[HN Gopher] What does any of this have to do with physics? (2016)
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What does any of this have to do with physics? (2016)
Author : telotortium
Score : 179 points
Date : 2021-03-10 16:57 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nautil.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
| quacked wrote:
| I think the crucial insight in this essay is glossed over; the
| author allots only a few lines to an explanation of how the other
| graduate students didn't need to work as hard as he did to
| understand the fundamental concepts relevant to his project.
| This, I believe, is the heart of his issue. He comes to the
| conclusion that "he quit" or "he didn't know what to work on",
| but it appears to me that he simply wasn't as high-caliber as the
| other students, and only persevered for as long as he did largely
| due to stubbornness and his tremendous work ethic. (Also, he
| mentions the other students' more-rigorous mathematical
| backgrounds, but he does not mention their IQ [1].)
|
| Immigrant outperformance of native-English-speaking students is a
| complicated topic; the way I choose to look at it is in terms of
| population competition. India has 1.3B, China has 1.4B, the U.S.
| has 0.33B. Assuming that the IQ distributions are exactly equal
| (ehh), for every one 130 IQ American, there are 4 130 IQ Indians,
| and 4 130 IQ Chinese. If they all compete for one spot at an
| American university, the Indians and Chinese will have to work
| much, much harder to win the "top spot from <nation>" than the
| American will. A look at the questions and scores for entrance
| exams in undergraduate physics and math for the India Institute
| of Technology vs. a look at the questions and scores for entrance
| exams in physics in math for Stanford should confirm this vast
| gap in curriculum and competition. Any cursory examination of
| formal education in terms of course complexity, workload, and
| exam importance of Korea, China, Japan, etc. vs. the U.S. or
| other western countries should also lay bare the incredible gap
| in preparation and competition. As I like to explain to those who
| support a "global meritocracy" for college admissions, the
| implementation of their plan would result in a majority Asian
| student body at every single university in the U.S.
|
| The author's work ethic is tremendous- I have never worked
| anywhere near as hard as he did for that sustained period of
| time. But the fact of the matter is that a higher-IQ, more-
| prepared student would not have needed to struggle as hard as he
| did, and from his description of the foreign students that
| surpassed him, they didn't. I suspect he would have been happier
| if he'd accepted his lot much earlier and leaned into a higher-
| paying, less-hours career and studied physics in his free time.
|
| Another question- did he refuse to quit because he loved physics,
| or did he refuse to quit because his vision of his life was
| overly focused on holding the identity of "guy who works on
| theoretical physics"?
|
| [1] Many people dislike using IQ to measure anything, and its
| most stringent detractors say that it is a meaningless metric. It
| is worth pointing out that while IQ is a completely made-up
| metric, it is a specific measure of memory and abstract reasoning
| as applied to western-style logic puzzles and patterns. This
| makes it a useful metric when trying to evaluate one's ability to
| study and perform western-style math or physics, which are giant
| collections of western-style logic puzzles and patterns. Many
| people who believe that IQ does not predict anything have never
| had the opportunity to spend a lot of time interacting with
| someone who is so much higher-IQ than they are that it shows in
| regular interactions. I am regularly shocked at how much more
| quickly my extremely smart friends can pick up and memorize
| concepts than I can.
| ResearchCode wrote:
| Late exposure to higher mathematics sounds perfectly plausible.
| Someone getting into sports at 15 is rarely going to compete
| with those that started at 10, assuming equal innate talent.
| The same principle applies to academics.
|
| Would be nice to see some envelope math on the respective
| importance of IQ and socioeconomic background/nepotism in
| academia (many PhDs have parents with PhDs etc).
| searine wrote:
| >Immigrant outperformance of native-English-speaking students
| is a complicated topic
|
| I wouldn't even say 'outperformance' is an accurate
| description. I have learned from, taught, and been colleagues
| with many scientists from across the globe and each education
| system has its merits and drawbacks. East and south asian
| education systems highly emphasize quantitative skills. Western
| education emphasizes critical thinking.
|
| The hurdle for many western students is late introduction to
| higher mathematics, but you are ignoring the hurdle for many
| eastern students, flexibility and creativity of thinking.
| Eastern education systems focus heavily on rote memorization,
| stringent quantitative evaluation, and strict mentor student
| hierarchies that discourage questioning. I have encountered
| many colleagues from more structured education systems really
| struggle with developing their ability to formulate novel lines
| of inquiry.
|
| As this article describes, the difficulty in science isn't just
| the math, it's about knowing if question you are trying to
| solve is valid, novel, and adds to the field. You need both to
| be successful. Unfortunately the author of the article seemed
| to fail at both, resulting in his exit from science altogether.
| creativeandlazy wrote:
| Those seem like they could be orthogonal issues. The US
| system could have more rigor and be more engaging to bright
| students. The creativity issue could be more a function of
| wider society than the education system itself. Rajeev came
| off as a very creative person who somehow filtered out of
| that kind of a system.
