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Comment by hwillis | Hacker News Reader

> We don't have Einsteins because the brightest people don't work on astrophysics because there's no money in it.

Einstein worked in a patent office from 1902-1909. In 1905 he published four papers on the photoelectric effect (laying the way for quantum physics), Brownian motion (proving the existence of atoms), special relativity, and the equivalence of mass and energy (leading to atomic energy).

From the beginning Einstein wanted to be a teacher and had little interest in money. Has money suddenly become more important to everyone?

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> Has money suddenly become more important to everyone?

Quite possibly, or dare I say probably. The amount of available products and experiences one could purchase with more money was significantly smaller in Einstein's time than today. I think it'd be quite a reasonable hypothesis to posit the explosion of consumerism coupled with the everything everywhere effects of online life have caused folks to be considerably more aware of, and interested, monetary gain.

> Has money suddenly become more important to everyone?

How often people could afford a home and basic necessities for a family (including stability) without focusing on money back then? And how often can people afford those now without focusing on money?

It is very, very likely that it has.

>Has money suddenly become more important to everyone?

Check out career fairs at "top" universities. Kids are clamoring to get into IB and Consulting and giant tech companies. Legions of the best and brightest are literally just chasing prestige and dollars. I mean the number of MIT Math/Physics/CS/etc PhDs alone that go on to do Quant finance is dizzying and should make people think twice about our current society and how it incentivizes work.

It's pretty simple, why go on the Academic Research Post-Doc -> Faculty grind to make relative peanuts when you can walk into a hedge fund and make 300k+ your first year out of your phd?

Einstein applied to higher institutions where he wanted to work, but he was not admitted. The patent office was the available job, so he took it.

Yes. As I said, from the beginning he wanted to be a teacher. And despite having a job of necessity, he worked on physics anyway, and revolutionized the field over a single year.

Maybe the answer is that we have become more effective at detecting and monetizing genius; Einstein might have languished for the rest of his life if he were less driven. Or maybe it's the opposite; we don't give smart people enough time or money without draining them of the time to work on novel discovery. Or both at once.

Einstein got rejected? From where?

I dont remember the exact schools. He was looking for academic teaching/research position. But, he could not find the one. He got the patent job through his friend's father.

Maybe, but back then you just had to be an interested party of some learning whose work was correct. Now you have to be a “professional” or endorsed by one. It’s a status competition with real resources on the table rather than an aristocratic hobby for the few who were interested.

> Maybe, but back then you just had to be an interested party of some learning whose work was correct.

1905 was very different from 1705. It was not particularly different from today, aside from cars, planes and computers. Hell, it was a golden age of physics research and incredibly well respected. The men and woman of the fifth Solvay conference [1], Emmy Noether and all the incredible mathematicians of the time- most of them did not come from means and could hardly be described as aristocrats.

> Now you have to be a “professional” or endorsed by one.

No, you just pay the publishing fee.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solvay_conference_1927.jp...

I do think so. I think wealth disparity has enabled intellectual folks to, very quickly, propel themselves into the upper class, by essentially being part of the money machine that keeps rich people rich (hedge funds, ads, etc.). I don’t have any data to support this but I believe this was literally impossible before some decades ago. Certainly was not available to Einstein.

More evidence: people literally write songs about wanting/making money and this is acceptable in our culture. We live in a disgusting age.

Einstein was a bad example. What is true though is that intelligent people choose not to risk their health and safety by living in poverty.

There is this narrative parroted by the ultra-rich and corporations that life is much more livable for the poor in the modern era (because we have microwaves), but that is simply not true.

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