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It's a surprise even if you restrict your point of view to the narrow economic interests of his employer, UCLA, who benefits from Tao's discoveries. Shelling o
by jonahx 4y ago
It's a surprise even if you restrict your point of view to the narrow economic interests of his employer, UCLA, who benefits from Tao's discoveries. Shelling out another 50k or so for an assistant, even if it boosts his productivity by only 10%, is a no-brainer.
If you expand your point of view to the interests of all mathematicians, or society at large, the waste here is even more extravagant.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoAn assistant who could do what Tao did is not going to be $50k.
- valarauko 4y agoThe assistant's job would be to take low-hanging fruit non-research administrative tasks off his hands - pretty much like the tasks here.
- joshspankit 4y agoThe assistant would have gone through the documents manually and that’s very much a $50k/yr task