| cammikebrown wrote:
| Aw, man. This essay gives me some perspective. I ended up hating
| physics by the time I got my bachelor's in it. I remember junior
| year they said, we know you're confused, you haven't actually
| learned REAL physics yet, that's what grad school is for. And
| most of you won't be accepted, and of those who are, most won't
| become professors even if you want to.
|
| I figured a physics degree would allow me to get a good job, but
| then they said, sure, if you want to do finance, defense, or
| education. What?! The first two were pretty nauseating so I
| decided to do a year-long internship at various local public
| schools, and realized that I hated that too. (More the
| bureaucracy than the actual teaching aspect.) My school basically
| expected you'd double major in math or CS, so they often didn't
| teach a lot of the fundamental techniques you needed, assuming
| you knew it already. I also learned that while my high school had
| done a great job teaching me English and history, the math
| department was not quite up to snuff comparatively, and I felt
| behind my classmates about "fundamentals" like linear algebra,
| which they had somehow been taught in high school. Sure, I knew
| Shakespeare a lot better than them, and even minored in
| literature in college (maybe biting off more than I could chew)
| but that clearly didn't impress them. Why waste your time with
| old books when you could be making money! It definitely brought
| me down a notch and made me feel dumb, but I also realized
| college wasn't a place for someone to learn lots of different
| things, but to focus on one area instead. I ended up becoming a
| bartender and I'm very happy with that decision. At least, once
| things are back to normal, hopefully within the next few months.
| Hopefully I didn't just jinx it
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I look back on college, and so many classes seemed like a waste
| of time. I understand a well rounded education, but so many
| classes seemed like fluff. I once took a Abnormal Psychology
| class. It sounded interesting being premed. For half a year we
| sat in a circle, and talked about feelings. I was so shy that
| was the last place I would open up. I used to think, If I was
| honest, I would admit I was still a virgin, and had a deathly
| fear of public speaking. I loved the teacher though. She really
| meant well.
|
| If I had a kid, I would supplement his education. I would make
| sure he knew mathematics well. I also think physics should be
| taught much earlier, along with the finance, and the markets.
| As a kid, I was interested in woodworking, cars, engines, even
| electricity, but the teachers had us coloring world maps?
| cammikebrown wrote:
| I agree that we should teach math earlier, in elementary
| school the same math (fractions, percentages) were literally
| taught repeatedly from 3rd-6th grade. I would have loved to
| learn some algebra instead. The concept of doing the same
| thing to both sides of an equation to solve for an unknown is
| not terribly difficult to grasp.
|
| As for finance, I'd rather be coloring world maps. It's given
| me a great desire to travel the world. Finance makes my
| stomach hurt. Then again, I'm poor, so what do I know? I
| agree we should be taught more about it than we usually are,
| which is that we aren't taught anything at all about it.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > As a kid, I was interested in woodworking, cars, engines,
| even electricity, but the teachers had us coloring world
| maps?
|
| Wait until you read this [0] [1]
|
| [0] https://www.city-journal.org/the-miseducation-of-
| americas-el...
|
| [1] https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/new-course-
| outlin...
| a_t48 wrote:
| Care to give a little bit more context?
| xxpor wrote:
| As Matt Yglesias put it, the first article makes 0 sense.
| If they don't like what the school is teaching them, pull
| their kids out! Isn't that the whole point of private
| school? It's a choice to go there.
| spazrunaway wrote:
| As if they're not teaching the same things in public
| schools.
|
| And it's sort of frustrating that the woke teach actively
| fighting supposed oppression in every institution, every
| workplace, every household, and really every imaginable
| part of life in order to be an 'ally', lest your 'white
| silence' and complicity encourage 'violence'...and the
| rest of us are told that if we don't like something, we
| should just shut up and avoid it.
| [deleted]
| bezout wrote:
| Life is too short for these shenanigans. But, I think that you
| should still go for it if and only if you understand what you're
| getting yourself into. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
| kemiller2002 wrote:
| I think this is the most important comment. Most people don't
| realize until much later, that everything is a trade. This for
| that. You get an advanced degree at the cost of: higher income?
| free time? finding the right partner? That's what life is
| about. Everything has a price, and not knowing the cost is the
| biggest mistake.
| shoo wrote:
| >> you should still go for it if and only if you understand
| what you're getting yourself into
|
| > Most people don't realize until much later, that everything
| is a trade. This for that.
|
| > Everything has a price, and not knowing the cost is the
| biggest mistake
|
| I agree. Yet people often -- perhaps nearly always -- choose
| to pursue things based on limited information. Some people
| decide at a young age that they want to be a physicist, or a
| ballerina, or an astronaut, or a doctor, or a professional
| basketballer. Perhaps the decision is based on a dream or
| naive external understanding of what the occupation involves
| that isn't based on the reality of what the training and
| doing the work actually entails. Let alone the realities of
| the labour market: is there an oversupply of people willing
| to do the work compared to opportunities? What base rate of
| intelligent, hard working aspirants actually succeed at
| turning that job into a career? What compromises -- in
| ethics, in freedom of action and thought, in terms of making
| the work pay a living wage -- need to be made in order to
| have the career succeed?
