tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post5277845750598316671..comments2024-03-28T21:56:51.675-04:00Comments on Face to Face: Geniuses on MTV: The portent of intellectual cultureagnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-21651707228078251152007-04-03T08:00:00.000-04:002007-04-03T08:00:00.000-04:00I think it was Watson of DNA structure fame who sa...I think it was Watson of DNA structure fame who said something similar to one of your ideas - that when he was a young man in the 1950s science was one of the few interesting things around. But now there is a lot more freedom to pursue all sorts of esoteric interests, which are just as immediately arresting but less hard work. I always find it amusing to see very bright people focusing on the silliest and most trivial topics - the Comic Book Guy effect.Karna O'Deahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13664573386167940506noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-55412686824619183612007-03-31T20:08:00.000-04:002007-03-31T20:08:00.000-04:00If you're tenured faculty, sure - it's a decent in...If you're tenured faculty, sure - it's a decent income. If you're a postdoc shuttling between three neighboring universities in order to make ends meet, it's a whole different story. Guess which one is more likely scenario for a would-be PhD? <BR/><BR/>As far as Wall-Street goes, my guess is the guys raking in the dough are going at it whole-hog. A guy trying to achieve a work-life balance in such a hypercompetitive field is likely to end up broke.<BR/>If you know any counterexamples, I'd like to hear about them.<BR/><BR/>A more workable option to someone who wants to divide his time between making a lasting contribution and paying the bills is to find a niche that's fairly low in status, is not too demanding, and not too crowded.<BR/><BR/>For example, I have a relative who maintains old COBOL programs. It's not terribly exciting but it pays decently, she only has to work about 30 hours a week, and so far her employers haven't been very successful in displacing her work with cheap foreign labor. <BR/><BR/>I'm ok with your idea of switching from one field to another, newer one. I believe that most of the discoveries in the 21st century will be in multidisciplinary fields and the applied sciences. So an aspiring mathematician might consider specializing in mathematical genetics, or a chemist might go into nanotechnology.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-23404736817936767382007-03-31T18:39:00.000-04:002007-03-31T18:39:00.000-04:00Well, "starvation" and "decent income" are surely ...Well, "starvation" and "decent income" are surely exaggerations -- you can live on any faculty member's salary, and raking in the dough on Wall St. is far above "decent."<BR/><BR/>Another option for physicists who feel they won't be able to make huge contributions is to simply invade a less developed field. 20th C. biology would have been totally different were it not for two "career-changing" physicists: R.A. Fisher, a pioneer of population genetics and statistics, and Francis Crick, the brains behind discovering the structure of DNA (as well as some neuroscience stuff). In linguistics, Paul Smolensky is a physics PhD who has brought a lot of new ideas to the field.<BR/><BR/>Usually, such people are pretty smart, know a lot of math, and have logged lots of man-hours modeling stuff. All that's left is some "summer reading" that will get them up-to-date with the basic ideas and literature of their new field, some chatting with established figures, and then there they go.<BR/><BR/>Again, I'm just suggesting moderation -- maybe the physics PhD decides to devote 1/3 of their work time to a lucrative career and 2/3 to work of (in principle) lasting importance. Anything but shrugging their shoulders and disappearing into non-culturally productive occupations.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-51956566274322087102007-03-31T18:04:00.000-04:002007-03-31T18:04:00.000-04:00According to Norman Matloff, a professor of Comput...According to Norman Matloff, a professor of Computer Science at UC Davis, the US has been massively overproducing PhDs for many years. That's the main reason why there's such a high proportion of foreign PhDs and postdocs - they're willing to work for peanuts in return for a shot at a green card. Native-born American have no such incentive, so they've gone off to greener pastures. The choice isn't between being a wealthy but "underachieving" financial analyst or attorney and just doing OK as a scientist or a mathematician. It's a choice between a lifetime of financial insecurity and working brutally hard for starvation wages vs. the possibility of making a decent income.