User talk:Quercus solaris/Converting the energy of light to an electric signal

I'm not sure how I found my way here, but this was fun to read. I had a similar problem on the polyphenol page a while back. Wikipedia is in a weird position where it is often too technical or not technical enough. We want things to be useful for the layperson, but sourced from experts who normally only write for other experts. Of course having reliable sources is critical, but a little touch of original research/synthesis/blue sky can do a lot to really make a great article. Pelirojopajaro (talk) 11:49, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Pelirojopajaro: And it's wonderful when a useful upshot can come out of such a discussion instead of just a censoring of the line of thought into oblivion. An instance of such a happy outcome was when, as a chemistry layperson, one day I was prompted to wonder why carbonic acid was not listed in the table at Carboxylic_acid#Examples_and_nomenclature. I eventually learned from Wikipedians with chemistry knowledge that "Carbonic acid, which occurs in bicarbonate buffer systems in nature, is not generally classed as one of the carboxylic acids, despite that it has a moiety that looks like a COOH group." Which I accordingly added to the article—one short simple sentence that answers the question for anyone in future who may ever wonder, just like I already did earlier. This solution has value because it keeps other people in future from wasting time and effort reinventing the wheel of that particular discussion. And yet some people would tend to want to censor/gag a piece of information like that because their mode of cognition struggles to understand why it is relevant. It is relevant because it helps learners to form their mental ontologies and to easily move past sticking points within that process and easily move on. Such lines of thought increase human insight and decrease needless rehashing and sparring among human individuals. And you don't need to cite that the sky is blue, so arguments to censor/gag it are flawed. Quercus solaris (talk) 17:28, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. That's a great example. I am afraid that a Wikipedia written by an AI built to scour news sites and journal articles would look quite similar to the current one. Some would say this is a good thing. Articles should be written by the curious, for the curious, and machines aren't curious. Pelirojopajaro (talk) 03:29, 5 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]