[HN Gopher] Elite Underproduction
___________________________________________________________________
Elite Underproduction
Author : imartin2k
Score : 135 points
Date : 2021-11-06 09:52 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (troynikov.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (troynikov.io)
| bjornsing wrote:
| > Young people going into physics are fundamentally ideologically
| driven. So why do they lapse?
|
| I've got a master's in engineering physics but now work in data
| science. Here are some reasons I "lapsed":
|
| - I would have loved to be a physicist in 1921, but being one in
| 2021 is very different. I'd be surprised if there is a single
| leap in understanding (comparable to general relativity or
| quantum theory) in my lifetime.
|
| - Machine learning on the other hand is making huge progress.
| It's a really exciting time to be working in the field.
|
| - Personality-wise I'm not cut out for academia. My friends who
| are physicists describe it as essentially a feudal system... I
| don't like being beholden to some boy's club.
|
| Also, the idea that my friends who are physicists are the "true
| elite" and that their contributions are so much more valuable
| than mine... I remember one of them actually saying that his most
| significant contribution is probably that he educates a lot of
| engineers (and yes, he's a successful tenure track researcher).
| avsteele wrote:
| I disagree with the article's premises and conclusions, my
| perspective is that of a physicist who also knows many lapsed
| physicists.
|
| The premise seems wrong in that he disagrees with the elite
| overproduction thesis, but the professions he lists are "
| lawyers, MBA holders,..." and later to finance. But these are the
| professions likely to be zero-sum. So to me the article really is
| "I agree with the elite overproduction thesis, I just don't think
| it applies to physics".
|
| OK lets talk about that then.
|
| If there is something that's gone wrong with pushing forward the
| boundaries of our knowledge it isn't a lack of bodies producing
| the standard unit of scientific knowledge: "the peer-reviewed
| publication". These have grown exponentially. I don't think I've
| seen anyone even argue the rate of knowledge increase is growing
| commensurately. It *might* be the case that new knowledge
| requires exponentially more people looking for it but that's a
| pretty different article. Personally, I'm skeptical more NSF
| funding would help.
|
| I do agree with this part: Our apparatus of
| scientific education, especially mathematics education, is deeply
| flawed. It takes too long to bring young people to the research
| front, and it produces a false view of what doing science is
| really like.
|
| But this research is in a academic setting, and there _is_
| definitely, unambiguously, an overproduction of physics PhDs
| relative to academic positions available. Letting more new
| students in the door wouldn 't help anyone!
| erikerikson wrote:
| I took the author as saying we should have more research
| positions for those PhDs to inhabit and while we're at it, why
| don't we let them do that research instead of playing the
| current academy games that undermine research production.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _the professions he lists are "lawyers, MBA holders,..." and
| later to finance. But these are the professions likely to be
| zero-sum._
|
| True, people with zero-sum, "I want more!" attitudes might very
| well self-select for the listed lines of work, perhaps because
| of the greater potential payoffs and arguably-weaker checks and
| balances there. But at the risk of sounding defensive, _zero-
| sumness really does depend greatly on individuals ' attitudes:_
| Lawyers can be useful in the same sense that cars'
| transmissions and oil pumps are useful; MBA types are trained
| in planning and management, which, I dunno, have their uses;
| financiers can get people who have money to part with it
| voluntarily so that others can make use of it.
|
| When I took a review course for the patent bar exam many years
| ago, Professor Irv Kayton told us forcefully that our job as
| patent attorneys was not to be scientists or engineers
| ourselves -- we all had science- or engineering backgrounds --
| but instead to be the "noble servants" of those innovators in
| society.
| whiddershins wrote:
| In all fairness the legal <=> political feedback loop seems
| to act to make law less zero sum, by continually increasing
| the amount of law and regulation, hence an ever-growing pie
| of legal work.
|
| And all cynicism aside, a growing economy might organically
| increase the need for lawyers.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _a growing economy might organically increase the need
| for lawyers._
|
| I've long thought that; the need for lawyers grows non-
| linearly with population, because the need is correlated
| with the number of _transactions_ , which would tend to
| increase (exponentially? factorially?) with population.
| didibus wrote:
| > The premise seems wrong in that he disagrees with the elite
| overproduction thesis, but the professions he lists are "
| lawyers, MBA holders,..." and later to finance. But these are
| the professions likely to be zero-sum
|
| I disagree with you. From the article, those very professions
| existing would be explained by Elite Underproduction. It is an
| example of the system optimizing for all surplus to be competed
| away. Thus we have created an Elite which include the science
| and study of competing where only so many resources and only so
| much status is available.
|
| If you read his argument, it is that we create an "elite" whose
| role is not to advance the frontier of understanding and
| achievement, but instead to capitalize on the currently
| available resources and status.
|
| I think the part that is a little bit of a stretch, is that
| he's redefining "elite", he seems to say that "elite" should be
| a status held by those who innovate our capabilities of
| understanding and producing for all. And then he says, if you
| take "elite" to mean that, you'll see that we do not produce a
| lot of those, therefore we are "underproducing elites".
|
| That said, I think generally people think of "elites" more as
| the "aristocracy", a.k.a, those who have entrenched themselves
| with social capital and status. With that definition, you can
| say we produce too many "elites", as in, too many people who
| are trained in trying to acquire a big slice of the social
| capital and status, and because there is a limited pool of
| that, these people fail to acquire a big chunk of it as they
| all compete for that limited resource. Thus the theory of
| "Elite overproduction".
|
| So you see, it really just depends how you define "Elite".
|
| But the main point of OPs' article is valid, our system does
| not reward or invest enough in trying to push our understanding
| and capabilities in order to advance all of humanity. And
| because of that, if you have the qualifications to try and do
| so, you instead choose to capitalize on maximizing your slice
| of the existing wealth by going into Quants for example,
| because the system pays well to do that, but doesn't for true
| research.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Part of the problem with Physics PhDs is they take too long.
| Median of like 7 years in graduate school. And they're hyper-
| specialized, not as useful as the general education you get in
| physics undergrad.
|
| Good argument for making more undergrad physics students but
| stopping the emphasis on graduate degrees.
|
| Graduate degrees: 7 years of your young life focusing on a very
| specific topic that might be better spent applying the really
| useful physics undergraduate education in industry (or perhaps
| adding a couple more years in engineering graduate school
| beforehand).
|
| Not to say that graduate school has no function. But The cost
| benefit is not nearly as clear as the education you get in
| undergrad.
| robbmorganf wrote:
| > overproduction of physics PhDs relative to academic positions
| available
|
| Why are positions researching physics so closely tied to
| academic positions? We probably don't need too many more
| physics _professors_ but we sure could use more physics
| research. Or maybe better physics research. Either way, more
| /better physics discoveries.
|
| That said, our scientific communication channels seem filled to
| the brink. So maybe we need more efficient scientific
| communication before we can make good use of more researchers.
| kragen wrote:
| Maybe what we need is cheaper physics _apparatus_ so you don
| 't need a physics professorship or a big lab to advance the
| state of human knowledge. You aren't going to scale down the
| LHC to fit under your bed when you aren't using it, but you
| could surely fit an XRF, ICP-AES, AFM, and maybe an optical
| bench in there. For a while I worked at a satellite company
| whose first cleanroom was made only a few years back by
| covering the concrete walls with polyethylene film, and a
| class-10 clean bench that you stick your hands into is within
| the reach of lots of people. Lots of amateurs have built
| fusors, but mostly they aren't doing the work necessary to
| measure reliable, reproducible results, in part because Vixra
| doesn't offer any incentive to do so. Radio amateurs are one
| shining exception here, even if most of them are just using
| store-bought equipment these days.
| enkid wrote:
| Is this actually the case? There is a lot of research that is
| occuring in the private sector or research labs and the such.
| A lot of it is being done at universities, but us there an
| actual quantified measure if what percentage of research is
| not in a teaching institution versus what is?
| pydry wrote:
| Instead of trying to quantify research (not really
| measuable in any meaningful sense) perhaps ask yourself how
| physics has improved your every day life and then ask
| yourself which improvements you think society should have
| given up in exchange for a greater supply of quants.
|
| Things like the microchip, wifi, rocketry, satellites, jet
| engines, etc.
|
| If the answer is "none of it" that tends to suggest
| underproduction.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| This is some rather flawed logic. The productivity of
| physicists at the time the microchip was invented doesn't
| suggest anything at all about the productivity of
| physicists today, and the utility of productive physics
| research doesn't suggest anything at all about the
| existence of non-productive physics research.
| native_samples wrote:
| Do we need more physics research? I guess it depends a lot on
| how you define physics, but it seems like outside of possibly
| better silicon nodes, there isn't a whole lot of low hanging
| fruit in physics at the moment. When physics does get
| research funding it gets dropped into building giant machines
| that, at vast expense, have discovered virtually nothing.
|
| It feels like right now most areas of academia are consuming
| far more resources than their useful output could really
| justify, which is perhaps why in so many fields it's so
| heavily dependent on government funding (vs say computer
| science where academic/corporate lab collaborations are quite
| common).
