4 ms·
Yes, i stumbled upon a reddit thread recently where the conversation devolved into actual hate for people who were curious about studying the "why's" of quantum
by wholinator2 4y ago
Yes, i stumbled upon a reddit thread recently where the conversation devolved into actual hate for people who were curious about studying the "why's" of quantum. The most liked comment and prevailing attitude was, "it doesn't affect my research, so i don't care", which makes sense but those same people were getting upset that _anyone_ might want to make it _their_ research.
I'd heard of the hate before but it was so baffling to witness. I left a comment asking for explanations to my above observation and received no replies. As someone who's personally very interested in this type of research, it kinda terrifies me.
- parton 4y agoYou shouldn't pay too much attention to the hate, what you find interesting is intensely personal and few others will ever understand. Foundations is in a much better spot than it was 50 years ago, and you can definitely succeed in it. Having said that, as someone outside the field who peeks in every once and a while, it does seem like a lot of foundations research (that gets noticed at least) is about constructing flashy abstracts out of simple linear algebra. The interesting stuff always seems to belong to another field, like computation, error correction, encryption, etc. Combine this with many physicists' distaste for philosophy, and you'll get the current attitude towards foundations.