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Even Einstein Doubted His Gravitational Waves (astronomy.com)
Flash Modin writes: In 1936, twenty years after Albert Einstein introduced the concept, the great physicist took another look at his math and came to a surprising conclusion. 'Together with a young collaborator, I arrived at the interesting result that gravitational waves do not exist, though they had been assumed a certainty to the first approximation,' he wrote in a letter to friend Max Born. Interestingly, his research denouncing gravitational waves was rejected by Physical Review Letters, the journal that just published proof of their existence. The story shows that even when Einstein's wrong, it's because he was already right the first time.
The most intelligent users here were driven away by the bad moderating that happened years ago.
Slashdot was at its peak between 2005 and 2007. Stories would routinely get 400 or more comments, rather than the 50 to 100 that is typical now. But this also meant that a lot of rather dumb users got mod points.
Back then, JavaScript, Ruby on Rails and NoSQL were the darlings of Slashdot. They were worshipped by many. Yet the more experienced Slashdotters were concerned about the lack of quality of these technologies. They were worried about how these technologies threw out years or even decades of acquired knowledge and experience. Like responsible technicians would, they voiced these concerns. Yet instead of these concerns being met with discussion and consideration, the large pro-JavaScript, pro-Ruby on Rails, and pro-NoSQL crowds attacked with downmods. They censored anything resembling questioning or opposition to JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, and NoSQL. The experienced, intelligent Slashdot users left for greener pastures.
Yet as time has passed, we see that those driven-away Slashdot users were absolutely right. JavaScript has been one of the biggest disasters known to mankind, leading to constant and invasive online tracking by advertisers, and even poorly-performing, unmaintainable server-side code. Ruby on Rails has lost its luster and became the laughing stock of web frameworks. The use of NoSQL databases have resulted in data corruption and loss, the two most inexcusable things when using database systems.
Those Slashdot users were right all along, yet they were vilified for being right. The broken moderation system here, intended originally to limit spammers, was turned against those with the most knowledge, the most experience, and most importantly, the ones who were correct. The moderation system became the very weapon which destroyed intelligence at Slashdot.
While I've been outside of the computing industry this entire time, I've watched here from the Slashdot sidelines as those people were marginalized and driven out. I've seen the intelligence level here drop as those people have been forced away. And the part that saddens me the most is that I still see it happening today. The ones we see victimized today are those who don't fully support systemd. They point out its flaws in good faith, yet are mercilessly attacked by those who support systemd. As we see systemd tearing apart well-established Linux communities, like the Debian project, we see similar destruction of the few remaining Slashdot users with experience and knowledge.
Is there hope for Slashdot? I don't know. But if there is to be salvation here, the moderation system needs a massive reworking. It should never be a tool of abuse or censorship. And those who use it as such should suffer dearly; they should never moderate ever again. For they are the ones who drove away the most intelligent users Slashdot ever had.
I somewhat agree with you.
Einstein copied from/built off of many others, prompting some physicists to give the credit for relativity to Lorentz and others? Yes
Einstein was weak enough, mathematically, that he needed Hilbert (and even some interns) to help him with the math? Yes
Einstein did little after SR/GR? Yes
Even worse, in my books, is that SR discarding the ether was the single most damaging thing to happen in physics in the last 110 years.
GR saying the ether can be there, but is not needed, did not fully reverse the gaff of SR.
Einstein then vacillated about the ether for the rest of his life, coming out both for and against numerous versions of the ether, before finally settling on a name-changed ether.
Bottom line? Einstein played both sides of the ether fence, and played games with words, rather than advancing physics and further than SR/GR.
On a non-physics level, I like Einstein. He was a thinker, philosophical and a pacifist. And he didn't wear socks...something I haven't been able to give up.
I come here for the love
When you don't give credit, as Einstein was famous for not doing, then it is copying. Had Einstein given the proper amount of credit, he wouldn't have the unreasonable levels of adulation he has today. Which was the OP's point.
As to the papers you list: Einstein was always a contributor, and a big factor in general. But the papers you cite are invisibly small compared to SR/GR. For anyone else, those papers would be worth framing. But Einstein basically fizzled in his later years. The big stuff he was working on -- trying to define space/fields/ether, and trying to unify the e/m & gravity -- produced zilch.
I come here for the love
And I bet Einstein's shit stank, too.
Even very good humans have human failings, usually the standard ones.
Good luck not fucking up your own children, especially if the extraordinarily important work you are doing is massively changing the world as we know it.
I say this as the (now adult) child of a quite famous and truly excellent medical professional from the northeastern United States who spent most of the last decade of his 90-year life apologizing to and developing human relationships with the 7 children he pretty much destroyed along the way. Ooops. Love ya, Dad! Always did! An interesting side note: it was the first time he met a grandchild that started his journey to his own humanity. He MELTED. Amazing.
Also let us state it correctly. Einstein did not say E= m c^2. He proved it.
Yes lets state it correctly: it is E^2=p^2c^2+m^2c^4. Only when you are stationary, and so have zero momentum, does E=mc^2. Also Einstein did not prove it. He was doing physics, not maths. What he showed was that given his postulates for special relativity it followed that E^2=p^2c^2+m^2c^4. He was then proven to be correct by experiments not by the maths alone because until those experiments were done his theory might have been nothing more than an exercise in abstract maths.
I think the story is primarily an interesting bit of behind the scenes drama and personalities. Einstein was not used to peer-review process and reacted emotionally to a legit criticism and refused to publish in the premiere physics journal anymore despite the fact that the criticism turned out to be accurate. In addition, the story is pretty interesting the way the reviewer was able to indirectly get the criticisms explained to the assistant and ultimately to Einstein who accepted those criticisms as valid.