| nickelpro wrote:
| An incredibly short sighted view of academic utility.
| Maxwell's work on radio waves took 30 years to be developed
| into a "useful output".
|
| The purpose of scientific advancement cannot be understood
| on the timetables of capitalistic utility.
| pydry wrote:
| "There is nothing new left to be discovered in physics now.
| All that is left is more and more precise measurement." --
| Lord Kelvin, 1900
| kiba wrote:
| What is the likelihood of discovering a new phenomena or
| largely unexplored field of science akin to the discovery
| of electricity and electrochemistry?
|
| There may be a finite amount of works on physics that we
| can do, or technological niches that we can exploit
| thanks to discoveries in physics or any relevant field of
| knowledge.
|
| The well of discoveries isn't running dry today, but it
| may in future generations.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What is the likelihood of discovering a new phenomena
| or largely unexplored field of science akin to the
| discovery of electricity and electrochemistry?_
|
| We have zero idea how gravity works, how to predict the
| properties of vast stretches of new materials, if the
| island of stability is real, what the limits to know
| propulsion technologies are, what the limits to know
| fusion technologies are, _et cetera_. And I'm not even
| getting to batteries or biology or hosts of related
| fields.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Everyone here is missing the point. It's not that physics
| is running out of questions to ask. It's that the
| questions are getting increasingly more expensive to
| answer, and the answers are increasingly less compelling.
| The low-hanging fruit picked long ago, modern physics
| produces fewer discoveries that change people's lives in
| the way that radar, lasers, microwaves, and transistors
| did, which makes science investment less compelling to
| the public.
| kragen wrote:
| Well, maybe we won't find anything akin to _electricity_
| again; the electroweak force is one of the three
| fundamental interactions we know affect matter in the
| universe, and knowledge of electricity as such dates back
| at least to Plato, 2500 years ago. It was unified with
| magnetism in 01873, and unified with the weak force in
| the 01970s. Maybe we 'll find a fourth one; maybe we
| won't. (Gravitational waves weren't observed until 02015,
| and they solved the mystery of short gamma-ray bursts in
| 02017.) Here's a list of candidates for similarly
| fundamental discoveries:
|
| 1. Maybe we'll find a fourth fundamental force that we
| just haven't noticed yet. This sounds stupid until you
| realize that we hadn't noticed Archaea until 01977 or
| dark matter (85% of matter in the universe) until 01980
| (though the phrase is from the 01930s), and we still know
| almost nothing about the behavior of dark energy, the
| existence of which wasn't known until 01992.
|
| 2. Maybe we'll find a way to reconcile general relativity
| with quantum mechanics ("quantum gravity").
|
| 3. Maybe quantum computers won't work, demonstrating a
| flaw in the assumptions of quantum theory in the same way
| that the Michelson-Morley failure to detect an ether wind
| demonstrated the flaw in the assumptions of Newtonian
| physics that Einstein resolved with special relativity.
| More likely, they _will_ work, and this will change a lot
| of things; their computational power is still poorly
| understood. They were originally proposed (by Feynman) as
| an engine for simulating quantum physics.
|
| 4. Maybe dark matter and dark energy don't involve a
| fourth fundamental force like the strong force, gravity,
| or the electroweak force, but we still know almost
| nothing about how they behave. So almost everything about
| them is unknown. Can we use them for communication,
| propulsion, computation, energy sources, mass sources,
| etc.?
|
| 5. General relativity hasn't been shown to conserve
| energy or (equivalently) momentum. Does that mean
| reactionless drives and perpetual-motion machines are
| possible, or (more likely) that there's a more subtle
| symmetry to GR that hasn't yet been discovered?
|
| 6. Where does consciousness come from? It's the most
| perceptually salient phenomenon in the entire universe,
| but we don't have any convincing account of what it is.
|
| 7. We know very little about plasma dynamics. We don't
| know how to make a usable plasmoid gun, we don't know how
| ball lightning works (or even if it belongs in this
| item), and although we know they're a magnetohydrodynamic
| phenomenon, we don't know how solar prominences are
| formed, and similarly for solar flares, which accelerate
| some particles to GeV speeds by means we don't understand
| at all. We don't know why the solar cycle happens.
| Coronal waves weren't discovered until 01995. We don't
| know how to stabilize fusion plasma in a tokamak. We
| don't know if there are significant magnetohydrodynamic
| phenomena at scales larger than a star, much less larger
| than a galaxy. We don't know what heats the corona. This
| is important because a large majority of the matter in
| the universe is plasma, and our understanding of it is
| mostly just empirical, like stamp collecting. We're used
| to thinking of plasma as an undifferentiated homogeneous
| continuum like a well-mixed liquid, where nothing
| interesting happens, quite unlike all our complicated
| organic molecules (which can't survive in it), but
| obviously from looking at the sun that isn't the case; we
| really have no idea about the possible complexities. Is
| this where the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall comes
| from? Perhaps more excitingly, if MHD makes stable
| structures possible in large-scale plasma systems (as it
| evidently does in the sun), are there analogous phenomena
| that can occur in a quark-gluon plasma?
|
| 8. Forget about magnetohydrodynamics for a moment. We
| don't even understand _regular_ hydrodynamics. Tao 's
| most famous result (02014) was a finite-time blowup in a
| version of the _Navier-Stokes_ equation, for which he had
| to use results from automata theory:
| https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/finite-time-
| blowup.... What this means in practice remains unclear
| (Tao: "In principle, it might even be possible in this
| case that the speed and the wave number both go to
| infinity in finite time, a scenario known as finite-time
| blow-up. Of course, such blow-up does not mean that a
| physical fluid such as water can exhibit this behaviour,
| but it does mean that the Navier-Stokes equations cease
| to be an accurate model for such a fluid in these
| cases."), but it's clear, if Tao's result can be extended
| to the real Navier-Stokes equations, that it means we
| don't _have_ an adequate model for fluids in such cases.
|
| 9. Okay, and what's up with the profusion of apparently
| random physical constants? Could they have been
| different? Are they different elsewhere in the universe?
|
| 10. How did the universe start out with such low entropy?
| Equivalently (or possibly not, depending on the nature of
| CP violation), why is the past different from the future?
|
| 11. Is spacetime continuous, or is it like a sort of
| foam? Is the foam size really of the Planck-length scale,
| or is it much larger, as the holographic principle
| suggests? What happens when you approach that scale?
| Fundamental particles like protons are far too big to do
| experiments like this, but in theory we ought to be able
| to make black holes that are much, much smaller than
| protons to do these experiments. (You think NIMBY is bad
| _now_...)
|
| 12. String theory posits a number of other spatial
| dimensions. Is spacetime really only four-dimensional?
|
| Quite aside from these fundamental problems, any one of
| which promises a "largely unexplored field of science
| akin to the discovery of electricity", there are a huge
| number of things we can create that don't even require
| discoveries of fundamental new phenomena like those
| above. Electrochemistry, to take one of your examples, is
| extremely underexploited because in most cases we don't
| know what conditions we have to control in order to make
| our experiments reproducible, and of course medicine is
| full of unknowns.
|
| Of course anything _could_ happen in future generations,
| but there 's nothing to suggest that your prediction
| _will_ happen. Rather the other extreme: the well of
| discoveries is overflowing today, but may become a geyser
| in future generations.
| pydry wrote:
| I'd say the likelihood seems a lot higher now than it did
| in Kelvin's time.
| avsteele wrote:
| There are quite a few places like this:
|
| * GTRI * Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab * MIT Lincoln Labs
| * ~All the national labs (NIST, Argonne, etc...)
|
| They are still mostly full as I understand.
|
| If I was to write an article on what might be improved: We
| need more translational research (product focused, using
| existing knowledge) and less academic research.
|
| One problem I see is that there just isn't the springboard
| from academic research to commercialization in physics like
| there is in comp sci or biotech.
|
| Granted I'm biased. I founded my company (zeroK NanoTech) to
| capitalize on laser cooling research. Two Nobel prizes and
| countless professors pushing the boundaries on this stuff
| since the 90's. And my little company is going to be the
| first to deliver a product that's a black box to the user wrt
| to the science but delivers some new capabilities. The ion
| trap quantum computing may yet pay (much larger) dividends to
| society and those guys are also now making big pushes as
| well. Might be fair to count the resurgence of rocketry and
| fusion in this category as well.
|
| So maybe things *are* looking up after all!
| jollybean wrote:
| " there just isn't the springboard from academic research
| to commercialization"
|
| I worked in tech transfer for a bit.
|
| There isn't such a thing as 'translation of science'
| because knowledge itself is pretty useless, even applied
| research is.
|
| Products - which hopefully embody some of those things -
| are what people buy and the things that go into making good
| products are a bit orthogonal to classical R&D approach.
| Thinking about things from a 'user centric' instead of
| things having 'intrinsic' value is a big leap that I think
| takes a few years for some to get.
