this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2024
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It's a tough call. I was as liberal as it gets on my 20s, now I'm in my 40s. I see a lot of people bitching about inequality, injustice etc. that acquired a ton of student loan debt to major in subjects that would very clearly not land them a job.
Socially, still very liberal. Fiscally? Stop wasting my tax dollars on anything that's not defense or legit scientific research.
counterpoint: broad educations and different perspectives enrich society and keep culture alive.
I studied physics and still ended up not getting a job in it, but in a world of people educated only like me I'd have learned so much less about all the things that bring me joy. People contribute in more ways than working for dollars. They give you insight in conversations, expose you to new ideas/experiences, make the world interesting with their own styles and interpretation, challenge dogmatic practices or cultural norms.
Also just like using your brain on stuff helps you grow and develop, and people ought to be allowed to do that even if their interests are a bit strange or less "useful", it's part of growing up. It's not like we're strapped for resources, it's just that like 100 people own half the world.
Believe it or not, I have several degrees in physics. I worked in the field for a bit then left for industry. I don't disagree with the premise that diverse educational backgrounds can be a good thing, they are more often than not a fine pathway to being a very interesting bartender buried in crippling student debt. Why not double major in something useful on top of Art History?
what is useful? Did I use my knowledge of polaritons when working for an insurance company? Perhaps the details of etching -OH terminated diamond under esem helped me when I was maintaining servers, no no it must have been linear alg that enabled me to tutor kids in ochem.
like my degree hasn't helped me to much explicitly, but it was fun. sometimes answering peoples' questions about physics is fulfilling to them, and the act of learning crap helped fill me out (including realising how utterly naive I was at assuming scientific knowledge was more valueable than other kinds).
You see a problem in our society: that we only reward a very narrow subset of kinds of labour and grossly unevenly at that and you blame people for studying something that interested them. Why? Would we be better off if they were buying up apartments and renting them to an underclass? that's something that pays highly. Maybe we need more gunsmiths! afterall inventing the machine gun reduced death and destruction during war. Perhaps instead they should have studied finance, because we have far too few insurance brokers?
I'm not blaming anyone for studying anything. I'm simply stating that the bill for that education will come due and it might be a good idea to have acquired a skill to help pay it if the projected return on investment is non-existent.
Ever have a conversation with people in your local service industry? I live in a major US city and this is a common story:
Do you think they'd have advised a younger version of themselves to do something else?
A nice thing about Physics: quantitative reasoning is a highly valued skill in many paying jobs and something you have to acquire along the way to learning things like QED. The end result of knowing, say, if a neutrino has mass isnt terribly useful.
Quite a naive (and also stereotypically American) perspective, really. Just ignoring major parts of the economy, like the music, film, book publishing industries etc. They are all based on people doing anything that's not "legit" according to this guy. Also a smell of a very naive concept of "legit science" lurks behind this. Clearly someone who has no clue about how science works.
How many successful filmmakers, authors and musicians do you know personally? Let's keep the bar real low: ones that can feed themselves and retire without supplemental income from a spouse that does something more pragmatic?
I was a Physicist before leaving for industry. What would you like to know about how science works and how it is funded?
What is legit science?