|
| Another lens: universities are in the business of selling
| education. If the young customer wants to buy an education in
| some specialised niche based on a naive misunderstanding of
| the true costs in doing so, who is the university to disabuse
| the customer of their naivety and turn away their custom?
|
| Similarly for people wishing to pursue a career in academia:
| if we think of the system as some kind of industrial process,
| what inputs does it require? Funding from grants is helpful,
| a few blackboards, access to libraries and journals. But we
| also need a feedstock of smart, well-trained, hard-working
| low-cost graduate students to feed into the machine.
| superfamicom wrote:
| Previous discussions:
|
| 2019 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19010164
|
| 2016 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13276968
| antattack wrote:
| Capitalist system does not seem to value scientific research well
| enough. Risk to reward ratio is very high.
| searine wrote:
| There is a reason that scientific research was an aristocratic
| pastime for most of its history.
|
| The idea of a middle-class scientist is an invention of the
| mid-20th century, and not an enduring one. Even Einstein had to
| work as a patent clerk.
|
| Society will never highly value fundamental research because it
| cannot comprehend it, thus cannot ascribe a value to it.
| xxpor wrote:
| Even Bell Labs was really the result of government
| intervention.
| ofcrpls wrote:
| Rochester does that to one.
| yxwvut wrote:
| The section on being ill-prepared and out of his depth compared
| to fellow (mostly international) grad students with stronger math
| backgrounds stretching back to elementary school was almost
| identical to my experience in a top 5 operations research PhD
| program. A typical American calc-heavy HS curriculum and a CS
| undergrad (even one with theory/ML heavy upperclass work) just
| don't cover the math that's relevant for top level research work
| in most applied math domains (theoretical CS included). I and
| every other US student in my cohort (roughly a quarter of the
| class) wound up dropping out - none of the international students
| did. It was undoubtedly for the best, but there is still a twinge
| of sadness to have closed the door on my dreams of pushing the
| frontiers of knowledge (foolhardy and grandiose as they may have
| been).
| mrfox321 wrote:
| When you say calc-heavy, you are speaking about just cranking
| the wheel or number crunching?
|
| What type of exposure would have prepared you better?
|
| HS obviously won't prepare you, so this is speaking more
| towards uni curriculum.
| jeffwass wrote:
| This article resonates quite strongly with me. I also did a PhD
| in physics which I grew more and more disillusioned with as it
| progressed.
|
| I did physics in undergrad, then worked for a few years as an
| engineer. I was the only one on my team who didn't have a PhD,
| and saw the limits of my own knowledge, so I went back to school
| to get my PhD in experimental condensed matter physics.
|
| Originally I thought I'd struggle through the classes, then do
| some kickass research, and come back to being a full-time
| engineer.
|
| Turned out to be quite the opposite. My first semester
| transitioning back to being a full-time student was rough, but
| after that I really enjoyed the classes, and for the next couple
| years I wanted to do tenure track research in academia.
|
| I then signed on with a faculty member athe department hired as
| my advisor, to study nanoscale physics (eg superconducting
| nanowires). Fast forward a few more years and I started to hate
| the daily grind.
|
| Firstly, my advisor was hired in my third year, so we had to
| build up the lab from scratch. Every little bit of cryogenic
| equipment, data measuring apparatus, data acquisition and
| analysis code. Took a couple years before we could do "real"
| research of interest.
|
| Also we had no senior grad students or post docs to learn from. I
| felt way behind all my colleagues who were in functioning labs
| and could start taking publication-quality data after just a few
| weeks of joining their group.
|
| Most of my day-to-day wasn't even physics but annoying laboratory
| maintenance. Eg finding cold leaks in the cryogenic equipment
| (these only leak at temperatures of 4K or less, so it took lot of
| trial and error to find). Or tracking down ground loops on my
| circuits that were blowing up my fragile nanowires. Or fighting
| the sputtering chambers we used for deposition (and realising
| they had been contaminated with magnetic materials making it
| impossible to grow clean superconducting films).
|
| I saw my friends at other schools write paper after paper in top
| journals working in their well-established labs with huge-budget
| clean rooms and facilities with full-time maintenance and support
| staff. Meanwhile in my lab we had limited equipment, no
| maintenance staff, and we had to fix stuff in our 'spare' time,
| etc.
|
| I became jealous of my theorist friends who could work anywhere
| with just their notebooks and a pencil.
|
| I became jealous of my astrophysics friends who were assigned
| observing time on Hubble and other telescopes, where teams of
| technicians would make sure their observations would go smoothly
| and provide them with perfect raw data.
|
| I saw that without any seminal publications, my postdoc
| opportunities were slim. I thought about changing research areas,
| but came to the realisation that I'm stuck doing the same narrow
| brand of research that I had been doing the past few years.
| Because no faculty member would pay for a postdoc who wasn't
| ready to hit the ground running as a domain expert.
|
| I saw some of my successful friends with lots of amazing papers
| struggle to find a postdoc appointment. Or if they found one
| struggle to find a second, or a good faculty position. And if it
| was a struggle for them, my lack of publications would make this
| nearly impossible for myself.
