Academia: Exponential Growth & Post Docs Till 40?

[pi-r8]

In many years of bartending (first in a college town as a phd student, then in a tourist resort as a phd), exactly 0 coworkers asked me anything about physics (although they did take it upon themselves for some friendly pranks, like etching ",phd" into my nametags).

I don't think very many people read random articles about physics research. If we want to increase scientific knowledge, sticking random phds into people's everyday life in the hopes they ask them some questions is terribly inefficient. Your better bet is probably an incentive/training program to get phds teaching in middle and high schools. If the interest isn't instilled in them young, its probably too late by the time they are adults.

Hmm I've been asked a lot of questions by random friends and family members... not so much coworkers though. I don't have a PhD just a bachelor's degree. And, on the flip side, I also ask them questions about whatever subject their degree was in.

Admittedly most questions were of the "do you think the LHC will destroy the earth?" variety which is... kind of annoying... but I do my best.

 

[mal4mac]

Suppose we label schools by integers n, with n=1 being a community college...

Why not include n=0 - a school? Then there is actually a shortage of physics graduates! Isn't it just as good teaching in a school? Given the shortage of physics graduates, you should be able find jobs teaching classes with motivated pupils in good schools (if you don't fancy the challenge of 'difficult' pupils...)

 

[mayonaise]

If I could social engineer on that sort of level, I'd more likely push for a strong industrial policy/mercantilism. Give manufacturing a shot in the arm, and physicists will be in higher demand. But until there is higher demand, I stand by the assertion that training lots of scientists in the hopes that some go into politics is silly. A better question is how can we get science into curriculums at law schools? If you want your president to know physics, teach the people likely to go into politics some physics.

Or teach physics people politics. I think it's quite arrogant to think "the other side", which is everyone except scientists, should come and understand how important science is. How much politics/economics/law do you think the average physics grad understands? And if they, we, didn't learn any of these in our youth, how well are we equipped for power struggle? These are exactly the social subjects! Any wonder that people in power don't know science? I don't even think it's moral to personally ask the president to understand physics, given how little I understand our law.

Also, once you learn politics/economics/law, you might find that science is not so important to so many people after all.

 

[ParticleGrl]

How much politics/economics/law do you think the average physics grad understands?

I'm willing to be most science majors took at least one or two econ classes in college. Probably more for physics and math majors (the two semester micro/macro course was considered an easy A for people who already knew calculus well). And I'm not talking about teaching senators string theory, I'm talking about trying to make sure they have a decent, basic understanding of the laws of thermodynamics.

I don't even think it's moral to personally ask the president to understand physics, given how little I understand our law.

Moral is a strange word here. Anyway, the reason why the analogy is bad is that law makers set the scientific and industrial policy for the nation. Politicians ARE involved in scientific policy, but scientists aren't usually particularly involved in making laws. I'd suggest that scientists who go into policy should certainly know something about politics- and I'm willing to bet they do.

Why not include n=0 - a school? Then there is actually a shortage of physics graduates!

I'm not sure this is true either. At least in the US, k-12 schools have been shedding people for years now. There are a fair number of high school science/physics teachers looking for work.

 

[atyy]

Or teach physics people politics. I think it's quite arrogant to think "the other side", which is everyone except scientists, should come and understand how important science is. How much politics/economics/law do you think the average physics grad understands? And if they, we, didn't learn any of these in our youth, how well are we equipped for power struggle? These are exactly the social subjects! Any wonder that people in power don't know science? I don't even think it's moral to personally ask the president to understand physics, given how little I understand our law.

Also, once you learn politics/economics/law, you might find that science is not so important to so many people after all.

No, of course not - no one is saying that physicists don't have to understand politics. In fact, physics as an experimental science depends tremendously on politics. And yes, it is moral and necessary for the president to understand physics - energy and defence are major political issues that depend on physics. Now what is the reason for maintaining cutting edge "esoteric" research in particle physics when there are tons of important problems that can be solved by existing technology if social organization permits? The reason is that knowledge not maintained is knowledge lost. And yes, even biology (my field) benefits from the overarching framework of high energy physics. Of course, it doesn't have to be the bulk of physics research - and it isn't - but a critical number of workers has to be maintained.

"Politics is more difficult than physics." Albert Einstein
"If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is." John von Neumann

 

[Pyrrhus]

Really? You were so confident of staying in academia that you don't need a PhD?

A PhD is really only for those who leave academia - otherwise, how are they going to find jobs after being low paid workers for 5 years?

A PhD in Economics is highly in demand. I can type in any job search engine "PhD Economics", and there will be MANY MANY MANY job postings requiring one. Both Industry, and Academia. Thus, I am not worried. In fact, I have already applied to several jobs, and I am just waiting for job offers.

