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Comment by ahzhou | Hacker News Reader

While not common, I know of other Chinese diaspora in North America with similar stories.

Many graduates from post Cultural Revolution China left the country in 90's and found the language barrier (and accompanying discrimination) too high to overcome. The man delivering your fried rice might have a PhD.

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An unfortunate parallel: the best physics professor (unfortunately, just an adjunct) I ever had was a Russian immigrant. He quit teaching to go run a blini restaurant because it paid way more :(

This is so true and still the case. I've seen so many highly skilled immigrants passed over for politics and image reasons... Academia is ruthless but for the wrong reasons.

I had so many Russian mathematics professors. They dominate the field, for obvious historical reasons.

Why is this :( though? The market is working and filling a market opportunity. Maybe he likes running his own business? Unless he was being discriminated against for being a Russian immigrant and treated unfairly?

Because the world would be better off having people of that calibre making progress on outstanding problems in maths than having one more mediocre restaurant in it

ok, you're insulting the guy's restaurant and the market disagrees with you, apparently

Contrary to what you may believe, the market has failure modes. Just because something is difficult to monetise doesn't mean that it's not valuable. Fundamental research is one such thing. It can open up vast realms of possibility for all of humanity, but in a way that's difficult, if not impossible, to privatise. And the benefits may take years, decades or even centuries to pay off. Thus there is very little incentive for any market actors to invest in them.

But if Newton had decided to open an inn instead of work on the Principia the world would have been far worse off for it. Possibly centuries behind where we are now.

I will apologise for calling the restaurant mediocre. I have no idea about the quality of the food, but if you think that's what this hinges on then you've missed the point. That as good a restaurant as it may be, it's not worth losing a mathematician of his calibre over.

I get it, but I do get some satisfaction out of observing when justifications of perceived value meet market realities. I don't think it's bad, I think it's interesting, and the person made the choice that was theirs to make. That's economic freedom.

I'm not sure what you're deriving satisfaction out of. That the market prevented someone from being able to earn a living and fulfilling their potential at the same time? I'm genuinely confused

I don't believe there's enough data in the original comment to assume that the market prevented them from being able to fulfill their living working with physics. It said they could make more money running a restaurant. If that it is the case they could not earn a living at all, and it's due to discrimination, which I asked about, then I agree it's not good. But if it's the case they could make a living in physics but chose to instead open a restaurant due to making a better living that way, then yes I think it's good.

Based on the provided information I judge it more likely that their passion was maths and physics but were prevented from doing so because of certain economic realities than they had more interest in running a restaurant than engaging in research. You may disagree.

It's late, but he made poverty wages as an adjunct.

My calculus professor from university in the late '90s had earlier on won a Lottery Visa to the US. As I understood it he took advantage of it, only to find out that while there he could only find very menial jobs.

He came back to Romania and to Bucharest, which was really good for me and for my then colleagues because he was an excellent professor.

Eastern Europeans can relate too. Lots of people with phd from finance to physics and philosophy were or at least started like that in Western Europe too.

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