|
| I was working 12+ hour days making barely enough to live on. And
| not enjoying it at all, and feeling depressed, with difficulty
| getting out of bed to come into the lab.
|
| Then one day pretty much on a whim I applied for an internship as
| a quant on Wall Street. I was invited to an interview where I was
| grilled over two days in 11 separate one-on-one sessions. In
| between sessions I would look out the window of the 30 floor of a
| skyscraper in NYC and wonder if I was betraying myself and my
| fellow physicists, as if academia was a cult.
|
| I was offered an internship, and really liked it. This was my
| ticket out.
|
| I went back to school at the end of the summer to write up my
| thesis.
|
| Many of my physics friends were curious about my internship and
| were considering doing this themselves. All of them told me not
| to tell anyone else that we had spoken.
|
| I wrote a few drafts for papers, one was published, defended my
| thesis and got myself outta there.
| Twisol wrote:
| I last read this article before I started grad school (in
| computer science). I'm reading it again, now, more than two years
| after I left.
|
| My experience was the polar opposite, if the poles were bent
| around like a horseshoe magnet. Rather than suffocating under
| thick expectations, I was gasping for air without direction.
|
| My first advisor recognized that his lab's interests had shifted
| between my application and my arrival, so he gave me free reign
| to figure out where my interests lay for my first year. (The
| nexus of programming languages, concurrency, and logic, if you're
| wondering.) He moved on to another university, and as an
| introvert who'd _barely_ been out of state without my family,
| much less on my own in another country, I chose not to go with
| him.
|
| I met my second advisor in a seminar course on static analysis
| and formal methods -- his first on joining the university. It was
| completely up my alley, and we got along really well. Given the
| situation with my first advisor, we were on the same wavelength
| about becoming his first official student. But he thought he was
| getting a grad student who had done real research for a year, and
| in reality I still had no idea how to approach research. He had
| to lower his expectations a few times, and since he started from
| an expectation that I wouldn't need much guidance, I never really
| got the amount of attention I asked for. We ended up parting ways
| with bad feelings.
|
| I can't really blame my advisors personally. I still don't know
| enough about the day-to-day of the academic system to judge. And
| I'm sure there are places where (and advisors of whom) you can
| expect more support.
|
| But my takeaway, from my experience and from this article, is
| that if you go in without knowing what you're getting into,
| nobody's going to be there to tell you what to do. You either
| luck into finding a sustainable approach, or you don't.
|
| I still want to go back to grad school. I think my experience
| will help me know better what my needs are and where those can be
| provided, and thus make me a less risky proposition for a
| university to take on. But I regret not taking a gap year to
| really dig in and understand the system I was going to put myself
| through.
|
| (EDIT: My advisors are good people, and I wish them well. I hope
| that's clear from what I've written. Things just didn't work
| out.)
| daxfohl wrote:
| I think what the author is missing here is how does he define
| "succeeding" in the field. It sounds like for himself anything
| short of "theory of everything" is failure, but for others,
| finishing a PhD is success. So on his terms for himself, terms
| even his advisor is way short of that goal. Heck, even Einstein
| was. But then he sees others just completing an arbitrary thesis
| and thinks of them as the successful ones. The author has just
| failed to reconcile his expectations and hopes of himself with
| what he's seeing others do.
|
| In other words, I think even if the author had "succeeded" to the
| point of being top in his class and exceeding the research output
| of his advisor, he'd still be unhappy, still consider himself
| unsuccessful. Opting out was probably the best decision he could
| have made, and his life is probably more productive thereby. And
| heck, maybe he even still has a better chance of finding some
| theory of everything via some analogy he comes across in his day
| to day work than by a life of research in "fiber bundles".
| youdonotknowme wrote:
| The author was sort of like me. When I entered my Ph.D., I had a
| dream of finding something really big. But I was disappointed to
| find that those low hanging fruits of big questions had been
| answered. Those left were impossible to answer with current
| technology. People were just guessing the answers by some hints,
| rather than evidences. I decided to leave to do a very ordinary
| job after getting my Ph.D.. I do not regret it. What I have
| learned is if you really like a subject, you should be fine with
| solving those trivial problems, while enjoy the fact that the
| real questions are there to be answered, but you may not see them
| answered in your lifetime. Otherwise, don't do a Ph.D. in theory
| directions.
| ahelwer wrote:
| Still my favorite essay I've ever read on the experience of grad
| school, five years after publication. Of course I've never been
| to grad school, although if I were to go it'd be in physics (try
| reading Anathem _without_ wanting to drop everything and get a
| PhD in physics afterward, I challenge you).
|
| I've spent the past decade or so living frugally & working in big
| tech. I now have enough saved up that I can conceivably work on a
| couple contracts a year then spend the rest of the time working
| on whatever I want. I think I know enough to do useful,
| interesting things in computer science without going to grad
| school. So that's one path I can take. The other would be to go
| to grad school for physics, but able to maintain greater material
| comfort than the author of this piece - and having already made
| peace with the end of a burning desire to shake the world. I
| wonder whether those two things would make a difference to my
| experience.