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-22223526672860555492007-03-31T14:29:00.000-04:002007-03-31T14:29:00.000-04:00Interesting post. To pull something, almost at ran...Interesting post. To pull something, almost at random: "it is sheer vice for a mathematically gifted person to join the ranks of "quants" on Wall Street in order to be buried beneath a pile of money once they're gone". In Emanuel Derman's book, "My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance", he makes it clear that being a physics genius means endless low-paid postdoc and assistant professor positions that go nowhere and lead to few scientific discoveries. One can hardy blame people like him for going to work on Wall Street. Besides, lots of important discoveries have been made in finance over the past generation by geniuses who applied themselves to it (Sharpe, Markowitz, Black, et.al., all Nobel Prize winners).Dennis Manganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16934802482968611507noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-39213372943557328032007-03-31T12:50:00.000-04:002007-03-31T12:50:00.000-04:00agnostic said Ray -- I haven't read that book, but...agnostic said <BR/><<<BR/>Ray -- I haven't read that book, but my response to the "low-lying fruit" argument is that this is a misnomer: it's only low-lying in retrospect.<BR/>>><BR/><BR/>I'm not so sure about that. For example, a study by NBER researcher Benjamin Jones has shown that the average age at which individuals produce notable inventions and ideas has increased noticeably.<BR/><BR/>This suggests that we may be approaching cognitive limits in our ability to make new discoveries.<BR/><BR/>Source : <BR/>http://www.nber.org/digest/dec05/w11359.html<BR/><BR/><<<BR/> A late 19th C physicist could've complained about how physics had become reduced to filling in the minor gaps left by Newton. <BR/>>><BR/>> Then boom, quantum revolution -- not gap-filling at all.<BR/><BR/>Great, but what comes after that<BR/>revolution? And the next one? We've been stuck with string theory for the past thirty years, which so far has escaped empirical verification. <BR/><BR/>Maybe a bigger, better particle accelerator can solve that conundrum. But I suspect we could easily come to a point where its no longer economically feasible to <BR/>invest in more powerful equipment.<BR/>Or we run into cognitive limitations that bar us from making further advances. This argument also applies to the arts, not just the sciences. <BR/><BR/>> Technology is the one domain <BR/>> where there's pretty steady <BR/>> progress, and I have an idea why, > which I'll write up soon.<BR/><BR/>I'd be interested in your thoughts on that one. My own feeling is that immense changes are still in store for us as a species but our technological capabilities will also come to a level of near-stasis.<BR/><BR/>And they will do so within a time period very short compared to our history as a species. <BR/><BR/>Realistically, how long do you think our era of rapid technological progress can continue? A century or two is certainly possible, but surely it can't be thousands of years.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-58561320146052628662007-03-25T23:52:00.000-04:002007-03-25T23:52:00.000-04:00Ray -- I haven't read that book, but my response t...Ray -- I haven't read that book, but my response to the "low-lying fruit" argument is that this is a misnomer: it's only low-lying in retrospect. A late 19th C physicist could've complained about how physics had become reduced to filling in the minor gaps left by Newton. Then boom, quantum revolution -- not gap-filling at all.<BR/><BR/>Scientists can apparently never see the revolution coming, or else they'd beat the "intended" discoverer to the punchline and claim easy fame. So we're always going to be in for surprises. Same with art and music -- who saw linear perspective coming (and remember how long art had stagnated due to lack of perspective), or the fugue (again, look at the stagnation -- no polyphony in the ancient world, only in late Medieval France)? Technology is the one domain where there's pretty steady progress, and I have an idea why, which I'll write up soon.<BR/><BR/>Spike -- lack of control to some degree, sure. I'm talking about giving in to distractions. Picasso or Van Gogh wouldn't have created anything if they didn't focus at least long enough to become inspired and execute their vision. An important mathematician (Galois) barely left an intellectual legacy at all because he was mortally wounded in a duel at age 20. So, high-ranking figures probably need to exercise even more restraint than a normal person since they tend to be a bit nuts.<BR/><BR/>Axolotl -- that's quite an argument for home-schooling! Or at least trying to stick your kids in a school where degenerates don't dictate fashion. This is definitely harder when you also have to worry about your kid playing lots of video games and watching lots of TV (not corrupting morally, but it takes time away from doing things).<BR/><BR/>Anon -- "hot chicks" are definitely relevant to my intellectual pursuits, as I study human variation and try to account for it through an evolutionary lens. It's no different from an ornithologist trying to account for why the prettiest birds with the most ornate songs are more likely to come from some regions than others.