Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system • Hacker News Board

Re: Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

#81

Post by cvet » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 6:10 AM UTC

ChristianMarks wrote: post #67

Higgs isn't alone in remarking that he would not have had the time today to conduct the kind of work he did in the 1960s. Brian Greene has remarked that today’s grant-driven academia would not have allowed Einstein the luxury of a decade in which to develop his General Theory of Relativity. Eric Weinstein wrote that, "We have spent the last decades inhibiting such socially marginal individuals or chasing them to drop…

As a student in a Ph.D. program, I can't help but think I'm caught in the grant-driven world and am being steered away from deeper consideration of big ideas. It's an easy track to get stuck on, mostly because grant-proposing is a game, identifying a minor unexplored area is relatively simple, and there are short-term rewards for doing so.

What's really getting at me is the arrogance of established "experts." It's kind of baffling (because it should be about curiosity, not certainty), and when you come across someone who has made it through the academic system and still retained curiosity, independent-mindedness, etc., it's a really refreshing sight.

That being said, a lot of what I do is unfulfilling and I've discussed several times leaving the academic world for some kind of tech startup life, although I'm not sure if that is a pipe dream or grounded in reality.

Re: Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

#82

Post by visakanv » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 6:20 AM UTC

purringmeow wrote: post #57

amerika_blog wrote: post #48

School is an obedience/memorization test, the exact opposite of the real-world applied thinking skills that are needed. Private schooling is bad; public schooling is even worse. That's where ideology substitutes for academics as well. Memorizing 20 ways to do something, and then finding a way to cram in each one on a test in an "applied" situation, leads to indiscriminate use of technique and poor debugging skills.

I am interested in what kind of alternative are you offering? How do you give basic knowledge to the majority of people?

I anticipate that a lot of it will come through other means. Check out http://www.youtube.com/crashcourse, it's doing a fantastic job of making knowledge fun, interesting, engaging and cool.

Re: Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

#83

Post by avrilkiki » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 6:24 AM UTC

vorg wrote: post #80

avrilkiki wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of TBBT is not to entertain nerds, it's to acclimatize everyone else to the new normal where nerds hold a form of status. In 2013 nerds can be very rich, their fields can be very influential, and their intelligence can be useful to normals. Normals, however, don't understand how to relate to nerds in a post-high school environment. Their previous social training has been to simply ostracize and bully. TBB…

The word nerd doesn't mean nowadays what it meant 20 or 30 yrs ago. It's been appropriated by business sorts as a label so they can pass themselves off as creators of genuine stuff as part of their sales routine. Look at most of the nerds nowadays and ask if these people are really "persons of above average intelligence who don't care about their appearance"? Real nerds tend to use the aspie label nowadays.

The nerds on TBBT really are real nerds. All of them. They are different flavors of nerd. Sheldon is the aspie pervert creep. Raj and Howard are creepy manchildren. Leonard is the low self-esteem self-conscious self-hating type.

Re: Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

#84

Post by AKifer » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 6:51 AM UTC

Something I noticed 'An atheist since the age of 10, he fears the nickname "reinforces confused thinking in the heads of people who are already thinking in a confused way. If they believe that story about creation in seven days, are they being intelligent?"' How someone [intelligent enough to get the Nobel prize] who knows relativist equations better than the average could argue that creating the universe in 7 days is stupid ? Didn't we know since Einstein discovered it that time can expand and compress depending of the environment ? And who can say that Earth local time is the norm ? Better back to pre-Gallileo time then, when everyone though Earth is the center of the Universe.

Re: Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

#85

Post by nhebb » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 7:30 AM UTC

vorg wrote: post #80

avrilkiki wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of TBBT is not to entertain nerds, it's to acclimatize everyone else to the new normal where nerds hold a form of status. In 2013 nerds can be very rich, their fields can be very influential, and their intelligence can be useful to normals. Normals, however, don't understand how to relate to nerds in a post-high school environment. Their previous social training has been to simply ostracize and bully. TBB…

The word nerd doesn't mean nowadays what it meant 20 or 30 yrs ago. It's been appropriated by business sorts as a label so they can pass themselves off as creators of genuine stuff as part of their sales routine. Look at most of the nerds nowadays and ask if these people are really "persons of above average intelligence who don't care about their appearance"? Real nerds tend to use the aspie label nowadays.

