My dream died, and now I'm here

What people said

wg0 · 2024-09 · Recommendation

On a tangent, this video[0] from Sabine Hossenfelder about academics in general is eye opening. In comments, veritasium[1] agrees: >After finishing my PhD I went to a university-led session on ‘What Comes Next.’ What I heard sounded a lot like “now, you beg for money.” It was so depressing to think about all the very clever people in that room who had worked so very hard only to find out they had no financial security and would be spending most of their days asking for money. I realised that even what I thought of as the ‘safe path’ was uncertain so I may as well go after what I truly want. That led me here. EDIT: Typos [0]. [VIDEO] [1]. [LINK]

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biomcgary · 2024-06 · Recommendation

I love Sabine Hossenfelder's personal take on the social problems in science ( [VIDEO] ), which reminded me a lot of my own experience in academic science. She also has some critiques of particle physics that I find compelling - but outside my knowledge domain - where the sociological dynamics sound similar to things I've bumped into in biology.

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jasode · 2024-12 · Reference

>, I wish Sabine Hossenfelder didn't have to leave academia. [...] I understand that she is catering to the audience but this is one example why alignment of the incentives works. Before, she was earning her living as a working physicist so she did not have to cater to anyone actually But this obscures the fact that she was still "catering to the audience" when working in academia as a paid physicist. She was just placating a different audience and worked on topics she really didn't think was groundbreaking just to keep the grant money rolling in. The misalignment of incentives just happened outside of Youtube. Deep link to her explanation: [VIDEO] A lot of viewers wish that "content creator" wasn't a thing and people just did Youtube for free as a hobby. Understandable. But what viewers don't realize is that it's also actually saying this: "Please continue being unhappy in your crappy day job so you don't need to live off money from Youtube ads or sponsorships."

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