New proposed theory is the same I asked in this network some years ago

Question

Imagine that I make a post in which I propose a new theory or idea, but I don't write any paper about it. Then, some years later, a researcher independently and completely unaware of my post, proposes the same theory/idea in a peer-reviewed paper.

In what circumstances could I claim co-authorship of that theory/idea and how could I handle that?

EDIT: As suggested, I rephrased this question. I kept the original question below, for future reference. The context of how this question arose was maybe idiotic, and that was making the answers to drift away from a general view of the problem. As I said in the comments, I was not realistically considering to claim any authorship for the idea or act on it in any way - it is a genuine curiosity of how things could be handled in a generic way. At least, I'm glad to see that this community can engage in a controversial question like this without being disrespectful (no sarcasm).

Some years ago I made this question which was closed soon after. I was basically suggesting that sleeping could be an evolution advantage as they allow dreams to happen, which in turn allow you to simulate different situations in a safe environment, thus being more well prepared to react in new situations in real life.

Recently, a researcher proposed the same (similar?) idea.

Now, I honestly don't think he stole the idea from my post. It's perfectly reasonable that someone in this field could come to the same hypothesis. However, I am creature with an ego bigger than one could consider healthy, and this feeling of "I also had that idea before, and I think I deserve some acknowledgment for that" is lurking on the back of my head. I'm sure that with it will go away, but what I would like to ask here is: do I have any reason/right to claim co-authorship of such theory?

I know that history of science has many cases of independent researchers doing the same discover, and I'm sure all around the world there are people who already experienced this "ah! but I had that idea before!". So, even though this really doesn't matter and it's just food to the ego, I am curious to know how this type of situations can be handled.

Answer 1

No, you have no reason/right to claim co-authorship, or I believe any acknowledgement at all.

For those curious about the paper a preprint is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.09560

I have skimmed through the paper and have some background in AI, but even ignoring the fact that the topic of the paper is different to what you wrote about, what you have linked to is no more then a random thought. Any contributions from you can be summed up in the following hypothesis:

Dreaming can be a significant advantage since it allows you to experience a virtual world, simulated situations and reactions, without taking any risks. In this way specimens who could dream were better prepared to face new situations and how to react.

This statement is very vague and doesn't actually specify anything. How are dreams simulating a virtual world? Why are dreams better than being able to run simulations while awake? How does the specimen decide upon which simulations to run? Possibly a good starting point to develop a more specific research question but not a research question by itself. The statement was also after you asking if anyone else had ever looked at this kind of idea.

Even if the author had read your statement and that had inspired him to start thinking more about the subject I don't believe there would be any ethical issues by not referencing you since the statement above feels lacking in substance to me (just like you wouldn't reference a handwaved/madeup science fact from some sci-fi book if it had inspired you to look into a topic).

Now considering the actual paper, and based on my skim of the paper a few months ago, the topic is actually different to what you suggested. The paper proposes that dreaming solves the problem of over-fitting. This occurs in reinforcement learning (AI) where the algorithm is trained on a data-set and can perform very well on classifying/responding to that data-set, but when input that it wasn't trained on comes in the algorithm does something stupid.

So instead of simulating the situations and reactions that the creature may run into, the paper suggests that dreams are the result of training yourself from your daily experiences, but with added random noise to the input training set (your daily observations). This means that you won't assume that everything will occur exactly the same as what you observed today, and that will be beneficial. Specifically it balances against the innumerable number of variables that you couldn't have been aware of which impacted your daily experience.

Answer 2

Posting an idea on stackexchange does not count as prior publication when thinking about coauthorship or some other way to establish priority. The scientist in the post you link to seems to have done some actual work on the hypothesis in question. I don't think what you have done amounts to "discovery" or calls for any acknowledgment.

In your situation I might consider a polite email to the author, saying that you had a similar idea several years ago. If you actually followed up on your idea you might try to engage with them to see if your thoughts ran along similar lines. Your goal should be to advance the science, not to get some credit.