 

[twofish-quant]

It seems that everyone who starts a PhD wants to be an academic. Clearly this is not possible nor sustainable.

I think it is as long as you define "academic" in ways that doesn't include being a full time researcher exclusively paid for the job.

 

[twofish-quant]

Lets say we got rid of "phd" as a degree, and a graduate student was simply a low paid (relative to other bachelors degree holders) scientific researcher- would people still do it? Does the distinction of "phd" have any value for researchers outside their field?

It does for me. In my family, getting a doctorate degree is rite of passage akin to getting married or having kids. This started in the 18th century, where passing the Chinese Imperial Examinations meant that you were "upper class", and the social meaning of that got transferred to getting a Ph.D.

One thing that I noticed was that there were a lot of people descended from Eastern European Jews in the astronomy department, and I suspect that there is a similar cultural meaning.

 

[twofish-quant]

I'm willing to be most science majors took at least one or two econ classes in college.

One thing about classes is that they can be useless. One problem with economics classes is that they there is an effort to make economics work like physics, which is bad in a lot of ways. You can go through an intro physics class with the belief that what you are being taught isn't totally wrong, but there is no such guarantee with an economics class.

Anyway, the reason why the analogy is bad is that law makers set the scientific and industrial policy for the nation. Politicians ARE involved in scientific policy, but scientists aren't usually particularly involved in making laws. I'd suggest that scientists who go into policy should certainly know something about politics- and I'm willing to bet they do.

One of the reasons I think my Ph.D. education was excellent was that I got a lot of training in the politics of science. A lot of times, you found yourself in a lunch time discussion about the latest goings-on in Washington, and from time to time we'd have speakers from the NSF or NASA talk about things.

The scientists that I knew were *very* heavily involved in making laws and getting funding. One of the big issues that I remember was the effort to get NASA to send up another space shuttle mission to repair Hubble, and AAS was very heavily involved there.

The other thing is that I went to a big public university, and the interaction between the department, the university, and the state legislature was something that was just part of the background.

 

[twofish-quant]

A PhD in Economics is highly in demand. I can type in any job search engine "PhD Economics", and there will be MANY MANY MANY job postings requiring one. Both Industry, and Academia. Thus, I am not worried. In fact, I have already applied to several jobs, and I am just waiting for job offers.

But there is a catch. It's harder to get into a Ph.D. economics program than it is to get into a Ph.D. physics program, and much, much harder to get funding.

 

[twofish-quant]

What does it mean for "the cutting edge" to get diffused? i.e. I used to do work in quantum field theory, now I work for an insurance company. I don't really use anything I learned in graduate school (my work now appears to be 90% sql/c#, 10% undergrad statistics). Similarly, a friend of mine did a phd in math (algebraic geometry) and he is now (after a two year associates) a nurse, etc.

I had a job in which I wasn't using much of what I was doing in graduate school, but in the end I was going crazy so I quit and found another job. The one big catch was that I had to move to New York City.

What finally did it for me was that I found out that an "old college rival" of mine had just been named a dean of a major university, and at that point I knew that I'd either mentally explode in a bad way or mentally explode in a good way, and exploding in a good way meant going to NYC. NYC is one of the most insane places on the planet, and I had to go there to keep my sanity.

For most physicists, though, not getting an academic job means leaving the field entirely- how does this diffuse anything?

We are looking at different parts of the elephant, but physics is diffusing pretty heavily into high finance. Also one thing that is cool about NYC is that you end up with very different people colliding with each other, and that produces all sorts of crazy interactions.

The other thing is that I don't think I have really "left the field". I'm still on good terms with my adviser and his research network, and I'll find my way back.

 

[atyy]

The other thing is that I don't think I have really "left the field". I'm still on good terms with my adviser and his research network, and I'll find my way back.

That's great! I thought it a rule of thumb that students don't get along with their advisors (maybe reading too much PhD comics:)

 

[Pyrrhus]

But there is a catch. It's harder to get into a Ph.D. economics program than it is to get into a Ph.D. physics program, and much, much harder to get funding.

YES, and YES. I guess that's how they fixed the issue in economics... It's hard to get in, and even harder to get funding. Frankly, I think a BS in Math/Physics/Engineering should be able to get in Econ Grad school. However, I've seen Econ minors, and Double Math and Econ as graduate students. This may make it harder for future BS Math/Physics/Engineering to get into Econ Grad School. I guess times are changing as students are deciding to abandon dreams in PhD in Physics. I think in a way is sad as research in physics is the reason we have many of our current technological advances. Is USA going to stagnate?