| 2sk21 wrote:
| It's interesting you mentioned Anathem. I have often fantasized
| about living in a Math and working on theorics myself :-)
|
| I retired early from software development last year to spend
| more time studying math and cognitive science.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "I retired early from software development last year to spend
| more time ..." [insert anything you enjoy].
|
| This is the dream.
| Koshkin wrote:
| > _[insert anything you enjoy]_
|
| Writing software.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I know, some people have it good and "never work a day in
| their life". I would probably write software when I
| retire, but it would be personal projects.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > insert anything you enjoy
|
| Raptor conservancy. It's often cold and wet (an outdoor
| job) and often menial (someone has to clean the projectile
| poop) and I'm a newbie where the young people are my
| mentors. And I don't get paid (the previous 30 years are
| funding this).
|
| But the experience, on a summer evening, in the rolling
| countryside, of a Peregrine Falcon diving at 100mph and
| hurtling right past you is unbeatable.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I got to witness a peregrine once. That was pretty cool.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Still my favorite essay I've ever read on the experience of
| grad school, five years after publication."
|
| Not all grad school is like this. It varies greatly by subjects
| and also by degree level. For example, a Master's degree can be
| easily attainable through night school while working. Education
| PhDs have their own challenges, but it usually doesn't resemble
| the types of questions and struggles the author describes about
| physics.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "... stay the stressful course of wandering in the dark and
| guessing ..."
|
| I feel like that's a highly accurate description of my career
| path (I'm a dev, not in physics). The part about dreading going
| back into work and the feelings of being inadequate - that the
| best effort is only treading water - is basically how I feel too.
| I wonder how common that is.
| intrasight wrote:
| Curious that this is article back on HN 5 years later
| GNU_James wrote:
| Wait a moment! Universities are for people who can't start their
| own business and make money!?
| 6nf wrote:
| Those who can't do, teach
| mjfl wrote:
| Ultimately this guy should have had the mind to shop around more
| for other professors who motivate their work better. Maybe do
| some experiments? You're not stuck with one advisor, and it isn't
| unreasonable to think that it's your _job_ and not a convenience,
| or someone else 's job, to find good motivation for your work.
| Koshkin wrote:
| > _Maybe do some experiments?_
|
| Well, he was/is a theoretical physicist.
| mjfl wrote:
| No he was not. He was a graduate student. He could become
| anything.
| creativeandlazy wrote:
| He didn't want to do experiments. He wanted to chase the holy
| grail in theory. He was full of himself. He didn't want to be
| Hamilton. He wanted to be Newton. Hamilton was brilliant and
| amazing and changed the world. I would happily settle for being
| Hamilton.
| mef51 wrote:
| You can have as high of an ideal as you want about physics,
| quantum gravity, Einstein, Feynman, and hard work, but you should
| at least be aware when you start to abuse yourself in the name of
| this ideal. Fifteen hour days in the library? Reading paper after
| paper while ignoring the feeling you don't have a direction?
| These are moments where self-empathy can go a long way. And the
| more you dig into your ideals the less of a pedestal you put them
| on, and you can see them more clearly as they really are, and as
| human. Einstein was very close-minded about physics in his late
| career. Feynman was brilliant but also said a lot of other things
| other than "Shut up and calculate", which, by the way, the
| context of which is "eventually you just have to shut up an
| calculate" (from one of his books I believe). Quantum gravity
| isn't the only deep mystery in physics. And why does glory always
| seem to the main motivation for pursuing quantum gravity?
|
| > "But in the end, I never knew what I was looking for and I
| didn't find it."
|
| To me it felt like you were looking for meaning and purpose in
| quantum gravity and its (mis-)characterization as the Grail, or
| at least in the process of working on quantum gravity. But it
| seemed like it was difficult to admit to yourself that it wasn't
| working, which ultimately makes the going even tougher.
|
| I'm in a physics phd right now and I see this disconnect in
| myself and in other academics a lot.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| This resonated with me pretty hard. Despite starting as a nuke e,
| I figured very quickly that the situation was rather grim, so I
| got my BS in physics, with a ton of credits in related math,
| computer science, and some other hard sciences for giggles. All
| the time, though, I kept my eyes peeled.
|
| What I saw was some very intelligent people whose hard work,
| creativity, and genius I admired making very little money,
| scavenging for grants like jackals, their spouses working second
| jobs, their clothing a little worn, their cars breaking down even
| as they labored over Big Issues. That is the payoff?
|
| I did not pursue it any further. Yes, the degree itself impresses
| people (sometimes more than really necessary, is my feeling), and
| it certainly primes you to be able to switch gears for entirely
| different frameworks, but it has opened doors.
|
| Meanwhile, I occasionally look at the odd paper, sniff around.
| For strings (oh, not strings, _super_ strings) (oh, not
| superstrings, _M-theory_ ) it's all out of my league, but not so
| much so I cannot feel the shape of things and just how _far_ they
| are from being more than just very abstract mathematical
| constructs. "Fiber bundles," exactly how many strings and shiny
| hag-stones are we out on that particular Glass Bead Game?
