you believe that replaceability and economics of scale ensure that individual impact in Theoretical Physics is small, unless you are able to be revolutionary, like Einstein?
I’m not saying that you necessarily present day adjusted Einstein-level to be a physicist. If you have strong personal fit and are very motivated then maybe still consider it. You could also do some other physics (see for instance Toby Ord’s astrophysics papers).
I’m just saying everyone who goes to university is implicitly exposed to the ‘basic research is the most noble / high impact pursuit ever’ meme… and I think that’s not true… so if you have other interests then you could just pursue those, and all else being equal, you would have more impact because they’re likely more neglected in terms of raw IQ than particle physics. But then some argue that society pushes too much raw IQ into the financial sector and not enough into science.
I’m not saying that you necessarily present day adjusted Einstein-level to be a physicist. If you have strong personal fit and are very motivated then maybe still consider it. You could also do some other physics (see for instance Toby Ord’s astrophysics papers).
I’m just saying everyone who goes to university is implicitly exposed to the ‘basic research is the most noble / high impact pursuit ever’ meme… and I think that’s not true… so if you have other interests then you could just pursue those, and all else being equal, you would have more impact because they’re likely more neglected in terms of raw IQ than particle physics. But then some argue that society pushes too much raw IQ into the financial sector and not enough into science.