 

[pi-r8]

YES, and YES. I guess that's how they fixed the issue in economics... It's hard to get in, and even harder to get funding. Frankly, I think a BS in Math/Physics/Engineering should be able to get in Econ Grad school. However, I've seen Econ minors, and Double Math and Econ as graduate students. This may make it harder for future BS Math/Physics/Engineering to get into Econ Grad School. I guess times are changing as students are deciding to abandon dreams in PhD in Physics. I think in a way is sad as research in physics is the reason we have many of our current technological advances. Is USA going to stagnate?

Is it not obvious that we've been stagnating for the last 12 years? Not that nothing has been accomplished but... the pace of accomplishments has definitely slowed down. That's why there's so much nostalgia for the fashion and pop culture of previous decades.

 

[twofish-quant]

YES, and YES. I guess that's how they fixed the issue in economics... It's hard to get in, and even harder to get funding.

And the problem is that it's so hard to get in that it kills research. If you want to make it in economics, the last thing that you want is to come up with a new or original idea or anything that's the slightest bit risky or controversial.

One problem that I have with economics academics is that I don't think that anyone outside of economics really reads any of the research gets published in the economics journals, outside of some of the more technical econometric stuff. Getting published in the right journals is critical for getting tenure track, but it's not useful for that much else.

Also the status hierarchy is different in economics and physics. In physics, if a tenured Harvard professor gives a talk, and some random person without a Ph.D., says "this is total non-sense" then that person is going to be seen as a crank. In economics, you could have a tenured professor from the London School of Economics or University of Chicago give a talk and if a trader or hedge fund manager or Fortune 500 CEO who dropped out of college says "this is total non-sense" then more likely then not it's going to be the professor that is seen as the crank.

The flip side of this is that because industry has higher status than academia, the universities have to put together extremely attractive packages to compensate.

I guess times are changing as students are deciding to abandon dreams in PhD in Physics. I think in a way is sad as research in physics is the reason we have many of our current technological advances. Is USA going to stagnate?

Hard to say. I've learned not to say "X is going to happen" but rather "Assuming that X is the case, then Y will happen, so I should do Z."

 

[twofish-quant]

Is it not obvious that we've been stagnating for the last 12 years? Not that nothing has been accomplished but... the pace of accomplishments has definitely slowed down. That's why there's so much nostalgia for the fashion and pop culture of previous decades.

On the other hand grew up in the 1970's when much the same sort of thing happened. This may be a long cycle. Or not. It's hard to tell.

The other question is whether this "stagnation" is just the inevitable consequence of history. The United States was the "only nation standing" in 1945 and 1991 and as time passes, US relative power is going to definitely decline.

The other thing is that the world looks really, really different if you look at it from somewhere else. If you talk to someone that is British, French, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, or Canadian, they are going to have a *vastly* different view on things than talking to an American.

 

[twofish-quant]

Now what is the reason for maintaining cutting edge "esoteric" research in particle physics when there are tons of important problems that can be solved by existing technology if social organization permits?

During the Cold War, the reason that lots of money went into basic physics research was "I don't know what we'll find, but we'll all be waving red flags and holding pictures of Lenin if the Russians find it first." We got the internet out of that. For that matter, the World Wide Web was invented in CERN.

What I'd like to see is "friendly competition" between national governments. Basically the Cold War II without the threat of nuclear annihilation and without anyone getting killed. So someone shows up in Washington asking for money to research electric cars, and if the answer is no, they look at the next flight to Beijing, Moscow, Dubai, Brussels, or New Delhi.

The reason is that knowledge not maintained is knowledge lost. And yes, even biology (my field) benefits from the overarching framework of high energy physics. Of course, it doesn't have to be the bulk of physics research - and it isn't - but a critical number of workers has to be maintained.

True but those workers don't have to be in the United States, and around 1990, the US Congress made the decision that as far as HEP goes, they wouldn't be when they zeroed out funding for the supercollider.

 

[twofish-quant]

The reason this is hardly outrageous to me is that it's already the case at some places.

On the other hand, is it a good thing? We are talking about changing the system, so the fact that the system is already a certain way doesn't mean that you should keep it that way.

What I hope for is that people end up where they should. I agree that those individuals who are kidding themselves about being suited for a relatively narrow research career (i.e. they just won't have the energy/interest to push themselves to publish lots of technical stuff in the narrow area) should be sent elsewhere.

But is that a good thing? One thing about physics is that the reason that physics gets the money is that the generals and CEO want better bombs and toasters. One of the *good* things about this is that in order to get what the generals and CEO's want, you *can't* be narrowly focused on a small technical research area. You *have* to think broadly about what you are doing and to function in an environment where you have to think politically and philosophically.

