To synthesize your point, 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 don’t have access to the first paper you linked, though I can get an idea of what it debates by reading the abstract. The projects in science have been getting bigger, and that is specially true in Physics. A multi-billion dollar project, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), was needed to test the Higgs Boson. Now, some Physicists want an even bigger one. Papers have tens, sometimes hundreds of co-authors because that’s the number of people involved in the operation of the LHC (and also because everybody wants to have publications so that they can get an academic job).
I have heard a few physicists, disillusioned with the realities of the academic job market, say that you can’t act like an early 20th century physicist anymore. This was the time of Einstein, and Bohr, and Rutherford. Nowadays, it’s impossible for a lone physicist working in a patent office in Switzerland to look out the window and have a revolutionary insight that will change Physics forever, like Einstein did. The low-hanging fruits are taken.
Besides, one could argue that the sacrifices needed make it a terrible career path in the personal level (years of postdocs, cutthroat competition, small chance of academic job without any choice of where to live). As 80000 Hours argues in https://80000hours.org/articles/personal-fit/ “the path would ideally be reasonably enjoyable and fit with the rest of your life (e.g. if you want a family, you may want a job without extreme working hours)”. I don’t think the academic job market allows for such considerations, specially in Theoretical Physics.
Other, more applied fields of Physics, of course, are somewhat different, such as Solid State Physics. Albeit still competitive, their job outlooks are better.
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.
To synthesize your point, 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 don’t have access to the first paper you linked, though I can get an idea of what it debates by reading the abstract. The projects in science have been getting bigger, and that is specially true in Physics. A multi-billion dollar project, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), was needed to test the Higgs Boson. Now, some Physicists want an even bigger one. Papers have tens, sometimes hundreds of co-authors because that’s the number of people involved in the operation of the LHC (and also because everybody wants to have publications so that they can get an academic job).
I have heard a few physicists, disillusioned with the realities of the academic job market, say that you can’t act like an early 20th century physicist anymore. This was the time of Einstein, and Bohr, and Rutherford. Nowadays, it’s impossible for a lone physicist working in a patent office in Switzerland to look out the window and have a revolutionary insight that will change Physics forever, like Einstein did. The low-hanging fruits are taken.
Besides, one could argue that the sacrifices needed make it a terrible career path in the personal level (years of postdocs, cutthroat competition, small chance of academic job without any choice of where to live). As 80000 Hours argues in https://80000hours.org/articles/personal-fit/ “the path would ideally be reasonably enjoyable and fit with the rest of your life (e.g. if you want a family, you may want a job without extreme working hours)”. I don’t think the academic job market allows for such considerations, specially in Theoretical Physics.
Other, more applied fields of Physics, of course, are somewhat different, such as Solid State Physics. Albeit still competitive, their job outlooks are better.
Here is your paper:
https://sci-hub.yncjkj.com/10.1257/aer.20180338
You should bookmark sci-hub
https://sci-hub.mksa.top/
(or rather mentally bookmark the name sci-hub, as the url get knocked around a bit)
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.