Comment by yeahnope6502 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yeahnope6502 | Hacker News Reader

Peter Higgs (of the namesake Boson fame): "I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system" [1].

I entered academia later on in life to pursue a dream that I had when I was 21 and put off for too long. I get to work on what I think are the hardest problems in TCS/QIS, bar none, and that often feels incredible. But academia is just so damned rough with no two way around it. It crushes brilliant people who think slow and don't chase grants. While rewarding people who gleefully call science 'pain'. And worse still, the rewards are quite meager.

Easily the brightest mind I know (who is dutifully in the 'pain' camp) doesn't conform to the performative aspects of academia and is worse off for it, despite their bottomless capability and tenacity. The rope is so tight and it regularly feels like walking it is harder than the halting problem.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-...

(was going to post this on my main, but, well, my handle says it all)

The Peter Higgs example that people throw around is just not a good one.

Higgs was simply among the first to publish an idea that several other people came up with basically simultaneously. He then essentially sat on his hands for the remainder of his academic career, at least scientifically, with a dismal output of less than one not-too-impressive paper per decade - at what was arguably the most exciting time for particle physics.

For all I know he was an admirable teacher and colleague, but I really think that in a world without Peter Higgs we would not have seen a noticeable regression of theoretical particle physics.

There do exist Nobel prize winners from that era who really changed the field, often beyond their prize-winning work: people like Anderson, 't Hooft, Wilson, Weinberg, Gell-Mann, and many others. But Higgs is just not one of them.

Indeed. In interviews he has even boasted with his abysmal academic output (sorry, no link, just a vague memory). It's like 10 papers in total. I feel like he's the most overrated scientist of all time.

Maybe he could be just underrated is you change the evaluation metrics from quantity to quality?

Not really, see the comment I was replying to for details.

Fair enough. I could have picked something better than Higgs quote, it just felt evocative off the cuff.

Hopefully, that doesn't somehow minimize the overall message I was trying to make.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com