The Portlandia Nerd PSA hits on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir3v5yDk9Ws

Re: Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

#86

Post by laichzeit0 » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 7:46 AM UTC

naiyt wrote: post #77

rtpg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A few days? People get upset if you haven't replied in an hour. I've solved this problem by always taking forever to answer e-mails. If it's important, people just call me. Whether this is good or not is questionable, however.

My problem is then I'll get too many phone calls. And for me, a phone call is more disruptive to my workflow then an email. Then again, that's probably just because I dislike talking on the phone in general.

I solved this problem too. People know that I hardly ever answer my phone either, unless you arranged to call me. If it's important, leave a voicemail with a reason why you called not just some "call me back" contextless shit. By "arranged to call me" I mean sending me an email and asking if you can call and at what time. I check mail about 3 times a day.

We really new to get over this instant communication fad. It's counterproductive.

Re: Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

#87

Post by irollboozers » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 7:58 AM UTC

hyp0 wrote: post #47

sampo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will not answer your question, but at the end of his CV here, there is his list of publications. http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/higgs/peter-higgs

aha! just as I suspected ... during 1951-1964, he published 16 papers, better than one per year. But, after his breakthrough, he eased back to 9, over 1965-2013... and only the first 3 look to be research papers (the remaining 6 seem to be historical recountings). Now, I don't blame him - do something incredible, why not slack off? He's way more accomplished than I could ever hope to be. But if you want an exemplar o…

Why is it slacking off? Is it instead not normal for scientists to publish 3 papers over ~40 years? How do we know whether or not this is normal or abnormal?

I'm inclined to believe we don't. And that we only assume so because of the incentive structures in place in our grant-first, publish-always system.

Re: Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

#88

Post by chubot » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 8:12 AM UTC

paul wrote: post #3

I feel like the inability to focus for long periods of time is holding back progress in many areas. If we can't even stay away from email for a few days, how can we clear our minds of conventional thinking?

It's a problem, but I think if you really value time, you can make it.

I've found that the best way to spend less time on e-mail is to send it very infrequently. I used to send tons of e-mail at work, and that was valuable to me at the time. Now I choose very carefully what to reply to, because every message I send means I will get something in return. It's pretty astoundingly effective.

Another strategy is to keep an odd schedule. I generally get to my desk around 2pm, so I'm sufficiently out of sync with people who get to their desk at 9 or 10am. It's also good because there so little (bike) traffic that I can space out and think on the commute.

Re: Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

#89

Post by sampo » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 8:14 AM UTC

avrilkiki wrote: post #55

GuiA wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: Big Bang Theory, I enjoyed this post: http://butmyopinionisright.tumblr.com/post/31079561065/the-p...

The purpose of TBBT is not to entertain nerds, it's to acclimatize everyone else to the new normal where nerds hold a form of status. In 2013 nerds can be very rich, their fields can be very influential, and their intelligence can be useful to normals. Normals, however, don't understand how to relate to nerds in a post-high school environment. Their previous social training has been to simply ostracize and bully. TBB…

> laughing at the nerds not with them

I think there is quite a lot laughing at normals going on in TBBT, too.

Re: Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

#90

Post by gscott » Sat, Dec 07, 2013, 8:17 AM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #65

amerika_blog wrote: post #48

School is an obedience/memorization test, the exact opposite of the real-world applied thinking skills that are needed. Private schooling is bad; public schooling is even worse. That's where ideology substitutes for academics as well. Memorizing 20 ways to do something, and then finding a way to cram in each one on a test in an "applied" situation, leads to indiscriminate use of technique and poor debugging skills.

> Private schooling is bad; public schooling is even worse. That's where ideology substitutes for academics as well. Not picking on you, but this comes up a lot about public education as a tool for brainwashing. Often the implication is it's by those "liberal teachers". I must say, based on the voting record in the US, those teachers are incredibly ineffective brainwashers.

My kids come home brainwashed from school all of the time. I have to sit them down and have them think about what is being taught to them so they can look at it objectively and make their own decisions.