|
| In Academia we think of knowledge as having inherent
| meaning and value unto it's own - which is totally fine I'm
| not hear to argue otherwise.
|
| But in the real world, it's almost as if you have to view
| Science as just 'fancy pants tooling' and give it about as
| much love as your ruler or hammer, i.e. think of it as just
| a tool to meet some 'ends' wherein the 'ends' is not
| 'publishing a paper'.
|
| In biotech, the 'ends' maybe more mappable, i.e. 'this drug
| regrows hair in men and women' but as you indicate, it
| mostly doesn't work this way.
|
| Even then, even if we got our surplus PhD's into industry,
| we still may have this over-capacity.
|
| So all of that aside, maybe we are entering the phase where
| the standard/normative level of education is just really,
| really high. Like in one of those corny Star Trek places
| where everyone has a PhD.
|
| Just like many of the wealthy, effete folks in the past who
| got degrees because they were rich and not even interested
| in pursuing something applied or interesting, 'we're all
| getting rich now' and perhaps should turn our focus to the
| 5B people on planet earth who still have material needs.
| version_five wrote:
| I agree with everything you wrote and you said it better than I
| was going to. I just want to add that I actually see "lapsed
| physicist" as a good sign: in physics PHD grads, we have a lot
| of people who as part of their formation undertook a focused
| study on some area at the forefront of human knowledge. Only by
| doing a lot of these studies will be make real advances,
| because science is mostly finding things that dont work. And
| the byproduct is someone with "useful" skills in the sense that
| they can use them to easily transition to highly paid work, or
| what the author calls a lapse. Less often, one goes on to a
| research career, and less often still, one makes a big
| breakthrough. But overall, it's win-win. Not saying its
| perfect, but I think having a meaningful offramp after grad
| school is the best way to do more exploration and push the
| frontier of science. If you had to do a PHD and then risk
| complete unemployability after, the situation would be much
| worse
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Thank you for elegantly summarizing the things I was going to
| take a lot longer to try to state, less coherently.
| andreilys wrote:
| _In our society, Elite Overproduction can be explained as a form
| of Malthusian social competition where only so many resources and
| only so much status is available, and the only way to access a
| satisfactory slice is to compete within the power structures that
| control them. In turn, our institutions evolve mainly to
| facilitate this competition rather than performing their
| ostensible material functions. In turn this causes resentment to
| grow among those who never had access to those institutions in
| the first place._
|
| _This situation is a consequence of Elite Underproduction. Our
| society is chronically bad at producing and nurturing true
| elites, the individuals who are capable of creating and
| sustaining frontiers. That makes malthusian competition
| inveitable, and the only thing going - the kinds of 'elites' we
| end up producing are good at that kind of competition and not
| much else._
|
| Yes it's important to have elites that go out and create new
| frontiers, but at the same time status in a hierarchical society
| is inherently zero-sum. We can't all be high status, because
| there needs to be some reference point.
|
| As an example in the world of law there are only so many spots
| available at Harvard Law School, even fewer spots for clerking
| with Supreme Court justices, and of course a very very small
| amount of actual Supreme Court justices.
|
| What happens when someone loses the high-status tournament to
| become a Supreme Court justice? Ideally they find another
| tournament/status game to play, somewhere they can succeed. But
| even so, if we saturate our society with too many lawyers, there
| are simply not enough tournaments they can play in (that will
| also pay them enough to pay off their student loans).
| xyzelement wrote:
| >What happens when someone loses the high-status tournament to
| become a Supreme Court justice? Ideally they find another
| tournament/status game to play, somewhere they can succeed.
|
| If someone reasonably bright orients their entire endeavor
| around the goal of becoming a Supreme Court Justice, they will
| be _totally fine_ in life even if they fall well short of their
| goal. "Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you will land
| among the stars."
|
| The problem we have is actually the opposite - too many people
| believe that no opportunity is available to them, thus they
| don't pursue anything, and end up stagnant or declining ("Aim
| for the ground... can't miss!")
| b9a2cab5 wrote:
| The "academic meatgrinder" ignores the fact that a plurality of
| top PhD and MS programs' students are international, usually from
| Europe, India or China. There are deeper issues at play - like
| the fact that American K-12 schools often have an anti-
| intellectual culture and American culture as a whole does not
| place sufficient emphasis on doing well in school.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| As an immigrant to USA in my teens in mid-2000s, one of the
| striking and underappreciated things about Americans (those
| that are born in USA) as well as the entire culture of America
| embodies a sort of a liberating spirit that resonates
| everywhere. Once you graduate high-school, the world is yours.
| The transition is quite remarkable and college students have a
| tremendous amount of ambition. I hated highschool because it
| was too easy (even AP courses), but loved college. There is
| also a deep disdain for hierarchical structure in USA and it is
| one of the most unique aspects that I don't see anywhere else.
| It gets developed in college years and then continues onwards
| to the professional world. If we have a spectrum from
| "Individualism" to "Hierarchical", we can draw USA on one end
| and may be Japan on the other. Germany would fall in the
| middle. I don't think international students like myself bring
| anything new, but we learn a lot from Americans and then obtain
| citizenship. These observations were at the center of my
| conscience as I was growing up into adulthood.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Worth noting that many of those cultures have a much more
| idealistic view of Science. Americans often use business terms
| when discussing science.
| civilized wrote:
| I can't help but wonder if the current economy, with all its
| inequality and disproportionate rewards for the highly skilled,
| is a necessary step on the path towards changing the anti-
| intellectual US culture.
|
| You get more of what you reward and less of what you don't.
| It's not always a pleasant truth, but it's a powerful one.
| rayiner wrote:
| Calling it a "step" implies moving in that direction. But the
| problem in America is that the counter-movement against
| "anti-intellectualism" is just as anti-intellectual. More
| people are going to college, but they're not majoring in math
| and science. We have an ever expanding ecosystem of non-
| rigorous *studies fields. These are arguably even less
| valuable than the cultural norms of Bible-thumping small
| towns. At least the latter has demonstrated itself as a
| framework capable of socially supporting communities of
| people who build things. The former has no track record
| whatsoever.
|
| You can see this exemplified in the fact that, even as we are
| mocking people for not going to college, we are lowering
| academic standards and getting rid of gifted programs:
| https://www.teachforamerica.org/one-day/opinion/stop-
| elimina.... It's magical thinking on all sides.
| _jal wrote:
| > These are arguably even less valuable than the cultural
| norms of Bible-thumping small towns.
|
| Since you seem to be a fan of intellectual rigor, can you
| describe the process by which you arrive at the relative
| worth of (apparently) social science programs vs. small
| town social behavior?
|
| Can that method also tell us whether citrus flavors are
| more valuable than ballet?
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Nothing he said referenced the social sciences in any
| way. He referred to * Studies. The Social Sciences all
| aim at truth in some way, whether you're talking about
| Sociology, Anthropology, Economics or Political Science.
| civilized wrote:
| The *studies folks are complaining loudly and bitterly of
| their debt and not having cushy jobs handed to them on a
| silver platter. In principle this should encourage future
| students not to take those paths.
|
| I agree that I don't like the direction we're headed, but
| hopefully the natural consequences of that direction will
| encourage people to revisit their ideological assumptions.
| rayiner wrote:
| The natural consequences of this will be China overtaking
| the US. Americans are not going to enjoy a world where
| they're not the dominant power. Among other things
| they're really going to hate not being able to print
| money for consumption free of consequences.
| civilized wrote:
| It's a concern, but a strong dollar isn't all roses and
| sunshine either. For one thing, it makes it hard for the
| American economy to compete in anything but the highest-
| margin industries.
|
| I'm not convinced that the rise of China will be so bad.
| Boomers and neocons want us to think so, but their
| "arguments" are mostly just paranoia and sentimentality.
| slt2021 wrote:
| just look at the UK - lowering of living standards,
| wages, inflation across the board.
|
| this is what's going to happen to the US, but on much
| larger scale and worse consequences
| xyzelement wrote:
| > I'm not convinced that the rise of China will be so
| bad. Boomers and neocons want us to think so
|
| You're not convinced that going from "living in the most
| economically dominant and militarily powerful country in
| the world" to "not" is going to somehow not be a painful
| experience?
|
| You can use the "I am not convinced" line for anything.
| "I am not convinced that being homeless is worse than
| living in a nice house" but... ok, what would convince
| you?
| watwut wrote:
| Most college students go for practical and business majors.
| They literally go for what seems to promiss them money.
|
| The *studies fields are rather small proportion of
| students. They also cluster mostly in top universities. It
| is just not true that they would dominated universities.
|
| That one is just paranoia and blaming what you hate anyway.
| named-user wrote:
| Which has what implications?
|
| Your comment is kind of meaningless drivel with abstruse
| language.
| dang wrote:
| Name-calling like this will get you banned here. Can you
| please make your substantive points thoughtfully and
| respectfully?
|
| Edit: your account has already been repeatedly posting
| comments that either break the site guidelines or are on the
| edge. If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking
| the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be
| grateful.
