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Fortunately such ridiculous hypotheticals have no correspondence to reality. Most every job can be easily trained or cross trained. Mathematicians make good phy
by throwaway85825 2mo ago
Fortunately such ridiculous hypotheticals have no correspondence to reality. Most every job can be easily trained or cross trained. Mathematicians make good physicists. Nor is there some foreign pipeline of a million physicists. Such ridiculous argument exist only to perpetuate the lie of a skills shortage and deny the wage shortage.
- doc_ick 2mo agoThey may make good physicists, but not great physicists. Similar to saying I know how to drive a car, now let me win the inde 500. Things take to for specialization, even with the advent of guessing and checking machines (llms).
- throwaway85825 2mo agoA shocking number of innovations in x field are because y person brought an idea that maps from z field. Cross functional teams are important and mathematicians can and absolutely do make top level contributions to physics. One of the math problems recently publicized as having being solved by was actually just discovering that a German mathematician had published a solution in the 1950s.
- doc_ick 2mo agoOh that is true, and I’m not putting down cross functional teams. I’m just putting down the idea that a specialist in one area can immediately be a specialist in another semi related area with no extra review time.
- throwaway85825 2mo agoIf you ask specialists about their backgrounds you will find that they took different paths. The critical step is time in the speciality, not background. For any job there's never a pool of applicants who are pretrained for that exact job, everyone takes time to get up to speed. People from related fields do just as well learning job tasks. The labor market is fluid if properly incentivized. Commenters intentionally pretend not to understand because they want cheap labor and want to impoverish the American worker.
- doc_ick 2mo agoCommenter doesn’t seem to understand how much of a drift there is for specialty learning or different negative patterns specialists may have. A front end architect and a computer architect may have similar backgrounds, but a computer architect will take wildly longer to learn front end and likely have some practices to un-learn. Also I would say for certain areas, people are pre-trained for the exact job as the tools or tech between is the exact same. It’s not just commenters who want cheaper labor, capitalism wants cheaper labor.
- throwaway85825 2mo agoA lot of employers would have slaves if they were allowed, doesnt mean that the workers shouldn't do everything possible to prevent this and politically demand better conditions. Such as the case in the topic of the thread.
- doc_ick 2mo agoI would agree employers would likely want that, though since in the us it’s difficult for labor unions to ever be created let alone extra protections or the necessity of tips or us at-will hire/fire. My point of your thread was disagreement with the immediate transfer of knowledge: “Most every job can be easily trained or cross trained.” I disagree with most jobs can easily be trained or cross trained, there is more of a time sync between that.
- throwaway85825 2mo agoThe national government functions as a labor union through its control of the border and regulating the conditions of employment. >I disagree with most jobs can easily be trained or cross trained People just overestimate how complicated their job is because it makes them feel important. If anything immigrants take longer to get up to speed which is why companies usually only hire them when its cheaper. Or nepotism.
- 2mo ago
- mixmastamyk 2mo agoWith training (remember that?) and practice, one could vastly improve. It’s called a growth mindset.
- doc_ick 2mo agoYou know what training takes? Time *you know what practice takes? Time
- mixmastamyk 2mo agoThat’s fine.
- doc_ick 2mo agoSo we’re in agreement? A mathematician can’t immediately be or replace a good physicist, it takes some certain time to transition.
- mixmastamyk 2mo agoIt’s an investment.
- doc_ick 2mo agoSo we’re in agreement? The time of investment for growth is the point of decision, and how long it takes to train specialists defines if it’s worth it. I.e. how long would it take to train a regular driver to drive the inde 500 vs buying a racers contract
- mixmastamyk 2mo agoWant me to agree that training takes time? Ok, but what a boring revelation. It doesn’t take much time in the grand scheme of things. I can read a substantial book each week, for example. Give a person a half ~salary and let them study and train for a month +/-, they’ll be ready to contribute.
- whatever1 2mo agoWe don’t need my hypotheticals. We saw how well the American bootcamps filled the market with completely trash talent when the market demanded a big number of SDEs. So no, money cannot generate infinite specialized talent overnight as you naively assume.