Wolfram, among several others, they are the only ones I can recall right now- they eventually have to explain their ideas to the scientific community to know if it's a good one and to further develop it and put it to use in the real world. So I'll try not to do everything by myself, hence my comment on just focusing on a few subjects I made while replying to Maria above, and try to gain a broad and general understanding of the basics of several subjects just enough to be able to hold a conversation with researchers in the areas that I'm not an expert in yet require to further my research project, and so I can know what topics or techniques I would require to solve the questions so that, even if they don't wish to collaborate, they could guide me towards the right topics and resources to learn it all myself and ask for help whenever I'm stuck, so I don't have to over-rely or depend too much on other's expertise or finding people with similar goals, interests or motivations who might not even exist or willing to collaborate.

I know that even if I work by myself, the tools and methods I use and the ideas I build on would be borrowed and those of others, so I could never say that my discoveries or projects would be just my own, because all the equipment, theories and other ideas would be other people's, but what I'm talking about is a type of collaboration that's more active, and that's hard to find, at least from my person experience, which admittedly isn't too much yet.

So I'll try to keep in mind how science works as a collaborative project, but still try not to depend too much on others to the extent that trying to find collaborators is proving to be a waste of time and efforts that could instead be diverted towards my primary project. Does that sound right? I'd like to know if there is a better way so somehow I don't have to go completely lone wolf and face the disadvantages of doing so without running into the problems I shall face while trying to find collaborators.

I sometimes myself wonder how these great researchers in the history of science sometimes seemed to easily find collaborators and with them made great discoveries and also said how it'd have been impossible to do without their collaborators. One example that immediately comes to mind is Kahneman and Tversky, then there's Ramanujan and Hardy, and there are several more. I wonder how they did that, finding like minded people interested in the same goals and levels of motivation and ambition, and complementing each other's skills and domains of expertise so perfectly.

If anyone knows anything about this and how such curious people motivated to work on the same topics come together- is it just the environment, like the institutions? Or is it pure chance? If it's chance is there any way we could connect such people?

Oh, I have a few projects related to that too. One is related to how high-IQ societies could be reformed and restructured in a way to also measure motivation and curiosity, and connect people with similar interests and goals. Another one involves using tech tools to detect the processes involved in a flow state and connecting people with similar values.

But this is a problem I've encountered several times throughout my past- you have these ideas and wish someone was there to help you, either startup-related or research-related, but then you realize first of all how rare it is to find such humans in the first place, and even if you do you have to see if they have the same interests, goals, skills, or at least interest in acquiring the required skills, aren't too hard to work with based on their personality etc.

Then you think maybe going lone wolf is the solution, but then it occurs to you why you tried to find someone- because doing everything by yourself is very difficult, and having a co-founder or co-author makes things much easier by dividing tasks among yourselves.

So the best solution seems to be trying to find someone to help you out, see if anyone is interested in the same things as you are, because after all 'multiple discovery' is a real thing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery) else don't rely on others, just get started, and take help from experts or from online communities or forums whenever you are stuck, and repeat the process till you get something that is good enough, or as close to perfect as possible, if you happen to be a perfectionist like me.

If anyone is interested or has any comments, feel free to connect.