|
| I accept the possibility that the universe may simply be too
| difficult, on a mathematical level, for mere humans to
| understand. It could happen. On the other hand, I suspect that
| the development of mathematical models of physical phenomena
| without frequent touching of the "real world," fumbling for
| guideposts, why, you could very well wander off into a paper map
| of your own creation, unrelated to the world you wanted to
| explain.
| trhway wrote:
| > too difficult, on a mathematical level, for mere humans to
| understand.
|
| to me the current situation looks similar to when we were
| building more and more complex combinations of epicycles in
| order to more and more precisely model the "Sun and the planets
| rotating around the Earth". Similarly we have right now a
| couple of dogmas, like say Copenhagen interpretation and the
| recently emerged dark matter, which while not confirmed by
| experiments yet can't be questioned (classic sign of dogma) and
| as a result the science resources are available only for the
| complex epicycle constructs based on those dogmas.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Well, right now we have some perfectly valid mathematical
| constructs that nonetheless have nothing to do with reality.
| Gabriel's Horn is a good starter example, but you can wave it
| away with giving the paint "atoms" a finite size, but then
| there are more subtle constructs which lie in wait, like the
| Banach-Tarski paradox.
|
| This will doubtlessly irritate some, but math for me is a
| tool and if it is not used somehow in reality, I start
| wondering what it is _for_ , then. Occasionally utility will
| pop up later, and good, because you don't know what will end
| up being handy eventually, but some branches seem so esoteric
| I am at a loss. Again, probably my own ignorance, but I worry
| that those brighter and better educated than I might be led
| astray by castles in the sky, just from the beauty and the
| sensation of satisfaction you get from finding your way into
| the castle, if that makes sense.
| trhway wrote:
| >math for me is a tool and if it is not used somehow in
| reality, I start wondering what it is for, [...] some
| branches seem so esoteric I am at a loss.
|
| i'm of a kind opposite opinion when it comes to math -
| myself a math PhD dropout i welcome more and more complex
| and esoteric constructions in math without any regard for
| any relation or lack of any such to physical reality. When
| it comes to physics though i think an opposite rule should
| be applied - any math constructions brought in should be
| checked against the physical reality.
| Koshkin wrote:
| > _any math constructions brought in should be checked
| against the physical reality_
|
| But that's not how things work in practice. Parts of the
| mathematical framework used for describing a particular
| physical phenomenon are always a kind of mental
| scaffolding and do not have a direct representation in
| reality. This is how math always works in science. Think
| of the complex numbers, for example: they are used
| extensively in quantum physics and electrical
| engineering, but that does not mean that you can see
| them, touch them or measure them.
| trhway wrote:
| >Think of complex numbers, for example: they are used
| extensively in quantum physics and electrical
| engineering, but that does not mean that you can see
| them, touch them or measure them.
|
| yes, we use complex numbers there only because we have a
| very consistent mental map between their
| properties/behaviour in the math model and the physical
| reality. The physical reality doesn't obey the math
| model, it is a successful and useful math model which
| seems to consistently describe and predict the reality in
| some range of conditions. So when a new model is brought
| in you'd want it to have at least some partial consistent
| mapping to reality, and with refining of a model the
| mapping is expected to improve. If refining of a model
| turns instead into rounds and rounds of complexity
| growths without matching massive improve in the
| consistency of mapping to physical reality, you'd
| naturally start to question the model, and may be think,
| kind of VC style, about spending say a few percent of
| resources going into that massive complexity growth of
| the currently dominating, yet still far from working that
| good, model into exploring some alternative models.
| CraneWorm wrote:
| > Think of complex numbers
|
| I'd say naturals are abstract enough :)
| Koshkin wrote:
| I would disagree: if you close your eyes you can still
| tell the difference between 2 and 3 - by touch!
| trhway wrote:
| sorry, man, no :)
|
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126997-300-tacti
| le-...
|
| "One of the oldest tactile illusions is the Aristotle
| illusion. It is easy to perform. Cross your fingers, then
| touch a small spherical object such as a dried pea, and
| it feels like you are touching two peas. This also works
| if you touch your nose."
| Gravityloss wrote:
| But is the research important? Or is it just impact factors
| and grants? There's so many researchers. It feels that some
| kind of optimism rather than say mathematical capability
| predicts who does that. Certainly I think it's very different
| than 20 years ago. How has the amount of publications changed
| over time? There just can't be enough original critical
| thinking for that amount.
| daxfohl wrote:
| Why three dimensions? There's so much deep math and physics and
| even philosophy around the abstractions of what's a
| measurement, what's an observation, what is information, what
| is communication, what is the direction of time, etc. I keep
| thinking that could eventually lead to a completion of an
| understanding of reality when proved deep enough. But why three
| dimensions? It seems so arbitrary in the context of everything
| else. But there has to be a reason.
| Koshkin wrote:
| Well, that's four, actually. This is what is needed for
| electrodynamics to work, and we being "electric creatures"
| only care about these. It's like different animals that are
| adapted to seeing different colors. (I don't know, some of
| them probably think they live in one dimension, why not?)
