Esoteric

I’m reading a paper named, “Using Genetic Algorithms to map first-principles results to model Hamiltonians: Application to the generalized Ising model for Alloys.”

It’s progress that I know what three of the technical terms in that title mean, at least a little. I still only understand about 10% of the paper.

The things I do understand make me feel a little funny. I’m taking a class about doing calculations using something called Density Functional Theory. Something I learned just last week was the key to understanding one statement in this paper that otherwise would have been entirely opaque. It wasn’t something I could have reasoned out (at least not in one lifetime). It was just something I had to know, and I’m certain that everyone who works regularly in the author’s field does know it.

Anyway, there’s sort of a trick to reading papers, I guess. You have to be able to know the difference between not understanding something because you haven’t thought enough about it (in which case, you might need to do more thinking), and not understanding something because it’s an encoded reference to some body of knowledge you haven’t been exposed to (so that almost no amount of thinking on the average person’s part will help).