| [deleted]
| civilized wrote:
| I'm not sure your evidence makes the point you intended. The
| academic meat-grinder is the best way for those international
| students to get visas.
| finexplained wrote:
| I don't really think the connection you're trying to draw
| follows immediately. There are very strong domestic students,
| probably enough to fill all the top PhD programs. The calculus
| for pursuing a PhD is different if you're a domestic vs
| international student. If you're international and want to move
| to and eventually live in the US, where some of the highest
| paying jobs in the world are available, then first getting into
| a well regarded graduate program, which will attract potential
| employers, coming in on a student visa and then getting an
| employer to sponsor an H1B is a pretty good strategy. If you're
| already a top student in the US at a top university, you
| already have access to those employers and intend to stay in
| the same country long term, so the opportunity cost of going to
| graduate school is so much higher.
| b9a2cab5 wrote:
| If that was the case then FAANG wouldn't be filled with
| Asians and engineers from ex-Soviet countries. The makeup of
| high paying tech companies does not represent in any way the
| makeup of the American population. I posit the reason this is
| the case is American culture and anti-intellectualism.
|
| If you look at top public school undergrad programs that
| don't practice affirmative action (UC's, UW) the programs are
| almost 50% Asian.
|
| To be clear, when I say American I mean someone whose
| ancestors have lived in America for multiple generations,
| since at least the 1950's. I'm the child of immigrants and I
| don't consider myself an American. My culture places a
| distinctly different emphasis on educational achievement
| compared to what you might consider an American.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Not quite. American across the sea immigration selects for
| the smartest and most ambitious people in the world. It's
| natural that they and their descendants will outperform
| most Americans.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| & it benefits Americans (even those whose families have
| been here for generations) tremendously.
|
| I am a "native born" American, and I've benefited a lot
| from having a whole bunch of extremely smart immigrants
| in my field. My physics graduate school mentor was from
| Ukraine, my advisor was an immigrant from China. The
| person who hired me out of graduate school to an
| aerospace/materials science job was an immigrant from the
| Philippines. Several of the coworkers who have best
| coached and mentored me were immigrants from Zimbabwe and
| Korea. Generally more helpful and kind to me than native-
| born coworkers. It is as positive sum as it gets.
|
| (although I don't think it lasts very long past first or
| second generation immigrants. It's more individual choice
| and family culture than anything. So the only way to keep
| the benefit of cherrypicking & equipping the most
| ambitious and brightest among the world is to
| continuously encourage high skilled immigration.)
| RNCTX wrote:
| > If that was the case then FAANG wouldn't be filled with
| Asians and engineers from ex-Soviet countries. The makeup
| of high paying tech companies does not represent in any way
| the makeup of the American population. I posit the reason
| this is the case is American culture and anti-
| intellectualism.
|
| In a land where money buys everything, you think culture is
| the reason why a thing exists or doesn't exist? I think
| you're drinking too much of your own ideological kool aid.
|
| High paying tech companies want to pay less, so they
| recruit internationally to not be so high paying. Along the
| same lines, American kids with the access to generational
| wealth to do whatever they want find it more lucrative to
| choose some other more localized field of work that doesn't
| compete with indentured servitude (H1s) for wages.
| slt2021 wrote:
| do you really think that FAANG companies want to pay
| less? they are already top paying employers, i think you
| are mistaken
| BirdieNZ wrote:
| It wasn't that long ago that FAANG got caught for rigging
| the labour market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
|
| Obviously FAANG (and most companies) want to pay as
| little as possible for their labour. They don't pay
| $500,000 for senior engineers because of their innate
| generosity and desire to pay them well. They pay that
| much because they have to if they want to attract and
| retain the employees they are looking for.
| amusedcyclist wrote:
| H1B's in Big tech are about as far from indentured
| servants as you can imagine, they're in high demand and
| switch jobs for better pay constantly. American kids with
| access to generational wealth aren't as interested in
| difficult technical subjects.
| andreilys wrote:
| Part of it is control. If you're on an H1B, applying for a
| green card you are often chained to your company. If you
| quit (or get fired), you have 60 days to find a job or you
| have to leave the country.
|
| This isn't the case with citizens who have much more
| freedom and mobility.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > If that was the case then FAANG wouldn't be filled with
| Asians and engineers from ex-Soviet countries. The makeup
| of high paying tech companies does not represent in any way
| the makeup of the American population. I posit the reason
| this is the case is American culture and anti-
| intellectualism.
|
| There are schools in every country.
|
| There are not FAANG headquarters in every country.
|
| The top candidates from around the world (who are willing
| to relocate) will emigrate to whatever country has the
| highest paying jobs. That happens to be FAANG companies in
| the United States right now.
|
| So of course FAANG jobs will not mirror the population of
| schools. It will mirror the population of educated
| engineers who are able and willing to relocate (especially
| pre-COVID before remote was an option)
|
| Trying to draw parallels between FAANG employment and
| American schools in this fashion is nonsensical.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| The difference between American and Soviet schools back
| in the day was that Soviet curriculum was designed for
| ~80% to pass, while American was designed for ~99% to
| pass. (Nowadays, Russia has lowered the bar
| significantly, so the difference is no longer as huge.)
|
| An average student who finished 5th grade in an average
| school in USSR could start 6th grade in the U.S. and
| coast along on what they'd learned until the first year
| of high school.
| thanhhaimai wrote:
| > The top candidates from around the world (who are
| willing to relocate) will emigrate to whatever country
| has the highest paying jobs. That happens to be FAANG
| companies in the United States right now.
|
| This view is only correct if a) the US border is
| completely open and b) all the candidates around the
| world can speak professional English. We know that both
| the above conditions are false.
| DFHippie wrote:
| How about this: the easier it is to relocate and work for
| FAANG companies, the more the FAANG workforce will
| resemble the global supply of people who would like to
| work for them. If the skill sought is coding, not sales,
| sufficient English fluency is not a great barrier. There
| are plenty of programmers who do fine without ever having
| mastered definite articles or the present perfect.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > If you look at top public school undergrad programs that
| don't practice affirmative action (UC's, UW) the programs
| are almost 50% Asian.
|
| That's why, when looking at resumes, I've heard "Yeah, you
| know X is good, he went to Y (a school with affirmative
| action) and he's Asian/International, so you know he's
| there on merit".
|
| I somehow feel we regressed over time.
| slt2021 wrote:
| >so you know he's there on merit
|
| it is hilarious how historical racism towards blacks
| leads to reverse racism (affirmative action) and leads to
| another racisms.
|
| it's like you can't fix racism issues by instituting even
| more racism, it will only lead to more and more racism.
|
| I hear often that Black employees are often looked down
| upon, because of the AC in hiring and education (the bar
| is extremely low for them). I think that Affirmative
| Action was created to reinforce stereotypes and racism,
| after the Civil Rights Movement
| kodah wrote:
| I don't know that America is anti-intellectual beyond a
| facade. It's easy to not like something that you'll
| perceivably never have or can manage to live without.
| Education is mainly reserved for the select few, and those
| select few aren't so revered anymore. People all want the
| same opportunities, but they're definitely not anywhere
| close to universally attainable. If you give people access
| to those things then I think you'll see that facade drip
| away.
| thrower123 wrote:
| The smartest Americans go into law and medicine and
| banking, because the expected value is even higher for
| bright people in those fields than technology.
| slt2021 wrote:
| it used to be true, before 2008 crisis. Not anymore
| ksaun wrote:
| Maybe this is implicitly understood, but I don't think
| everyone's goal is to maximize income/wealth. That is,
| not everyone would calculate "expected value" in the same
| way.
| amusedcyclist wrote:
| I don't think thats true anymore, unless you become a
| partner at a large law firm (very unlikely even for top
| grads) or are a very specialized surgeon (extremely
| difficult job) most FAANG level senior developers will
| out earn you and work far less. Might be true of banking
| but idk
| finexplained wrote:
| > If that was the case then FAANG wouldn't be filled with
| Asians and engineers from ex-Soviet countries. The makeup
| of high paying tech companies does not represent in any way
| the makeup of the American population.
|
| I don't think you can draw a cultural difference from this.
| I get what you're trying to say, particularly by narrowly
| defining "American"; that cultural influences put
| pressure/status on academics both by immigrant parents and
| non-American parents and that pressure causes students to
| excel academically and achieve these high paying positions.
| But there is so much selection bias here; both in the types
| of people who immigrate to a new country and those who
| leave their home country to attend school abroad. It's not
| clear to me Asian culture results in FAANG being
| disproportionally Asian, or simply that there are 2 billion
| Asian people in the world, and while the same percentage of
| people are sufficiently qualified as top American students
| (let's say 2%), 2% of 2 billion people is 40M people! Do
| you see the problem with jumping to this conclusion? You
| don't have sufficient evidence to reject the null
| hypothesis, that both cultures produce tops students at
| similar percentages.
|
| A personal anecdote: I spend a lot of my interviewing
| candidates. Students for all the top schools in the world,
| international students and domestic students, undergrads
| and PhDs. Conditioned on having gone to a top university,
| I've never noticed a difference in performances between
| domestic students and international ones. (Or undergrad vs
| PhD to be honest.)
