2 ms·

I wouldn’t call anybody a fool, but I think you’re right about the temperament of people who leave. I think it's attributable to a number of parallel factors: 2

I wouldn’t call anybody a fool, but I think you’re right about the temperament of people who leave. I think it's attributable to a number of parallel factors: 20-something unemployment in the United States, popularization of science (e.g. a Cosmos reboot produced by Seth MacFarlane), longstanding belief that attributes more education to more success, et al.

kevin_thibedeau 12y ago
There is nothing wrong with presenting science in a format with populist appeal. It helps raise the general level of knowledge in society, counteracting the types that want to believe people walked with dinosaurs 10000 years ago. The problem is lying to young people that they have any real opportunity to work in fields with such limited employment prospects.
- pm90 12y ago
  To be sure, mostly none of the popular science ever proposes that pursuing science will make you gainfully employed. When choosing major in College, I had to choose between Physics, which I absolutely loved and had got the highest grades in first year of college, and computer science, which I knew absolutely nothing about. However, I did know 2 things: 1) There were a lot more jobs in CS than Physics and 2) Since I knew absolutely nothing about computers (I never owned a personal computer), studying them in college would be possibly the best way to genuinely understand them. Coming from a lower middle-class family, 1) was extremely important. I chose CS, and have never regretted it. I hope more kids in College and high school realize that a) working physics professionally is very different from what is portrayed in popular science and b) you really have to spend a lot of time thinking about the future in these kind of things. That said, I still love popular science: interstellar made me want to study Relativity again :).

2 ms·

I wouldn’t call anybody a fool, but I think you’re right about the temperament of people who leave. I think it's attributable to a number of parallel factors: 2

by Q6T46nT668w6i3m 12y ago

kevin_thibedeau 12y ago
There is nothing wrong with presenting science in a format with populist appeal. It helps raise the general level of knowledge in society, counteracting the types that want to believe people walked with dinosaurs 10000 years ago. The problem is lying to young people that they have any real opportunity to work in fields with such limited employment prospects.
- pm90 12y ago
  To be sure, mostly none of the popular science ever proposes that pursuing science will make you gainfully employed. When choosing major in College, I had to choose between Physics, which I absolutely loved and had got the highest grades in first year of college, and computer science, which I knew absolutely nothing about. However, I did know 2 things: 1) There were a lot more jobs in CS than Physics and 2) Since I knew absolutely nothing about computers (I never owned a personal computer), studying them in college would be possibly the best way to genuinely understand them. Coming from a lower middle-class family, 1) was extremely important. I chose CS, and have never regretted it. I hope more kids in College and high school realize that a) working physics professionally is very different from what is portrayed in popular science and b) you really have to spend a lot of time thinking about the future in these kind of things. That said, I still love popular science: interstellar made me want to study Relativity again :).