The problem with "sending people elsewhere" is that it totally guts the research effort and undermines the political point of the exercise. Also, "where is elsewhere?"

Hopefully, a majority of those who really enjoy and excel at the kind of work academia demands are not pushed out simply because the system doesn't allow for much of a middle ground.

But what if you are flexible? Tell me what I should enjoy.

 

[twofish-quant]

Academic institutions are privileged corporations. They are largely exempted from repaying customers when their actions or inactions result in their failure to provide what they promise in their advertising.

Have you talked to a lawyer? Lawyers are good at sending out "nasty-grams" that can handle these sorts of situations. One trick that large corporations do is that they make you think that you have a lot less power than you really do.

Also UoP is a cash cow because the can issue a piece of paper that (supposedly) gets you a job. When I taught there I got $1000/month. There were 15 students paying $1000/month. About 40% of the money went into advertising and 10% went to pay instructors. You can see this from their older annual reports (pre-2007), although the newer ones have changed the categories so that it's much less obvious that this is what is going on.

Now, in a pure market, you could pay me the $800/month, I could teach you exactly the same Algebra I course, and we'd both be better off, but the problem is that you don't get that piece of paper that entitles you to a loan or a job.

It gets worse. Knowledge is created by social networks, and UoP tries very hard to keep those networks from forming, because if the students and the teachers were to talk to each other rather than going through the administration, you could have some sort of revolt.

Also, the UoP business model is different from the Harvard/MIT business model. The Harvard/MIT business model is to take young people, brainwash them, then have them infiltrate the power elite so that they can direct money and power back at Harvard and MIT. This works pretty well for the "secret agent" since UoP doesn't care what happens once they get your check, whereas Harvard and MIT really care that if you become President of a major superpower or win the Nobel prize.

Einstein himself, studying time and relativity, remarked that no force in the universe is as powerful as compound interest, and I think that justifies ringing the alarm when the cost of tuition increases more quickly than the extra income provided by a degree.

Those aren't the relevant numbers. Education provides huge productivity benefits, so as long as the productivity increase is more than the cost, there is some wealth around that can be used. The question is how this wealth flows.

I can only see a tiny minority of people -- corporate executives administering universities and already wealthy investors reciving dividends -- benefit from this cancer.

Karl Marx figured this out about 130 years ago, but people figured out ways around this.

The thing about education is that it can be frightfully cheap. Here is a list of books to read. Read them. Education is so cheap that you have to go through a lot of effort to figure out how to charge for it.

 

[chiro]

What I'd like to see is "friendly competition" between national governments. Basically the Cold War II without the threat of nuclear annihilation and without anyone getting killed. So someone shows up in Washington asking for money to research electric cars, and if the answer is no, they look at the next flight to Beijing, Moscow, Dubai, Brussels, or New Delhi.

The sentiment and the idea is great, but personally I'd rather private institutions do this sort of thing, or rather a movement towards private institutions do the majority of this kind of thing.

We are seeing this kind of thing anyway but its usually more of an engineering aspect and not a 'discovery' scientific aspect in the way that the payoff is not at all guaranteed and the risk high.

But when I here of say a private company building a quantum computer and selling it to places like Lockheed Martin and a major university, I get the sense that this kind of thing will expand a great deal in the future and if we ever retain some kind of fair competitive capitalistic system, then this kind of thing will be 'the model' as opposed to just 'a model'.

Personally I see governments as a monopoly and monopolies have a bad track record in innovating and being forced to do the best job they can if they don't have to.

 

[ParticleGrl]

The sentiment and the idea is great, but personally I'd rather private institutions do this sort of thing, or rather a movement towards private institutions do the majority of this kind of thing.

I'm not sure that works. Back when AT&T was a huge monopoly, they were engaged in exactly this, and everyone benefited (though they were paying higher telecom costs than they otherwise would have been). However, as the market grew more competitive, Bell Labs was spun off, and then shifted from fundamental to applied research. Its now a shadow of its former self. Other industrial labs have gone the same way. As companies become more competitive, fundamental R&D shrinks.

I think one take-away of the last thirty or forty years is that markets aren't great at valuing scientific research (consider the number of innovators who died penniless). It seems like you need a large institution that can spend a lot of money without worrying about being able to monetize it. One potential cause is that innovations have a tendency to spread to lots of companies in industry, so there is a free-rider problem. The creator of a technology might not make the money, an imitator might get rich instead.