<BR/><BR/>One man's trash... in fact, several of the bloggers and many of the readers at GNXP, not to mention the larger Western intellectual culture, are fascinated by religion. My Japanese grandma must've passed me her alleles at the religion genes, because I think an interest in religion is a perfect waste of time. (NE Asians are pretty a-religious.)<BR/><BR/>The research psychology part is interesting, if no more so than other topics in psych, but Dawkins, Dennett, and others spend too much time talking about religion, from my point-of-view. That's a higher-paid version of a smartie working at Starbucks or Barnes & Noble.<BR/><BR/>Then again, I may be missing something -- I'd trust a poll of a large, representative sample of people in my line of work. If they said trying to measure and explain variation in good looks, singing ability, dancing ability, etc., was a waste of time for a whatever-I'm-called*, then I'd trust their judgment. But I don't see that happening.<BR/><BR/>*Human behavioral ecologist, evolutionary anthropologist, evolutionary psychologist, sociobiologist? Y'know what I mean.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-32105253813315814582007-03-25T17:55:00.000-04:002007-03-25T17:55:00.000-04:00One of things that struck me while reading some of...One of things that struck me while reading some of your past posts is that your main research interest -Hot Chicks (HCs) (e.g. who is the HC? what lands do they hail from? of all HCs, which are the hottest? how do you score one?) seems like a rather silly use of your time & brains. I hope you'll take your own advice & use the time you spend poring over beauty pageant data on something a little more relevant.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-73111321573896110902007-03-25T16:00:00.000-04:002007-03-25T16:00:00.000-04:00I watched that program as well. Perhaps part of th...I watched that program as well. Perhaps part of the problem is that there are schools now. Most of the intellectual giants of old were upper class (likely because lower class meant malnutrition), and were probably tutored in private or with a few others of their status. A great amount of their learning was memorization of great works and facts - which could consume an entire day. It's likely they had little free time with other kids, and the kind of popular clique culture in existance now wouldn't have been possible when the young were always chaperoned. In effect, every upper class kid studied every subject all day without distraction, and was punished if those cultural references were not ingrained by adulthood. Even girls had to know how to quote literature, sew, paint, play the piano, and speak a few languages.<BR/><BR/>Alternately, even the 14 year old genius in this show feels he must attend a drunken underage party to feel normal, and get some normal friends (even though he has outsider friends). So maybe the problem is that those who might live the life of the mind are being convinced by a mob of teenager that it sucks, and they should worry more about what the mob of teenagers thinks.<BR/><BR/>(Also, I cannot believe that the 16 year old did not realize he needed extracurriculars. His brother was applying at the same time!)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-87895340329157242792007-03-24T16:59:00.000-04:002007-03-24T16:59:00.000-04:00I thank the non-existant God for having spanked me...I thank the non-existant God for having spanked me with failure enough times that it finally got through that IQ test scores mean jack without the ass-busting necessary to learn how to put it to good use.<BR/><BR/>On the subject of self-control, I'm of the belief that at least in the arts, genius can be fueled by a lack of control. I liken it thusly, a Picasso steadily feeds the creative fire over time, achieving a lifetimes worth of work and development. A Van Gogh dumps all the tinder into the flames at once which makes a huge fire that burns out quickly. One couldn't achieve the big flame along a slow and steady path. At times there's a "method" to the madness.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-19015600868788452842007-03-24T13:37:00.000-04:002007-03-24T13:37:00.000-04:00Interesting commentary. One possible reason for de...Interesting commentary. One possible reason for declining accomplishment that you didn't consider (I don't think Murray did either) is that we may be running low on new things to discover/invent. In his book "Paradoxes of Progress" Gunther Stent discusses this possibility and so does John Horgan in his book "The End of Science". <BR/><BR/>I find them both to be way too pessimistic, but they make some points worth serious consideration. <BR/>There may come a point where it becomes almost impossible to make a nontrivial contribution to the arts or sciences, no matter how many Mozarts, Einsteins, or Newtons we have.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com