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The author almost realized the much more important conclusion of the fact he lived. He shouldn't conclude the article by asking "what is the purpose of studying
by fiatjaf 11y ago
The author almost realized the much more important conclusion of the fact he lived. He shouldn't conclude the article by asking "what is the purpose of studying maths?" and then giving an three stupid answers.
He should have asked: is this actually "knowledge" as they say academia brings to society? Is the money researchers earn being well spent? Did I actually deserve to be remunerated by this piece of work no one understands -- and, in fact, no one has read except for maybe three people?
- argonaut 11y agoConsidering that PhDs get paid next to nothing, I actually think they're getting paid pretty adequately.
- fiatjaf 11y agoNothing would be better, considering this article.
- argonaut 11y agoExcept that some % of PhDs go on to be professors (who do a real service), and every once in a while you get a PhD student whose work probably contributes hundreds of millions of value to society. And every couple years or so, you have a PhD student who contributes billions to society in value. Not to mention PhDs usually have to TA (teach students), which accounts for some of their pay.
- fiatjaf 11y agoThere's no example of a PhD work that contributed hundreds of millions of value to society. (I could say there's no way to measure "value to society", in fact this concept means nothing, but I agree on settling on "an enourmous amount of productive capital to someone, not exactly the society").
- argonaut 11y agoA one minute google search reveals: Radioactivity. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/themes/physics/curie/ http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/themes/physics/curie/ Nash equilibrium. http://rbsc.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/Non-Cooperative_Games_Nash.pdf http://rbsc.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/Non-Cooperativ... Emergence of digital circuit design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Symbolic_Analysis_of_Relay_and_Switching_Circuits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Symbolic_Analysis_of_Relay_a... A pretty ridiculous thing to claim.
- reikonomusha 11y agoIt's not that no one can understand it. It's that someone who has been out of math research for half a decade can't understand it.
- fiatjaf 11y agoHow many have read it?