| reedf1 wrote:
| My whole childhood and young life I wanted to go into physics
| academia. I wanted to have influence - to push the boundaries of
| science. I had an idyllic view of this purely meritocratic system
| where people were paid to explore. My first year of undergrad
| utterly destroyed this notion. I left as soon as I had my
| bachelors degree. I knew what would await me in grad and post
| grad work and I'd seen post docs cry after endless work for
| grants. I wanted financial freedom and happiness, and that
| eventually won over pushing the boundaries of science. So sorry
| young me - I quit too.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| > I'd seen post docs cry after endless work for grants.
|
| People knock the recent Alien films but you know the scene
| where the android is leading the team through a theater of
| charred bodies and you think "holy shit, this is a HINT, how do
| you not see it?"
|
| Well, when I got home, I realized that the disgruntled postdocs
| around me -- some of whom were smarter and worked harder than
| me and still got thrown out like so much trash because their
| thesis didn't pan out -- were also a HINT. How did I not see it
| before?
|
| Thanks, Prometheus. You weren't a great movie, but you had a
| very important impact on my life.
| analog31 wrote:
| I finished my physics degree in the early 90's, and went
| straight into industry. At the time, we all knew about the
| problem of producing more PhDs than could possibly all get
| academic jobs. We called it "the lie" and "the birth control
| problem." My dad said it was the same in the 1950s when he got
| his degree.
|
| We pursue the degree for deep personal reasons that are hard to
| discourage, even in the face of harsh economic reality.
|
| I did a back of envelope calculation based on the number of
| grad students, the number of post-docs, their duration, etc.,
| and concluded that I would need to be a superstar to ever get
| tenure. And I was not a superstar. On the other hand I've had a
| good career in industry, with no regrets. I live in a nice
| town, and rarely have to work long hours.
|
| I was extremely lucky that both of my parents are industrial
| scientists, so I knew there was an honorable alternative to
| being a professor. The only hitch is that my own professors in
| physics could encourage my change of plan, but had no idea how
| to help me pursue it. I guessed correctly that computer
| programming would be important. ;-)
|
| While I was not a research superstar, I was very good at making
| complicated machines work for other people. That's what I do
| today.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| This is something that has fundamentally bothered me about
| our current society. I consider all the positions of people
| who do things that, when all has been said and done, do not
| provide value to humans. Then I consider all the positions
| that will advance humanity. The mismatch is jarring and
| telling. Something is wrong.
|
| I imagine a society where all the funding into ad tech goes
| into cutting edge research, where we might have to wait a
| decade or two but before too long we reap the rewards. Even
| in small cases that that don't matter, even something like
| creating a video game, how much of the budget goes into the
| game and how much goes into advertising? Across the gaming
| industry, how much of the budgets for creating games goes
| into games that expand the mind, introduce players to new
| views, and garner interest in new areas of life and how much
| goes into reskinned slot machines?
|
| This pattern seems to appear in many places. Short term
| optimization over long term gratitude as the social level
| leading to and caused by the same as the personal level.
| While it isn't the worse humanity has done, and it isn't
| anything worse than seen in other species, I wonder if this
| is a more pervasive and passive Great Filter that'll cling to
| us even after we have overcome others like the threat of
| nuclear war.
| KingFelix wrote:
| What did you end up moving into?
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| I think this is a problem for any "deep" occupation which can't
| readily be measured by immediate financial benefit.
|
| If I look around me, I can identify only a very few who are
| paid a living wage to do a) a thing that they enjoy that b)
| doesn't have a direct, immediate benefit to others.
|
| It's not just physicists, it's theorists of all kinds, the
| arts, history, and yes, underwater basket weaving too.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "I had an idyllic view of this purely meritocratic system where
| people were paid to explore."
|
| I feel like our society and schooling really pushes the idyllic
| visions of things as well as the idea of strict meritocracy. I
| feel like this has left many of us jaded when we realize much
| of what we were told as we grew up were only half-truths
| concealing a bleak reality from us, and in some cases dooming
| us to self-inflicted issues like the one's described in the
| article.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I can understand the pain of leaving that dream, but in a way,
| a tainted soil is rarely a good dream anyway.
|
| I so wish I could do beautiful coding work but societies are
| not aligned with beauty (even at zero cost) so i'm bailing
| toward financial independance and peace of mind. Hopefully you
| and I can make time to join club or do thinking on our own
| terms.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Hopefully you and I can make time to join club or do
| thinking on our own terms._
|
| Reminds me of a thought that's been sitting in my quotes file
| for a while.
|
| "What one wants is to be able to talk with a diverse club of
| smart people, arrange to do short one-off research projects
| and simulations, publish papers or capture intellectual
| property quickly and easily, and move on to another
| conversation. Quickly. Easily. For a living. Can't do that in
| industry. Can't do that in the Academy. Yet in my experience,
| scientists and engineers all want it. Maybe even a few
| mathematicians and social scientists do, too."
|
| -- Bill Tozier, Diverse themes observed at GECCO 2006
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20120625133020/http://williamtoz.
| ..