 

[chiro]

I'm not sure that works. Back when AT&T was a huge monopoly, they were engaged in exactly this, and everyone benefited (though they were paying higher telecom costs than they otherwise would have been). However, as the market grew more competitive, Bell Labs was spun off, and then shifted from fundamental to applied research. Its now a shadow of its former self. Other industrial labs have gone the same way. As companies become more competitive, fundamental R&D shrinks.

I think one take-away of the last thirty or forty years is that markets aren't great at valuing scientific research (consider the number of innovators who died penniless). It seems like you need a large institution that can spend a lot of money without worrying about being able to monetize it. One potential cause is that innovations have a tendency to spread to lots of companies in industry, so there is a free-rider problem. The creator of a technology might not make the money, an imitator might get rich instead.

Firstly for the imitator getting rich, that's going to be likely to happen if the creator was not a businessperson. If the creator has a desire to be acknowledged for his creation in a financial manner, then they have to understand that this requires understanding money, how people interact, how deals get made and so on. Unfortunately this is how humans interact and the social component that is often lacking in many inventors and scientists with regard to creating deals, shaking hands, playing rounds on the golf course and so on is required if this is the ultimate goal.

In short many scientists and inventors are not salesman or businessman and don't understand the game that is being played. If they want to play fine, but its a different game with different rules.

In terms of markets evaluating good research, you really have to define good. I actually agree with your sentiment in the way that good to a company is going to be something that ultimately benefits 'their bottom line' and often this can end up being contradictory in terms of benefit to humans in the long run.

For example it doesn't make sense for a business to develop a product that doubles the lifetime of an existing product because that means that the business can sell one item that lasts for twice as long which means they just lot a lot of potential sales in a specific time-frame. Sure it might help the planet, but it affects so called 'growth': its really screwed up I know.

The other thing that I think supports your argument is that when you privatize something, things are kept secret or things like patents enter the picture which funnily end up destroying innovation due to the draconian barbaric policies enforced by patent lawyer conglomerates for the big multinationals.

Having said the above, the one thing that a real sound capitalistic system provides is good to honest fair competition and this does have a habit of giving consumers a choice and forcing business to do what they need to do to keep up with the Jones' business. In the end it forces businesses to give the consumer a good deal which means businesses that don't give consumers what they want die and the ones that do keep going.

Just so you know, I am aware that it's not this easy when you have the Walmarts coming in, undercutting prices and forcing the local guys out of business and that because of this kind of thing the playing ground is not 'fair' in different ways, but capitalism as a tool does tend to create a lot of innovation and benefits for consumers in industries that have a lot of competition.

If somehow there was a way to merge these qualities together!

I know what I've said in many respects is highly idealized in certain respects, but there are benefits for privatization. But academia too has its place and purpose and it won't be disappearing anytime soon anyway.

Also for the ones who are not scammers (and even some that are!) investors will pump money into inventors if they are confident that it is worth pursuing so the idea of privatization is not really so far fetched for science.

Also there are people that are offering prize money for competitions for building better robots, more effecient cars and so on but it is acknowledged that this is not a 'mainstream' thing.

 

[twofish-quant]

The sentiment and the idea is great, but personally I'd rather private institutions do this sort of thing, or rather a movement towards private institutions do the majority of this kind of thing.

I don't care how the sausage gets made.

Personally I see governments as a monopoly and monopolies have a bad track record in innovating and being forced to do the best job they can if they don't have to.

If you have competing national governments, then they aren't a monopoly anymore.

 

[chiro]

I don't care how the sausage gets made.

I do!

If you have competing national governments, then they aren't a monopoly anymore.

Can you honestly imagine the kind of situation you are describing? Governments actually inventing stuff and then actually 'sharing' that with other countries/governments?

Maybe you should ask governments to release all the stuff that is covered under 'national security' or similar for your government of choice just as a 'pilot project' to get this whole thing started.

I'd be very interested in seeing how far you get.

 

[chill_factor]

I do!



Can you honestly imagine the kind of situation you are describing? Governments actually inventing stuff and then actually 'sharing' that with other countries/governments?

Maybe you should ask governments to release all the stuff that is covered under 'national security' or similar for your government of choice just as a 'pilot project' to get this whole thing started.

I'd be very interested in seeing how far you get.

i'd like to stay out of politics but let me make an observation:

all private corporations are dictatorships to their employees and are run as command economies internally. yet they can compete with each other.

why not national governments?

 

[twofish-quant]

In short many scientists and inventors are not salesman or businessman and don't understand the game that is being played. If they want to play fine, but its a different game with different rules.

I think that's a somewhat inaccurate stereotype. Trying to raise $100 million to get a telescope built or $10 billion to get a particle collider built requires pretty sharp sales and business skills. The other thing is that playing the game means changing the rules to your favor.

