[sidewndr46]

Day 1: We aim to demonstrate the effectiveness of an existing industrial catalyst in a novel application that has not seen commercial usage, potentially lowering cost of production of precursors for essential medications

Day 400: Having thoroughly described a universal theory of everything, we set out to build an experimental apparatus in orbit at a Lagrange point capable of detecting a universal particle which acts a mediator for all observable forces in the known universe.

[Ifkaluva]

I think it’s the opposite—you start out bright eyed and busy tailed thinking you will do something big over the next five years…

You find out your idea has been tried, five different ways, all of them failed. Two of your follow up ideas were already done, and had some impact but not as much as expected. Finally you have an idea nobody has done, you try it and it flops—maybe somebody had tried it before but their results were so bad they couldn’t publish.

Then in the end you have done a tiny increment over the state of the art, and you want to persuade the PhD committee this is enough and they should let you graduate.

[danaris]

I mean, part of the systemic problem here is that "results were so bad they couldn't publish."

That shouldn't ever be a thing. As long as your methods are sound, it should never matter whether your results are just completely random noise; that's still an important result.

[Ifkaluva]

Right :) I was trying to write the bleakest possible version, and in the bleakest, your own unpublished idea is not actually original, it’s just a failure of the system to record negative results.

[bluefirebrand]

Damn, that's an incredible amount of progress in just 400 days

[dnnddidiej]

Notice: "We set out to build..."

[lukan]

"Having thoroughly described a universal theory of everything"

That is already something people would call a project.

[gadflyinyoureye]

That is the power of AI.

[FridgeSeal]

Don’t sell yourself short!

You could achieve things yourself if you tried!

[richardw]

That’s how I do side projects.

[amarant]

I think this is the definition of side projects.

Like, if you stay focused, is it even really a side project?

Which is why my 2d top down sprite-based rpg now has a 3d procedural animation engine, a procedural 3d character generator with automagic rigging, a population simulator that would put Europa Universalis to shame if I ever get around to finishing it (ha!) a pixel art editor, a 2d procedural animation engine using active ragdolls.........

You might wonder why a 2d game needs 3d procedural animation, well...

The scope creeps in mysterious ways

[x______________]

> a population simulator that would put Europa Universalis to shame if I ever get around to finishing it (ha!)

I believe the answer is buried in this submission:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47902525

Using coding assistance tools to revive projects you never were going to finish (matthewbrunelle.com) 228 points by speckx 12 hours ago | flag | hide | 122 comments

[lukan]

"You might wonder why a 2d game needs 3d procedural animation, well..."

To produce better looking assets for the 2D top down world?

[appplication]

I think this is what factorio did for their assets (2d sprites from 3d models, not proc gen)

[twic]

Mine was more:

Day 1: we aim to demonstrate the role of myosin II in the initiation of adhesions in migrating fibroblasts

Day 1047: we aim to get one preparation of fibroblasts to express GFP-myosin and survive long enough to film, just one, come on, please, twenty cells is enough, is that too much to ask

[Johnny_Bonk]

Hahaha so well said, can relate during my thesis

[dnnddidiej]

This comment is screaming out fot 3 or 4 panels and some stick figures.

[sidewndr46]

feel free to expand upon it, I'm not an artist.

[fHr]

Lmao accurate