Hacker News Reader

Comment by Dig1t | Hacker News Reader

This was a super interesting article, it makes me sad though. As someone who loves studying physics for fun, it's disheartening to hear how hard it is to be really good at it and how people at the highest levels kind of look down on all the people who are not researchers in the field. I mean, I get it, it's a very difficult field and it requires an incredible rigor to contribute to it. It gives me a kind of "what's the point?" feeling though. The best I can ever be is a crackpot.

View on HN

Hi @Dig1t, PhD in quantum physics here. I think it's important to add some nuance here.

1. The crackpots are trying to "disrupt" or "overhaul" the very foundations of Physics. Finding something beyond general relativity or beyond quantum field theory is unlikely without high brain power combined with a minimum of 10 years of full time study. There's no way around it. It's like wanting to be an opera composer with a few months of guitar lessons.

2. This does not mean that there aren't thousands of fun, relevant and impactful physics problems out there. In all areas of physics. There are thousands of small questions that puzzle the best physicists and which they don't have time for, or haven't gotten the inspiration for, etc. Many of them can be tackled without understanding the whole field. It's not about laying new foundations which need to agree with decades and decades of data and theory. It's about using the tools to push the frontier.

If (2) sound interesting, keep going. If you contact a physicist and say:

- I know this and that math (done all problems in this and that textbook) - I'm interested in your field - Are there any accessible open problems that my math could potentially crack open?

Most physicists will likely point you towards interesting problems.

2nd year physics, my first lecture was one of the professors rambling away about quarks and other tiny particles. During that lecture I saw my future life:

1. Highly unlikely best case scenario : Academic treadmill and all that implies, PhD, Postdoc, applying for grants, tenuous employment forevermore etc. The rest of society view me as a crackpot even if my fellow physicists like my ideas. I mean even if you have a Nobel it's not like society in general would value you as much as say Linus.

2. Highly Likely scenario I fail or find something else interesting to do, at some point - all that effort and agony and knowledge of quarks and tiny particles is of very little use in my day to day life.

So, like you, "What's the point?"

I chose option 2. - go do something else. I walked away and never came back. Studying computers was relevant to my daily decisions every day of my life - even if I were to have a career not directly in IT.

3. I help people solve practical problems that require relatively mundane physics and math, plus the ability to bridge multiple disciplines, use things like theory and modeling as tools, and conduct experiments to test hypotheses. At a company that makes measurement equipment.

Some of this stuff is work that most people hate, and are happy to have off their plates.

This is sort of the problem with academia in general, isn't it? And the worst part is that it's a self-reinforcing problem.

Students see the academic path and at some point along the way realize it's not for them. It doesn't pay well, it's really difficult, and you have to constantly engage with an environment that is at best pedantic and at worst bureaucratic and toxic. Yet we still need more professors to actually teach, although the research grants, administrative costs, budget structures may not allow for it.

Academics should see themselves as public servants, not a priest class.

Agreed. But then funding/employment terms has to be reworked to match.

Then why does a PhD include a vow of celibacy, years of silent seclusion to meditate, and the abandonment of greed and ego in favor of beliefs in a greater power?

They are doing a public service by calling out the crackpots

Reply on news.ycombinator.com