If you look at the salaries of the professors of astronomy at UT Austin (and these are public records). Most make around $120K, but there is one that makes $500K, and he gets that money because in addition to being a first rate cosmologist, he is also a first rate salesman, and part of his job is to fly around and convince people to give people money to keep the other professors paid.

In terms of markets evaluating good research, you really have to define good.

The operative definition in the case of US science and technology has been to maximize American comprehensive national power. The reason that science and technology gets funded is so that United States stays a superpower. If the US doesn't care about the superpower thing, then some other country will.

Also the trick in sales and marketing is to get people to agree with your definition of good.
I think it's a good thing if we build lots of telescopes and create high paying jobs for
astrophysicists. The sales and politics comes in in trying to get people to agree with me,
and that involves appealing to some pretty basic human emotions.

Having said the above, the one thing that a real sound capitalistic system provides is good to honest fair competition and this does have a habit of giving consumers a choice and forcing business to do what they need to do to keep up with the Jones' business. In the end it forces businesses to give the consumer a good deal which means businesses that don't give consumers what they want die and the ones that do keep going.

Except that the easiest way of making a ton of money is to eliminate your competition and spending a ton of money on marketing. You don't keep up with the Jones's business, you figure out a way of driving them out of the market. This comes up with University of Phoenix. The rules are such that I can't put out a shingle and teach Algebra I. I have to go through them, and naturally, they'll charge through the nose for it.

Markets *can* be set up to benefit the consumer, but there is no particular reason why they have to be. You can end up with markets that screw the consumer in a big way.

Just so you know, I am aware that it's not this easy when you have the Walmarts coming in, undercutting prices and forcing the local guys out of business and that because of this kind of thing the playing ground is not 'fair' in different ways, but capitalism as a tool does tend to create a lot of innovation and benefits for consumers in industries that have a lot of competition.

But a lot of those industries also were critically dependent on government involvement. Look at Silicon Valley. There were a number of important factors including a very strong defense industry, a good education system, critical government research, and a set of contract laws that prohibited non-compete clauses.

I know what I've said in many respects is highly idealized in certain respects, but there are benefits for privatization. But academia too has its place and purpose and it won't be disappearing anytime soon anyway.

Academia as we know it is dead. Academia is dead because we have all of this new technology, and that technology has proven disruptive in every other industry. It's going to hit academia, and things will change. How they will change, I have no clue.

 

[twofish-quant]

Can you honestly imagine the kind of situation you are describing? Governments actually inventing stuff and then actually 'sharing' that with other countries/governments?

http://adswww.harvard.edu/ or the Los Alamos Preprints Archive. Or for that matter the WWW and the internet.

Stuff leaks out. The thing about national governments is that in order to do research, you need a degree of openness which means that most of what you know will eventually get known by all of the other major governments, but as long as it's another country in the "club" then it really doesn't matter that much.

As far as commercial stuff. All the big corporations and universities are multinationals anyway with interests that are independent of any government.

The other thing is that in order to maintain "soft power", a national government has to release the research. For example, the fact that the internet started in the US gives the US a big advantage in the "global power" game, but none of that would be usable if it just kept it a secret.

Maybe you should ask governments to release all the stuff that is covered under 'national security' or similar for your government of choice just as a 'pilot project' to get this whole thing started.

If you go to Los Alamos or Oak Ridge, you'll find a fairly large number of foreign nationals working on non-classified research. For that matter, just how many Chinese or Indian graduate students are enrolled in US universities working on projects under government grants.

The other thing is that getting a government to release information is 100x as easy as getting that information from a private corporation. Without too much trouble I can find the organization chart for the CIA. Now try that for your favorite Fortune 500 corporation.

 

[chiro]

Thankyou for the replies guys and girls. Very insightful! I'll check out those sites that you mentioned two-fish and yes what you said about open-ness makes sense in the grand scheme of things.

I think I learned a lot today :)

 

[chiro]

i'd like to stay out of politics but let me make an observation:

all private corporations are dictatorships to their employees and are run as command economies internally. yet they can compete with each other.

why not national governments?

I'm not saying its not possible, its just that the way things are now, I'm not optimistic.

I know you can play the diplomacy game and make it look all rosy but just look at the world: everyone is watching everyone else like hawks.

Again I point to things like national security in the US and the equivalent in other nations around the world. To me this says: "don't go there" in contrast to the "ties between nations have been forged".

Again I'm not saying it's not possible, just more or less that it doesn't, at this time seem to really be plausible as opposed to probable but if it happens on the kind of scale and scope that two-fish mentioned then that would be great: I'm just not holding my breath.

 

[twofish-quant]

I know you can play the diplomacy game and make it look all rosy but just look at the world: everyone is watching everyone else like hawks.