|
| I also take a bit of issue with your definition of
| "American" on a personal level.
|
| > To be clear, when I say American I mean someone whose
| ancestors have lived in America for multiple generations,
| since at least the 1950's.
|
| My parents are immigrants, I'm a first generation American.
| But I am absolutely culturally American. There is no other
| country were I would feel at home culturally, and I've been
| heavily influenced by the country I grew up in. I'm also
| the product of US public schools, most notably UC Berkeley,
| which you cite. And I'm not Asian or Russian. And I do work
| at a FAANG level firm.
| yaacov wrote:
| That's because of visas. In the US you can study CS at a good
| school now and make $200k straight out of undergrad. Makes a
| technical PhD a lot less tempting
| kafkaIncarnate wrote:
| Where are you getting that $200k figure? These are for not
| just out of college:
|
| https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/computer-science-
| salary-S...
|
| https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-Average-
| Co...
|
| https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Degree=Master_of_Scienc.
| ..
| marcinzm wrote:
| Large tech companies will pay that much and if you've got
| the skills to get a PhD then you can very likely pass their
| interview process.
|
| https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-
| Engi...
|
| Also most of the generic pay sites in my experience are
| down weighted by a bunch of underpaid visa workers, boot
| camp graduates and so on. Also government workers who don't
| get paid well but get great benefits.
| ryandrake wrote:
| OP said you _can_ make $200k straight out of undergrad,
| which is probably technically true, like it 's technically
| true that I _can_ win the lottery or get struck by
| lightning. There is probably a new grad somewhere making
| $200k in far-far right tail of the distribution. Just like
| it 's technically true that you _can_ make $400k (or $600k
| or $1M, whatever the popular number to cite is now) as a
| software engineer. Yes, these people probably do exist in
| that long tail, at certain top levels in certain top
| companies in certain top locations.
| bidirectional wrote:
| I really don't think it's that far out in the tails,
| especially given we're discussing top universities. If
| you're at MIT/Harvard/Stanford you're definitely aiming
| for 200k TC fresh out of undergrad.
| diognesofsinope wrote:
| Exactly my thought:
|
| A CS degree from Stanford almost has to start at at least
| 90k.
| amusedcyclist wrote:
| Its far more likely that you make 200k out of college
| than win the lottery, in fact at top schools i think most
| students would disappointed if they didn't get close to
| that number
| kafkaIncarnate wrote:
| His comment was in reference to the lack of PhD as an
| explanation of the lack of PhDs as mentioned in TFA. He
| then went to say that the ability to get $200k out of
| undergrad was, and I quote:
|
| > Makes a technical PhD a lot less tempting
|
| If it's as rare as you are saying, then it wouldn't
| factor into the broader reasoning of people debating to
| get PhDs at all. That's my point. I wasn't making any
| point that it isn't possible to make $200k/year out of
| undergrad.
| marcinzm wrote:
| If you think it's that far in the right tail then you're
| really underestimating how much large tech companies pay
| even new grads.
|
| edit: Also, $400k is about standard for a senior SE at a
| large tech company or late stage startup nowadays.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Entry level at Google is SDE III. According to levels.fyi
| the average total compensation for that is $191,860.
| There are lots of people making $200,000 straight out of
| undergrad. CMU, MIT, Berkeley and Stanford do not
| graduate enough students every year to fulfil Google's
| demand, never mind FAANG's and the same would be true if
| you expanded hiring to the top 20 CS universities.
|
| https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-
| Engi...
| zsmi wrote:
| The top bin in the first link was labeled $187K and the
| bins are at least $13K wide so it's possible there might be
| a data point at $193K (probably a bit higher) which is not
| so far from $200K/yr as a new grad, according to the
| glassdoor dataset anyway.
| pandler wrote:
| Somewhat unrelated to the point you're making, something
| seems off about the results in that Glassdoor link.
|
| Searching "computer science" in the jobs tab treats that as
| a keyword and shows results for a variety of job titles
| related to computer science. The salaries tab, however,
| seems to indicate it's only collecting information about
| job titles that have "computer science" in the title.
| yaacov wrote:
| From my new grad offer letters 2 years ago :)
| stale2002 wrote:
| The numbers you are looking for are here:
|
| www.levels.fyi
|
| Getting a job at Google, isn't exactly easy. But it is a
| far cry from "as hard as winning the lotto" that other
| people were implying it is.
| throwaway9278 wrote:
| You probably won't make 200k right out of undergrad in
| bigtech these days. But you will within 2-3 years. Most of
| my acquaintances in bigtech make 220-260K by age 25 doing
| run-of-the-mill stuff. This does not require elite level
| skill or knowledge - just merely bright people who put in
| the time and pass the filters. Most of us are fairly
| mediocre.
| watwut wrote:
| America produce huge amount of smart educated people. They
| choose to not do PhD, because financially it is often sucky
| decision.
|
| It has nothing to do with elementary or high schools
| performance. Those produce capable kids enough. It has to do
| with decisions and priorities those people have as young
| adults. And they are not even making bad decisions, for them
| not doing PhD is rational choice.
| greenail wrote:
| My view is that the problem isn't "lapsed physicists". They are
| largely still productive and contributing elites. The problem is
| the "pseudo elite" masters of sociology graduate who ends up at
| starbucks with a ton of debt and a chip on their shoulder. The
| incentives are "college is good" without regard for the demand
| for the degree. While I agree that "college is good", it clearly
| isn't a good investment for everyone. Most current policy de-
| emphasizes other ways of learning like apprenticeships which may
| actually be well suited for technical things. It may be the
| better description is "pseudo elite overproduction" will cause
| social and political instability.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I think this is it, and matches my recall of the original
| theory. The sociology graduate working at Starbucks perceives
| himself elite ("much smarter than the Trump-voting plumber who
| didn't go to college") but in reality lives in poverty because
| there's a demand mismatch for his eliteness.
|
| This kind of dynamic adds to instability because such people
| are downwardly mobile (poorer than their parents) and rather
| than recognizing the key error that sent their life down the
| wrong track (choice of major/not going to a trade school) they
| "plant the seeds" of discord by shouting loudly that the
| situation is hopeless and "the system" is to blame.
| errantspark wrote:
| It feels like the problem is tied to our understanding of what's
| important as a society. We agree more or less that money
| represents value, even if people say it doesn't their actions say
| they it does. I think the more we double down on this as gospel
| the further our manufactured/perceived reality can move away from
| the underlying truth of the world. Money only represents short
| term value well. I think at some point the tension there will be
| too much for the fiction to hold and the fault line will have to
| fall back into equilibrium. It would probably be best if we were
| to do it gently.
| lostdog wrote:
| Money represents immediate value, and basic science is long
| term value, and it's very difficult to get money to jump that
| temporal gap.
| fsloth wrote:
| I think Turchin percieves the matter better than the author.
|
| For some reason the author presumes everyone who decides to to
| study physics should not veer from this path or else they have
| failed. This is an extraordinary queer point of view.
|
| As such a "failed" physicist myself now in software, having a
| degree in physics makes me actually quite malleable for all sorts
| of fun things, and my studies have indoctrinated me to basically
| view everything as an unknows system, that can be modelled even
| though current models don't exist.
|
| This is very usefull!
|
| It's great to have this sort of dialogue, but the n physicists
| doing programming have found a niche for themselves and their
| talents. I would not call that failing.
|
| The other side of the coin is that should science be better
| supported? Instill insight and ambition to students? None of
| those are bad things from the point of view of the discpline.
|
| But attacking the argument from the point of view that "everyone
| who started studying physics, and are now doing something else
| signal a failure of the system" smells very much of propagating a
| view that people at the young age when they decide their
| university program should have a great understanding of the
| world, their position in it, and absolute certainty that physics
| is the best way to spend their working life. Which most 18-20
| year olds probably don't have (well, I did not for one). And
| having thus chosen a profession out of poor understanding of the
| complete picture, should stick to their decision and pull
| through, even though it seems to them other professions would be
| more suitable.
|
| The author mixes the bag even more by off-the-cuff random
| judgment calls on the intrinsic human value of others labour,
| which never really results in a sane dialogue. The claim itself
| is incredibly elitist - "Optimizing an algorithm at Google has
| less human value than repeating an known experiment at a physics
| lab to dot the i:s on a well understood theory".
|
| Physics is very important! But individual career choices are in a
| different category altogether. If you go and study physics and
| stick to it you might have ended up wasting your intellectual
| potential on hyped dead-ends like string theory . Now where is
| the benefit for mankind in that? (the comment is intended as a
| naughty swipe and I'm smirking while typing this).
| golergka wrote:
| > In the long run, creating more understanding of the physical
| world is probably more universally valuable to human flourishing
| than the far more parochial 'make money number go up' type of
| work lapsed physicists slinging JavaScript in the MAGMA[1] mines
| are doing for us now. If nothing else, it creates new and more
| interesting ways of making number go up.
