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I agree, you can't measure quality research output via patents and startups.
That's possible thanks to the academic research that preceded it. I remember giving a talk 20 years ago on quantum computers and qubits (I'm no expert, i was just interested in it). The audience laughed, the people where not ready for it. Even amidst academics.
I think I may have mentioned to you before, but I was a physics major in undergrad. I had the opportunity to potentially work with a quantum information professor at my university, but ultimately didn't pursue it.
I ended up doing economics, which has been fine, but part of me always wonders. Cutting edge physics still gets me excited, and i've been pretty jaded by academic economics as you may or may not be able to tell from my other writings on SN.
I ended up doing economics, which has been fine, but part of me always wonders.
Come back. Just treat those years doing economics as your patent-clerk years~~ (I imagine the reference is clear).
When I started doing my PhD, after a few weeks, i got hit by the politics going on in the lab, including the fact one postdoc may or may not have slept with my boss to further her career. My illusion of people doing science for the sake of science got shattered. It's not all sunshine even in fundamental physics.
Luckily, i later got to work with people who truly love the science and have a level of intellectual integrity i can only aspire too.
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Haha, maybe once my kids are out of the house I may look at doing some amateur physics
I imagine everyone in academia has their stories of feeling jaded, since you usually enter it with some lofty ideas of what the research world is like.
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