Sure, but at the end of the day, no one that matters wants the world to blow up. It's basically 19th century Europe all over again with the major powers trying to play diplomatic games to keep the peace.

Again I point to things like national security in the US and the equivalent in other nations around the world.

One of the things that I saw was after the Cold War, the US government worked very hard to make sure that nuclear scientists from the former Soviet Union got jobs in the US, because everyone thought that it would be better if they ended up in the US rather than in North Korea or Iran.

The United States buys its aircraft carriers with money that it borrows from China, and that tells you that there are limits to which the US and China are actually scared of each other.

Again I'm not saying it's not possible, just more or less that it doesn't, at this time seem to really be plausible as opposed to probable but if it happens on the kind of scale and scope that two-fish mentioned then that would be great: I'm just not holding my breath.

I'm telling you what I'm seeing *now*. What's happened is that the major issues are now all global, and they are beyond the reach of anyone national government, so you are ending up with cross-national cooperation in order to fix some of the major issues.

The other thing is that you have major non-state players in the form of multi-national corporations. One reason that national governments are cooperating is that without trans-national cooperation, they'll lose all of their power to the corporations.

For example, if Congress passes a law that changes the way that banks are regulated in the US, it's not going to do a darn thing since the corporations will just change their structure to move outside the scope of regulation. Now if you get the regulators from the major powers in the Basel Committee to agree on something, *then* it has teeth.

The United States is the most powerful country in the world. Perhaps the most powerful country in history, but that poses a problem for people that live in the United States. If you leave in the United States, you can pretty much pretend that the rest of the world does not exist. This isn't true anywhere else on the planet Earth, where you just *feel* the power of the United States even if you are not there. But that means that if you are outside of the United States, you see globalization hitting you left and right.

 

[Pyrrhus]

And the problem is that it's so hard to get in that it kills research. If you want to make it in economics, the last thing that you want is to come up with a new or original idea or anything that's the slightest bit risky or controversial.

One problem that I have with economics academics is that I don't think that anyone outside of economics really reads any of the research gets published in the economics journals, outside of some of the more technical econometric stuff. Getting published in the right journals is critical for getting tenure track, but it's not useful for that much else.

Also the status hierarchy is different in economics and physics. In physics, if a tenured Harvard professor gives a talk, and some random person without a Ph.D., says "this is total non-sense" then that person is going to be seen as a crank. In economics, you could have a tenured professor from the London School of Economics or University of Chicago give a talk and if a trader or hedge fund manager or Fortune 500 CEO who dropped out of college says "this is total non-sense" then more likely then not it's going to be the professor that is seen as the crank.

The flip side of this is that because industry has higher status than academia, the universities have to put together extremely attractive packages to compensate.



Hard to say. I've learned not to say "X is going to happen" but rather "Assuming that X is the case, then Y will happen, so I should do Z."

I don't think this is really true. I have seen professors from other fields even Civil Engineering publishing in top Economics Journals. That's how I changed to Econ. My Master's advisor introduced me to economics. He has published in Econ Journals. That means others read those journals. The problem is physicists don't read any journals except their own journals. This is apparent to me all the time. My coworker, a fellow PhD Candidate, does a lot of network economics. Recently, he sent a paper to a physics journal (EPJ) as they publish research in networks. The reviewers comments seemed to know anything at all about the papers he cited from econ journals. He had to explain back and forth after 1-2 round of review those papers. Eventually, the paper was published in EPJ. However, it showed me how clueless physicists are about research outside their own journals.

 

[Fifty]

Obviously I'm under-informed about this subject (still in high school) but perhaps the seemingly useless topics you learn through education to get a seemingly unrelated position are just to limit the amount of people getting those positions. There can only be so many accountants.

Also, the population is increasing. More specifically, the percentage of the population trying for university degrees is increasing (at least over here it is, without a doubt)

 

[chill_factor]

I'm not saying its not possible, its just that the way things are now, I'm not optimistic.

I know you can play the diplomacy game and make it look all rosy but just look at the world: everyone is watching everyone else like hawks.

Again I point to things like national security in the US and the equivalent in other nations around the world. To me this says: "don't go there" in contrast to the "ties between nations have been forged".

Again I'm not saying it's not possible, just more or less that it doesn't, at this time seem to really be plausible as opposed to probable but if it happens on the kind of scale and scope that two-fish mentioned then that would be great: I'm just not holding my breath.

what I am saying is that there's no reason why private corporations are any more trustable than governments. both are equally untrustable and in some countries they're one and the same; in that case, its a matter of which dominates which. in socialist countries, the government is the corporations, but in other countries, the corporations are the government. which is worse?

now many americans will say "its obvious that socialist countries are worse" but just keep in mind that in India, everything is so privatized water pipes to homes got shut down and instead the utilities sell water from water trucks (its what you think it is: a tanker truck filled with water that dispenses a tiny bit and they sell it).

academia, government and the corporations are one and the same, its just their job security that differs.