|
| (And personally, I do want it too.)
| agumonkey wrote:
| Indeed this is a very fitting quote.
|
| I can also generalize that to human existence. I've
| struggled with work life a lot, I've seen good people going
| robbers, depressed.. but 90% of them came in the morning
| with the best intentions.. somehow in this system,
| naturally a sad state of chaos emerges that makes most
| people very frustrated if not more.
| reasonabl_human wrote:
| Yep, sounds idyllic. Maybe some form of engineering
| consulting?
| mjfl wrote:
| Me too. What was the context of the quote?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| The immediate context is the article to which I linked.
| It's a stand-alone observation by someone attending some
| conference in 2006.
|
| How did I encounter that quote? I have no idea. I
| _thought_ I found it on HN, but going by HN search, I can
| only find myself posting it, twice before in the last 5
| years. I must have found it elsewhere.
|
| I saved it, because it strongly resonated with me - it
| describes what I would love to do for a living, and what
| I also think the society needs to improve both research
| and engineering.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| Sounds like Paul Erdos had it figured out...
|
| https://www.britannica.com/biography/Paul-Erdos
|
| > Erdos would show up--often unannounced--on the doorstep
| of a fellow mathematician, declare "My brain is open!" and
| stay as long as his colleague served up interesting
| mathematical challenges.
|
| (More anecdotes here: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytim
| es.com/books/first/h/ho...)
| _Microft wrote:
| This article is from 2016. Would you add it to the title?
|
| I'll remove my comment once it's updated, so please don't reply.
| aklemm wrote:
| In all seriousness, why?
| pfortuny wrote:
| Because some people may have already read it and the title
| may not be enough for them to realize it. It is not shaming
| information, it is just another piece of data.
| swayvil wrote:
| I for one think that adding the date is unnecessary.
| pfortuny wrote:
| Of course you may have your opinion. But I have found
| that datum very informative lots of times.
| _Microft wrote:
| Exactly this happened to me - but not only that! - I even
| got my hopes up to mark the "Dr. Hossenfelder" square on my
| HN frontpage bingo.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| That's kind of a tradition here on HN with old articles.
| aklemm wrote:
| All the more reason to find out the rationale.
| iorrus wrote:
| It's a beautifully written essay but he misses the obvious. What
| was the point of spending all this time in what he admits but
| doesn't make explicit was a dead end. He would have ended up
| spending his life pretending to make important discoveries and
| doing something worthwile, in reality he would have been making
| "toy models".
|
| He definitely made the right decision. I don't understand the "I
| quit" angst, it's sunk cost fallacy, no he didn't quit, he made a
| rational decision. It was a waste of his time and most likely
| everyone else who he mention's time.
| caente wrote:
| He did quit, there should not be shame in quitting, but he did
| quit. Others have the same difficulties as him, they don't
| quit, nor they achieved anything, that is the risk. Now he
| makes money in Wall Street. By his standards, he hasn't achieve
| anything yet, nor will ever, other than procuring for his
| family, which is not a small thing! But his dreams were about
| "The Grail", if they still are, then he quit. He quit a path
| that would most likely left him in the dust, but that it was
| the only path that could have possibly taken him to "The
| Grail", the current path won't take him anywhere near it. So
| unless he is able to change the narrative of his own life, he
| will forever be a failure, independently of how much money he
| can make in the trading floor.
| iorrus wrote:
| I agree 100% but his path to the grail was stifled where he
| was.
|
| He made the right decision to escape but maybe he would have
| been better off living like Grigori Perelman and devoting
| himself mind body and soul to the grail. That's what it
| takes, he should have left as soon as he felt the
| misalignment with the grail and the toy models he was working
| on as he was involved in fruitless make work.
| jeffwass wrote:
| Actually he resigned from Wall Street some time ago and is
| now a writer.
| dash2 wrote:
| There's a Burning Hell song called "Give Up" which expresses
| your point nicely:
| https://open.spotify.com/track/32BAQ6weHlO7hS1O3HEdYK?autopl...
| microtherion wrote:
| Presumably he did not exactly cure World Hunger at Wall Street
| either, though he almost certainly did not have to worry about
| killing cockroaches at night.
| rebuilder wrote:
| I don't necessarily see it as angst. He didn't want it enough
| to keep at it. We're maybe taught to see that as a failure, but
| it can be a liberating realization.
|
| I went to art school. I would not recommend most arts to anyone
| who can bear doing something different. You will likely
| sacrifice most of what people consider a normal life to be an
| artist. If you don't want it so bad you have no choice, you can
| have a very nice life. "Wanting it" can be a burden.
| [deleted]
| Koshkin wrote:
| > _an independent writer focused on science and finance_
|
| That has reminded me of
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44535040-physics-from-fi....
| j7ake wrote:
| This article made me subscribe to the magazine hoping to find
| more amazing articles, but I don't think there was ever an
| article that had this kind of emotional impact as this one in
| nautilus.
|
| Still this single article was worth the subscription.
| dandep wrote:
| Emotional impact or not nautilus has a really high journalistic
| standards and plenty of masterpieces
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