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The opportunity cost of wasting exceptionally intelligent people on unproductive and useless intellectual labor is substantial. The opportunity cost of those i
by samatman 3y ago
The opportunity cost of wasting exceptionally intelligent people on unproductive and useless intellectual labor is substantial.
The opportunity cost of those individuals educating exceptionally intelligent students to specialize in this particular blind alley is even greater.
- bluGill 3y agoIs it? The world only needs a handful of physics every year. However the world needs a large number of people who are trained in the things you need to be good at complex tasks - they type of training you get when working on string theory.
- nathan_compton 3y agoI think you might overestimate how fungible people exceptionally talented at physics might be towards other ends. I was an exceptional physics student and I've frankly never been all that productive at more prosaic tasks. The fact is there just aren't that many people out there interested in string theory for you to get up in arms about. People don't complain nearly as much about mathematicians, who spend their time on much less practical areas of endeavor. Frankly, the fact that some people get to make their living working on marginally-productive things that they like makes me feel a bit warm and fuzzy inside, in a way not unlike the experience I get giving my cat cat food and a place to sleep.