|
| I don't know that much about quants and trading, but I do know
| something about startups. Ten years ago, most of the startups I
| encountered were pets.com 2.0 -- with crazy ideas that were
| supposed to change the world but turned out just being batshit
| crazy.
|
| But now, most startups I encounter are about doing the same thing
| that existed for a long time, but more effectively. And a lot of
| them succeed. It's not exciting, but this JS code often replaces
| a lot of manual clerk labour, and allowing the same people to do
| more.
|
| It's certainly not the zero-sum game OP is trying to make it look
| like. It's exactly the kind of grinding, boring work on everyday
| things that make humanity better as a whole.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| As a physics PhD turned coder I am not sure more physicists would
| mean more progress in most fields, particularly in fundamental
| physics and cosmology. In these places experimental results are
| just too hard to win. For instance, String Theory lumbers on
| without evidence to confirm or deny it.
|
| There are a few areas where a little boundary crossing might make
| a difference (e.g. we got 30 years of bogus papers on universal
| power laws because no physicist ever talked to a statistician)
| but many areas have run into barriers that seem insurmountable
| (Chaos theory was stillborn, I think, because there was little
| reward for hard work cataloging phenomenology when Noether's and
| KAMs conserved quantities ran out of steam.)
| 101keyboard wrote:
| "In my line of work I meet plenty of lapsed physicists. These are
| people with physics degrees, even physics Ph.D's, who don't do
| physics. Instead they're usually some sort of programmer, or
| occasionally some version of a quant."
|
| I now PhDs that became High School teachers and they were some of
| the most gifted. I know PhDs that wait tables to make ends meet.
|
| I think if the guy has fundamentally not understood what Peter
| Turchin was talking about. They are getting priced out of the
| housing market, won't ever be able to afford to buy a house. Even
| raising a family might be difficult. At the same time you pay for
| services for the boomers and a retirement and social security
| that yourself might never see.
| timkam wrote:
| As somebody who's about to finish a CS dissertation, I
| sometimes think the best way to do CS research is to get a
| somewhat interesting software engineering job that allows for a
| 4-day week and to do research as a side project. Most likely,
| this gives one more research time than staying in academia
| (with the exception of the first Post Doc, perhaps).
|
| Edit: This works for most of CS, but not for most of Physics, I
| assume.
| [deleted]
| powera wrote:
| This seems to subscribe to the "bulb theory" of technological
| advancement; that if we have ten times as many physicists we will
| make physics advances ten times as quickly.
|
| That's just not true. And the various "lapsed physicists" he
| meets are in fact proof of elite overproduction.
| losvedir wrote:
| Offtopic, but the article uses and defines "MAGMA", meaning Meta,
| Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. That actually makes a lot
| of sense to me. How did Netflix make it into the usual acronym
| and not Microsoft?
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Netflix was there primarily because its compensation was in the
| same tier.
| altantiprocrast wrote:
| Netflix makes a better acronym MANGA
| rob_c wrote:
| Cool, very interesting reading.
|
| Does anyone know a good resource rich details the change in job
| demographics over time for different nations? (Possibly just my
| google fu escapes me today)
| smnrchrds wrote:
| You may like this article as well:
|
| _Why Are Egyptian Youth Burning Their University Diplomas? The
| Overeducation Crisis in Egypt_
|
| https://www.brandeis.edu/crown/publications/middle-east-brie...
| nradov wrote:
| It's sad how the protesting Egyptian students are asking for
| exactly the wrong thing. Large numbers of public sector jobs
| are the _problem_ not the solution. If they can 't manage such
| a basic analysis correctly then it indicates that their elite
| educations didn't teach them much of value.
| jollybean wrote:
| Nice thoughts but let's not assume academia is the powerhouse of
| advancement, it's just one layer.
|
| Making useful things with all the grinding that goes in product
| development is _hard_. All the little bity components, managing
| hugely complicated supply chains, these are not petty jobs.
|
| We could literally shift some people in Academia over to things
| like that, like science of supply chains.
| maayank wrote:
| > In the long run, creating more understanding of the physical
| world is probably more universally valuable to human flourishing
| than the far more parochial 'make money number go up'
|
| Citation needed.
|
| Moreover, dedicating resources to finance can be seen as
| dedicating resources to better dedicate resources.
|
| (I upvoted the article since it's interesting stuff)
| WhisperingShiba wrote:
| I think the money number go up thing is not working, and I'm
| sure study of the physical world is part of the solution, but
| the biggest gains for our society seem to be in the way we
| structure our lifes. I think the coming decades, the study of
| eudaimonia will be key to our advancement as a species.
|
| I asserted that using money as a mechanism for gradient ascent
| is not working. I will walk you through my thinking, since this
| is an off beat claim.
|
| 1) Not all human needs are related to resources. Money cannot
| buy dignity, or love, and in-fact can generate the opposite of
| these qualities in one's life.
|
| 2) Most 1st World Humans have everything they need, materially,
| and more
|
| 3) Suicide is the ultimate statement of 'I am not having a good
| time'
|
| 4) Wealth is not hugely overwhelmingly correlated with lower
| suicide rates, with some of the wealthiest countries clocking
| in the highest rates of suicide. Source: List of countries by
| suicide rate:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
| (Sort by all descending)
|
| 5) I believe some other element or spirit is being maximized in
| happy countries, which also leads to wealth.
|
| 6) We should try to maximize a certain social spirit, which
| then maximizes wealth, instead of trying to directly maximize
| wealth.
|
| 7) GDP is a strange metric, which doesn't directly map to
| abundance. Yet, socially, we try to maximize it. I think this
| metric is victim to the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
|
| Thoughts?
| convolvatron wrote:
| i think you're absolutely right. one issue here is kind of
| 'streetlight' problem. money gets you a crude, and perhaps a
| counterproductive way of measuring value.
|
| but what other metric are you going to use?
|
| not an anti-communist, but so far central planning has shown
| itself to be equally ripe for corruption.
| WhisperingShiba wrote:
| I'm not ready to pose a solution (to the problem, of 'what
| metric do we follow?'), but I agree, central planning is
| gross. Its likely that there is no numerical method that is
| going to map to human happiness, and perhaps that's a good
| thing.
|
| I believe that balancing our minds and our heart's
| influence on our decision is how we should proceed.
| DanBC wrote:
| > Source: List of countries by suicide rate: https://en.wikip
| edia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r... (Sort by all
| descending)
|
| > Thoughts?
|
| My thought is please don't do this. You get no useful
| information. Wikipedia strips out all the necessary context.
| The source that Wikipedia uses explicitly tells you that
| comparing rates across countries is difficult and fraught
| with problems.
|
| Heck, comparing rates across a single country - the US - is
| tricky because they've only just developed a unified
| definition of "suicide".
|
| https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/suicide
|
| > Globally, the availability and quality of data on suicide
| and suicide attempts is poor. Only some 80 Member States have
| good-quality vital registration data that can be used
| directly to estimate suicide rates. This problem of poor-
| quality mortality data is not unique to suicide, but given
| the sensitivity of suicide - and the illegality of suicidal
| behaviour in some countries - it is likely that under-
| reporting and misclassification are greater problems for
| suicide than for most other causes of death.
| WhisperingShiba wrote:
| Ok, so besides my use of data which is very difficult to
| collect and verify, do you disagree with my statements of
| money failing to map to love and dignity?
| barry-cotter wrote:
| GDP per capita maps excellently to dignity. The richer we
| get the less grinding, soul sucking poverty there is. The
| fewer children die of easily preventable diseases. The
| longer people live. The less people work jobs they hate
| just because they need sustenance. The more people work
| jobs they like. The more of their life people spend
| retired or just not working "in education".
|
| Insofar as wealth makes life less nasty and brutish it
| probably makes life more loving but money buys a lot of
| dignity.
| Animats wrote:
| _In the long run, creating more understanding of the physical
| world is probably more universally valuable to human
| flourishing than the far more parochial 'make money number go
| up'_
|
| The Economist once commented that the last subatomic particle
| to have commercial value was the neutron, discovered in 1932.
| fullshark wrote:
| Most of the frontiers our society explored and expanded in the
| last 80 years were borne from world war 1 and 2 technological
| advancements I'd argue, more so than true elites emerging (or
| those elites emerged due to WW2, e.g. Turing and Von Braun). If
| you agree with the author that we need these frontiers, then
| that's a scary thing for the future of civilization.
| Gollapalli wrote:
| In a lot of ways. This is due to the professionalization of the
| natural sciences.
|
| We need to let amateurs be amateurs while still contributing
| meaningfully let. Let teachers teach professionally and let
| physicists in industrial applications do the same. Obviously most
| experimental physics costs money, but that doesn't mean that
| everything needs to be a status competition.
|
| When there are a few slots, a lot of status up for grabs, and an
| entrenched elite, you get exactly what you describe. Far too few
| true elites, and a great deal too many trained to be "elites".
|
| But the very nature of elites is that they rise despite these
| hurdles, or perhaps because of them.