 

[twofish-quant]

I don't think this is really true. I have seen professors from other fields even Civil Engineering publishing in top Economics Journals.

I was thinking less in terms of other professors but rather how badly economics journals are seen by people that work in investment banks and other financial institutions. The problem is that if you pick up any economics journal, you'll find at least one article that appears totally clueless to someone that works in the industry (anything with the word "efficient" next to "market"). Yes, there are usually good articles along with the bad, but if you end up with stinkers then what's the point of peer review?

In that situation, it's just better to post everything to SSRN, Repec, or just put the article on your web site.

The other problem is that whenever someone with industry background publishes, it's usually a result that is moderately interesting, but not the crown jewels. That stuff you keep secret and make money out of. So even when you do see an article that isn't a stinker, it's often something that has been used for years in industry.

The problem is physicists don't read any journals except their own journals.

That's one problem, there are several others. Communication style is one of them. For example, if you disagree with something in a journal, you are expected to go to the library, and write a rebuttal with a thousand citations. The fact that you have to spend months in the library before anyone will even listen to you is a barrier to outsider input.

However, traders don't communicate in this way. If a trader thinks that what he read is nonsense, he'll let out a string of expletives, toss the journal in the trash, and that's the end of it. He has no reason to go to the library to prove his point.

There's also a lot more secrecy in economics. It's very common that I read an economics paper, and then think to myself, this is obvious non-sense. Unfortunately, if I publicly mention why I think it's non-sense, then I get fired and possibly investigated by the SEC. What this means is that a lot of real information in economics is "oral." I go to a conference, someone gives a presentation, and then afterwards, we talk over coffee. The fact that a lot of the information in economics is oral is why industries center in a few cities.

Recently, he sent a paper to a physics journal (EPJ) as they publish research in networks. The reviewers comments seemed to know anything at all about the papers he cited from econ journals. He had to explain back and forth after 1-2 round of review those papers. Eventually, the paper was published in EPJ. However, it showed me how clueless physicists are about research outside their own journals.

People have limited time, and so silos tend to form. But in the end it got published. Having clueless reviewers is a sometimes a good thing, since they will give you the benefit of the doubt and publish it. One problem with economics journals is that if the reviewers know the papers and don't like them, the papers will get binned.

 

[twofish-quant]

in that case, its a matter of which dominates which. in socialist countries, the government is the corporations, but in other countries, the corporations are the government. which is worse?

The good news is that you have a ton of interest groups. If both the corporations and the government agree, then give up. You can't win. What's more common is the situation were you have some corporations and some government agencies on one side and other corporations and other government agencies on the other, and in those situations, a small number of people can make a huge difference.

now many americans will say "its obvious that socialist countries are worse" but just keep in mind that in India, everything is so privatized water pipes to homes got shut down and instead the utilities sell water from water trucks (its what you think it is: a tanker truck filled with water that dispenses a tiny bit and they sell it).

One problem is "define socialist." Is France socialist? Is China socialist? One funny thing with China is that people have called it "half-capitalist", but if you *define* capitalist as "an economic system that works" that doesn't tell you much about what to do.

A lot of this came out of the Cold War, when the US=capitalist, and the Soviet Union=socialist. The trouble is that there aren't any Soviet-style economies any more, and while the US economy is functional, no one quite is sure what parts of this works.

Academia, government and the corporations are one and the same, its just their job security that differs.

It's not. There is a power elite, but there also conflicts within the power elite, so that means that if you aren't a member of the ruling classes, you can still have a lot of influence over what ends up happening.

There's also the "if you can't beat them, join them." The power elite is pretty good at making sure that anyone that could overthrow them gets "absorbed" into system.

One way of looking at MIT, is that ruling elite doesn't want smart people out in the streets doing mischief. So they convince parents that they should send their kids to elite schools where they get brainwashed into supporting the system. One good thing about going to MIT is that you get to see the power elite up close, and you figure out that they are just human beings, and you see the same sorts of cliques and conflicts that you have anytime you get a bunch of people together.

You might wonder what a Marxist is doing working on Wall Street. Well it's simple. I think that Karl Marx got most things right. The part that he got wrong was the idea that you could fix things with a revolution. If there is a ruling class, and if a revolution is undesirable, then the logical thing to do is to find a way of getting as close to the center of power as possible.