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Physics worth more to EU economy than retail and financial services, says study

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Re: Physics worth more to EU economy than retail and financial services, says study

#41

Post by walterstucco666 »

madaxe_again wrote: post #39
skribbj wrote: post #25

I'm hopefully a future physicist and the first to defend its importance but this kind of argument seems quite bad faith to me. " Physics-based industries are those that rely heavily on expertise in physics. These include oil and gas extraction, nuclear fuel processing, and various forms of manufacturing like fibre optics, lighting equipment, office machinery, cars, ships and armaments. " Oil extraction, gas, and ship…

You say that, but an awful lot of people doing maths in industry are physicists - mathematicians are far more likely to stay in academia. One of my first jobs was writing trading algorithms in the early 2000s - I was a physics student, most of the dev team were physicists or chemists. We got a mathematician in to consult on some gnarly cluster analysis - but after a month he presented us a white paper that was very,…

But the point is you are not doing physics, you are at best tweaking some pre existing model.

I did it in the past while consulting for a major bank, I studied CS, not physics, and I haven't seen any applied physics in banks.

They hire young people studying physics because they are not scared of working "with numbers", but when you past 40 you're not scared of anything anymore and you'll find there a majority of people with a degree in economy, once you grasped the basics, you can do the job.

While the physics student hopes to be a real physicist someday in the future and stop working on trading models as soon as somethings better comes up.

Re: Physics worth more to EU economy than retail and financial services, says study

#43

Post by imtringued »

toast0 wrote: post #32
Matticus_Rex wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you've nailed it. If a spark plug manufacturer claimed that spark plugs added [insert amount] of value to the economy and claimed the entire amount of value cars add to the economy, everyone could and should call BS on that, despite the fact that without a spark plug, the car doesn't run. It's simply bad accounting.

Splitting hairs, but diesel cars are common in Europe and don't have spark plugs.

This only adds to the argument because it shows that the importance of spark plugs is overblown.

Re: Physics worth more to EU economy than retail and financial services, says study

#44

Post by imtringued »

lazyjones wrote: post #13

The kind of sophistry nonsense that passes as a scientific study these days is amazing. Agriculture is worth much more than physics, since it feeds physicists all by itself. You could come up with many such dependencies to create chains of "worth more" relations, all utterly pointless. If the idea was to get more funding for physicists, it's unconvincing.

Modern agriculture would be impossible without artificial fertilizer.

Re: Physics worth more to EU economy than retail and financial services, says study

#45

Post by fungicide »

pergadad wrote: post #30
sbdmmg wrote: post #2

The conclusion of this study is not clear at all to me. From reading their executive summary, the CEBR researchers seem to take the global value added (GVA) of any physics-based industry, and consider it as a something like a contribution of physics to the society. That sounds like a gross overestimation to me. As an example, they consider "Extraction of crude petroleum" as a physics-based industry. Naively I would c…

Not an unusual lobby study. Then they turn around and tell everyone to teach more physics in school and invest in the field/studies. I've seen similar ones for very different professions with similar outcomes. A but unusual to see it for a field of study on its own though, I guess they have a strong lobby somewhere.

No kidding. CERN takes in public money which it turns into research. It then gifts that research to businesses (frequently owned privately by CERN employees) who then sell products which generate billions in profits. Following the money at CERN is a very complex task, but to the best of my knowledge none of those profits go back to CERN. The gifting of patents seemed like a good thing at the time, but now I think if CERN had a different model, where they kept a small percentage stake in the patents, they would have more than enough cash now to fund themselves and build the next collider, without all this daft lobbying and begging for public money.

Re: Physics worth more to EU economy than retail and financial services, says study

#46

Post by ClumsyPilot »

fungicide wrote: post #45
pergadad wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an unusual lobby study. Then they turn around and tell everyone to teach more physics in school and invest in the field/studies. I've seen similar ones for very different professions with similar outcomes. A but unusual to see it for a field of study on its own though, I guess they have a strong lobby somewhere.

No kidding. CERN takes in public money which it turns into research. It then gifts that research to businesses (frequently owned privately by CERN employees) who then sell products which generate billions in profits. Following the money at CERN is a very complex task, but to the best of my knowledge none of those profits go back to CERN. The gifting of patents seemed like a good thing at the time, but now I think if…

I have seen this happen at universities too, but I don't take issue with it. They will produce research and tech that is typically available for anyone to use. At this point the options are:

1. Technology transfer to an existing business 2. CERN employee starts a business to commercialise it 3. Nothing useful is done at all

Obviously people that originally worked on this research will have a head start when it comes to commercialising it. Most research never leads to anything commercial (at least not withing a reasonable time-frame)

Re: Physics worth more to EU economy than retail and financial services, says study

#47

Post by airstrike »

madaxe_again wrote: post #38
airstrike wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 33% physics, 33% chemistry, and 33% engineering How about financing investments, accounting, sales, supply-chain logistics and managing the business?

You can have all those things - but without a steam engine your mine is staying full of water, and your industrial revolution isn’t happening. Don’t know why you need supply chain logistics for a subsistence farm, because that’s the best you’ll get without physics.

You can have all those things - but without someone to invest in and run the business, your steam engine won't be operational.

Don't know why you need physics for a steam engine with no motion, because that's the best you'll get without money. That's if it ever goes beyond the blueprint.

Re: Physics worth more to EU economy than retail and financial services, says study

#48

Post by ClumsyPilot »

hogFeast wrote: post #17

Scientist discovers that he is very important and valuable. Much more valuable than all those idiots who didn't go to university...or those people who did go to university but earn more than scientist despite being way way more stupid then scientist.

Our society does not value scientists, you can't become a billionaire by doing research.

Einstein, Steven Hawkins, and Isaac Newton went down in history, but their net worth is nothing compared to fast-food chains. Does that means KFC created more value for society?

Re: Physics worth more to EU economy than retail and financial services, says study

#49

Post by airstrike »

marcusverus wrote: post #6
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic retail and financial services could claim the same output. All of these physicists and companies have to use them to survive in the modern world.

Yup. Every field that is a necessary input. Of course, physics could count every company that produced oil, whereas financial services could only count the specific activities that were financed. Giving Exxon a loan for a new office building does not mean you get credit for all of their oil production revenues.

Capital markets and banks fund every single project undertaken by public companies. The only other alternative is private funding, but in which case it's still financing and investors objectively get credit for it – it's why they get rewarded!

This exercise is completely pointless. At best, it serves to show people's biases.

Re: Physics worth more to EU economy than retail and financial services, says study

#50

Post by airstrike »

Iv wrote: post #22
sbdmmg wrote: post #2

The conclusion of this study is not clear at all to me. From reading their executive summary, the CEBR researchers seem to take the global value added (GVA) of any physics-based industry, and consider it as a something like a contribution of physics to the society. That sounds like a gross overestimation to me. As an example, they consider "Extraction of crude petroleum" as a physics-based industry. Naively I would c…

I work in tech and any company with a website calls itself a tech company. Saying you are a physics company as soon as you use advanced materials does not seem that far-fetched from where I stand. And the criterion of "these companies competitive advantage depend partly on recent physics research" is a pretty good one that may indeed include drilling companies and geological exploration.

Any company with a website calls themselves tech because there is a value in doing so, not because they objectively believe that to be true.

There's no value in calling a company a "physics company" because that means nothing outside of this very specific conversation we're having

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