| golemotron wrote:
| The author wants to manufacture demand. It's not that easy.
| lostdog wrote:
| It is simple, but not easy. Just replicate DARPA+NIH+NSF, and
| increase the total research budget by 100x, and ensure there
| are stable career paths to be a researcher until retirement.
| native_samples wrote:
| That would result in extremely large quantities of junk
| science of use to nobody. Increasing research funding must be
| entirely off the table until non-replicable research papers
| are no longer field-destroying problems.
| convolvatron wrote:
| more importantly, have money in DARPA+NIH+NSF like
| institutions and find some success metric that lets you
| reward fundamental basic science rather than things that are
| of interest to the military or commercial establishments.
|
| i worked on DARPA contracts for quite a number of
| years...they were...ok? but you still had to spend some
| energy talking about how this was going to benefit the
| warfighter or lead to something that was going to make
| someone alot of money
|
| NIH and NSF are certainly better, but my impression is that
| you still get alot of points in NSF land for showing a path
| towards commericialization
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Don't tell me what, tell me how.
|
| This is related to the modern version of academia, turned to a
| paper-making factory where mediocre professors toil away grant
| after grant waiting retirement. Still, young people will do a PhD
| just to see how deep the rabbit hole goes research-wise, even if
| they know that somewhere around middle life they'll switch to
| writing expensive software or overselling their skills to groups
| of developers. The problems are not well-defined. There is no
| grand scientific mountain to climb (despite the global narrative
| about climate crisis, photovoltaics and battery chemistry are not
| the sexiest of subjects). It does feel like science loses some of
| the mystery of previous generations and has become a lot more
| procedural. How do you motivate people to become mystics?
| max002 wrote:
| Im curious about one thing and im self-taugh so please forgive
| lack of understanding of uni world. Youre saying that physicist
| who do machine learning should be instead trying to unserstand
| physical world. While not having academic background i do read a
| lot of science news (its my porn:D) and now and then i see stuff
| like "new strong material discoveded by ml", "ml speeds up
| discovery of composite materials" or "ml speeds up new drugs
| discovery" and so on. How that does not improve our understanding
| of physical world?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Physics itself is about creating models of the world that are
| simple and understandable, and provide profound insights. ML is
| the opposite of that, a black box that works but cannot explain
| itself. A drug discovered by ML is not increasing our
| understanding of the world.
| max002 wrote:
| And IF we get to explainable models (i.e.
| https://aithority.com/machine-learning/neural-
| networks/deep-...) would that change its "usefulness" in
| physics world in your opinion? Not trying to fight or say
| that youre wrong. Just curious about perspective, im
| extremely detail oriented so i pick on them ^_^
| cblconfederate wrote:
| it doesnt even need to be explainable. If a model comes up
| with an equation that reconciles quantum physics with
| gravity then we could try to reason how it came to it, but
| we don't need to. As long as the model described in the
| equation is understandable by humans it should be enough.
| However most ML models are black boxes that solve problems
| without generating models of the world (that we know of)
|
| Physicists and mathematicians are uncomfortable with
| computer-generated proofs. I think they 'd be less
| uncomfortable with computer-generated theories because they
| can understand those
| max002 wrote:
| Points taken, thank you for explanation.
| somesortofthing wrote:
| I don't think the author meant to imply that ML as a whole
| doesn't improve our understanding of the physical world. The
| point seems to be more that the _kind_ of ML work done by a lot
| of people who have the qualifications necessary to expand the
| borders of our understanding of the physical world doesn 't
| meaningfully contribute to our knowledge.
| paulpauper wrote:
| looks like they are talking about different type of elites.
| Turchin is referring to govt. elites, mostly.
| wpasc wrote:
| I strongly agree with the premise of the article, and I wish more
| of society was aware of the issues that propagate what the author
| calls "Elite Underproduction". However, while I agree with the
| premise, I think the precise factors that create this issue are
| not sufficiently discussed or agreed upon (Not enough money goes
| into science research? Regulation imposes too heavy a burden on
| the outputs of scientific endeavors in the material world? We
| culturally are not sufficiently accepting of those people who
| would like to do elite-esque style research?). I'm not sure what
| the precise ratios of the causes are but I feel each of those
| question marks I just wrote contribute somewhat.
|
| Personally, I have no idea what the ratio is or a great way to go
| about fixing it. But hey, if some awareness of the issue helps,
| I'm all for it. Regardless of what you feel about Peter Thiel or
| Eric Weinstein, their discussion in the first episode of Eric
| Weinstein's podcast at least discusses the issue around "Elite
| Underprudction". In that episode, Eric brings a perspective from
| a more left-leaning viewpoint and Thiel with his signature more
| libterarian/right-leaning viewpoint.
| btrettel wrote:
| > However, while I agree with the premise, I think the precise
| factors that create this issue are not sufficiently discussed
| or agreed upon (Not enough money goes into science research?
| Regulation imposes too heavy a burden on the outputs of
| scientific endeavors in the material world? We culturally are
| not sufficiently accepting of those people who would like to do
| elite-esque style research?). I'm not sure what the precise
| ratios of the causes are but I feel each of those question
| marks I just wrote contribute somewhat.
|
| In terms of funding, I don't think increasing the amount of
| funding is going to be more than a short-term fix. Seems to me
| that there's a lot of induced demand: Add more money and it's
| quickly gobbled up.
|
| While I don't know all the details, it seems to me that we
| simply have far too many PhD students. I have a PhD, and I feel
| that a lot of well-intentioned people pushed me towards that
| before I was wise enough to understand the implications. The
| cynic in me thinks that some of them were more concerned with
| advancing their own careers than helping me out, as they need
| students to advance their careers.
|
| Too much science funding goes towards PhD students in my view.
| We need to reduce the amount going towards PhD students and
| increase the amount going towards more permanent research
| positions. Yes, the total headcount for researchers likely
| would decrease as PhD students are cheaper than experienced
| researchers, but I think overall scientific productivity would
| improve as experience matters, and we'd stop disappointing
| people who want jobs in science before they waste too much time
| on it.
|
| I wrote a bit about this earlier today, by coincidence:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29141107
| pharmakom wrote:
| Thiel is right wing but definitely not libertarian.
| enchiridion wrote:
| Isn't Thiel essentially anarcho-capitalist?
|
| So pretty far right and extremely (in the literal sense)
| libertarian.
|
| EDIT: anachro->anarcho
| woodruffw wrote:
| Thiel's hawkish military (and self-interested, given
| Palantir's contracts with Defense) positions on China
| probably put him outside of the pale of "normal"
| libertarian politics.
| native_samples wrote:
| Normally libertarianism has an 'exception' for defense
| because it's a pure commons. There's no obvious way to
| have private sector military due to the nature of wars
| and invasions. Indeed, the government having a monopoly
| on violence is a core part of libertarian thinking.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > Normally libertarianism has an 'exception' for defense
| because it's a pure commons. There's no obvious way to
| have private sector military due to the nature of wars
| and invasions. Indeed, the government having a monopoly
| on violence is a core part of libertarian thinking.
|
| This is an entirely parallel subject. The monopoly on
| violence (which is just a concept in the theory of state,
| not a uniquely libertarian concept) doesn't imply a
| hawkish foreign policy outlook. Put another way: the
| libertarian perspective (even the minarchist variants)
| don't entail the kind of aggression that Thiel publicly
| advocates.
|
| Being a hawk on China (e.g., extolling the US MIC to take
| a more aggressive stance in territorial disputes and
| information warfare) is a very _conservative_ , not
| libertarian, position.
| enchiridion wrote:
| Yes, libertarians generally define a government as having
| a monopoly on violence. That does not necessarily mean
| they think the government should have a monopoly of
| violence.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Anarchism-capitalism isn't a exactly a right wing ideology.
| It's really only useful to think of it that way in
| comparison to the traditional anti-capitalist flavors of
| anarchism.
| pharmakom wrote:
| Right anarchism and left anarchism only really differ in
| what they predict the steady state of anarchic conditions
| would be... and the culture of their advocates I suppose.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| That's sort of what I'm driving at. I would note that
| anarcho-capitalists are not pro social hierarchy which is
| a central belief in right wing political philosophy.
| Murray Rothbard described the ideology as being neither
| of the left nor fo the right, basically saying that self
| ownership is incompatible with both traditions.
|
| Notwithstanding Thiel isn't and anarcho-capitalist, he
| seems in practice to be almost a neoconservative. He
| describes himself as a "conservative libertarian", but
| has wrapped himself up in the war state and the
| surveillance industry, both of which are HIGHLY at odds
| with any kind of libertarianism. Thiel is much more like
| Liz Cheney than say Ron Paul.
| specialist wrote:
| I thought Theil was a self-described neoreactionary, which
| is explicitly anti-democracy.
|
| Which I interpretted to mean something like Aristotelian
| philosopher-king style governance. A fairly obvious logical
| conclusion when one's starting assumption that people (the
| polis) are fundamentally stupid and corrupt. By the
| standards of the self annointed philosopher-king, of
| course.
| Piribedil wrote:
| I presume you meant anarcho-capitalist but I love the
| concept born from your typo :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anachronism
| wpasc wrote:
| Honestly don't know the true nature of his politics, and I
| didn't mean to get political in my comment. I simply meant
| that in Thiel's discussion alone during the podcast comes
| from a less-government-would-help-here perspective. I don't
| know his opinions on virtually anything nor do I really care;
| I just thought that a variety of the points he made in that
| episode were at least interesting and made me think in a way
| I had not thought previously.
| danny_codes wrote:
| I find this kind of thinking kind of insulting actually.
|
| As a guy with a physics degree who's doing machine learning
| (precisely what the author bemoans), I don't feel like I
| "lapsed". I have other interests besides physics. There's a lot
| of things that aren't physics.
|
| > What they're not doing is advancing the human understanding of
| the physical world.
|
| I don't owe you anything. If this is your dream than do it
| yourself.
| dash2 wrote:
| He didn't blame the individuals, instead he argued that there's
| a social problem which society needs to solve.
| watwut wrote:
| And countra argument is that smart capable educated people
| choosing to do machine learning instead of physics is not
| social issue. That it is them not lapsing and doing less
| worthy intellectual pursuit.
| Shacklz wrote:
| > And countra argument is that smart capable educated
| people choosing to do machine learning instead of physics
| is not social issue.
|
| You want your brightest in society to do things that
| further society/humanity as a whole; playing the stock-
| market game or optimizing models to further consumerism
| (which is what most ML in the industry boils down to, let's
| be honest) isn't exactly doing that.
|
| Everyone's absolutely free to work on whatever they want,
| that's for sure. But from a society point of view, we
| should ask ourselves if our system sets the right
| incentives.
| stazz1 wrote:
| This is a good article and I disagree but in subtle and nuanced
| ways. For example, say that "overproduction of elites" did lead
| to the Civil War, well we can look to the FDR years and see that
| a progressive tax -- that successfully taxed the wealthiest at a
| rate that dissuaded concentration of wealth beyond a certain
| level -- actually helped: we made libraries and schools and
| public infrastructure in the US.
|
| So while having too many "elites" (by which I assume "wealthy
| people" is meant), we have a storm brewing. Whether that storm
| rains daggers or flowers depends. More "elites" does not always
| result in more "political instability" or "declining living
| standards of the general population." Of course, this is often
| the case in almost every nation especially ones with
| concentrations of power AND concentrations of wealth.
|
| A beautiful aspect of America is that power and wealth are not so
| tightly coupled as in other places. When the populous is educated
| and informed with quality information and ethics, we end up
| having power that is often at-odds with the aims of the wealthy
| who aim to preserve their wealth at the expense of the greater
| good, be it human education, or environmental protection and
| preservation, and matters of that ilk.
|
| So while I do agree that "overproduction of elites" can be
| problematic, I do not agree that this is a uniquely American
| problem or issue. Rather, I contend that America, with our
| innovative and novel system (in the span of historical political
| apparati) is in the best position to combat this parasitical
| relationship the wealthiest of people can have on the majority of
| citizens. Other systems, such as communist systems or monarchical
| systems, are not as fortunate.
|
| Also "money number go up" is -- as a sole motivator --
| problematic. But this flippant verbiage dropped with much aplomb
| is not representative of the difficulties in merely surviving and
| having enough resources to do so. We, in this modern age, still
| indoctrinate our offspring and ourselves with a scarcity mindset,
| and while much of this brain power that goes from "physics to
| quants" would be better spent defeating scarcity, I find it
| peculiar that you did not offer up your own income or savings to
| fund such research and therefore offer to sustain those who are
| seeking sustenance through said career shift. Emblematic of the
| problem, I suppose.
| [deleted]
| fpig wrote:
| > So while having too many "elites" (by which I assume "wealthy
| people" is meant), we have a storm brewing.
|
| It doesn't mean wealthy people. It means people who feel they
| deserve to be a part of the elite, usually by virtue of their
| formal education. If we're "overproducing" such people, a large
| part of them cannot actually achieve this, because there's a
| lot more such people than available positions in the "true"
| elite (ie people having real wealth/power), which causes
| discontent.
|
| _Elite overproduction generally leads to more intra-elite
| competition that gradually undermines the spirit of
| cooperation, which is followed by ideological polarization and
| fragmentation of the political class. This happens because the
| more contenders there are, the more of them end up on the
| losing side. A large class of disgruntled elite-wannabes, often
| well-educated and highly capable, has been denied access to
| elite positions._
|
| This however is also not a uniquely American problem.
| ummonk wrote:
| Oh great yet another person who can't be bothered to understand
| Turchin's theory or the data behind it and then attacks a straw
| man.
|
| Regarding physicists being driven out of research, as a physics
| major, institutional issues in academia have nothing to do with
| me doing coding instead. It's simply that money makes life
| convenient and I'm doing what makes me money. If I got paid
| equivalent amounts to pursue my passions I'd jump at the chance
| but absent that possibility I'd rather earn a lot, FIRE, and then
| focus on passions after.
| rewq4321 wrote:
| Started off interesting (RE institutions evolving into
| infrastructure for supporting zero-sum games), but then devolved
| into some hypotheses (stated as facts) about physicists moving to
| computer science and machine learning being a bad thing.
| cryptica wrote:
| This resonates with my own experience. It's an interesting
| perspective which requires a re-definition of the word 'elite'.
|
| I think the root of the problem is that value creation and value
| capturing are independent from each other. A well-functioning
| economic system should be designed in such a way that the two are
| intertwined such that an individual cannot capture value from the
| system without first creating at least as much value for the
| system.
|
| The problem we have nowadays is that the current monetary system
| has created opportunities for people to capture value (in the
| form of fiat currency) from the system whilst not creating any
| new value in return (in the form of useful products and
| services). The monetary system has even made it possible to
| capture value whilst actually destroying net value from the
| system.
|
| As an open source developer, I got to experience the downside of
| this dynamic; I was able to create a lot of value but not able to
| capture any value in return. I know that if I had tried to
| capture any value back from the system, my ability to create
| value would have been reduced to 0 (adoption of my product would
| have been 0; because nobody would have paid for it; not because
| it doesn't add value for them, but because they needed to start
| using it to understand its value and they wouldn't have started
| using it unless it was free to begin with; simply because there
| is too much noise in the market place; too much cheap 'newly
| printed' fiat capital sloshing around advertising competitors'
| expensive but inferior products). The system allowed me to create
| value, but only on the condition that I would forfeit my ability
| to capture the proceeds of the value I created.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| I think this guy has a point, but it's not actually a rebuttal to
| the elite overproduction thesis, it's more like "for this one
| angle of one piece of the elite overproduction issue we could
| actually do something."
|
| There are lots more people with PHDs that get pushed out of the
| academic research career direction they might have aspired to.
| And if more of them could successfully follow their dreams it'd
| probably be good. But that doesn't seem like a rebuttal to me.
| Sevii wrote:
| He talks about how we have to few people qualified to expand the
| frontier, laments how people with physics education, like myself,
| are working on software engineering, but somehow misses that
| software is the frontier.
|
| People are getting pulled into software engineering because it is
| the biggest frontier opportunity available today.
| dzink wrote:
| Support steers choices for ambitious youth. Those MBAs are
| deployed to put ears on the ground and markets, to surface
| consumer needs, generate demand for products at companies, and
| vet investment worthy projects in the market. They steer capital
| and engineers where the work is valuable, that makes money, and
| that fuels the demand for more MBAs.
|
| Researchers are building branches in the forest of knowledge, but
| to do it they have to bend to the will of an academic apparatus
| that is made to be self serving and zero sum in the hands of few
| who may or may not be worthy of the trust placed in them. There
| is also plenty of fraud and cheating globally among academic
| contributors. It's almost like we need an HN for each branch or
| academic work, so anyone can contribute and see what's novel, and
| the feedback is from vetted experts only, but that would put an
| undue burden on the experts and reduce their own productivity.
| There is room for an open collaborative solution somewhere, but
| it needs a lot of iteration to get it right.
| DevKoala wrote:
| There are way too many examples to validate the elite
| overproduction theory. Just right now we don't have enough
| skilled trade workers to execute on the infrastructure plan.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/09/us/politics/biden-infrast...
| thanhhaimai wrote:
| I don't share the same sentiment that we don't have enough
| talented workers. We just don't have enough workers who are
| willing to work minimum wage with a $0.5/hour raise year over
| year.
| DevKoala wrote:
| The article claims there is not enough trained skilled
| workers which might force the government to delay the
| execution of the plan and dedicate part of the budget to
| training people.
|
| Trade jobs require a certain amount of training/experience
| and pay far above minimum wage. A plumber did a job for me a
| couple months ago and the guy made six figures a year easily,
| I asked him. Right now getting any remodeling done in the Bay
| Area is impossible because there is not enough contractors;
| availability times are three months in the future and often
| you get outbid for their time.
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