Sabine Hossenfelder: My dream died, and now I'm here (careers in video/film)

[C C]

Why academia sucks
https://youtu.be/LKiBlGDfRU8

VIDEO EXCERPTS: When I signed up for studying at the university, I thought being a physicist was my dream job.

[...] When I started studying at the university, my expectations were based on biographies of scientists. They wrote a lot of letters to each other; they went to conferences. They were thinkers and tinkerers and had sometimes heated but usually respectful arguments.

This is what I expected. Yes, that was hopelessly naïve, I know I know.

But. In my defense. I don’t come from an academic background.

[...] At this time I was the only woman at the institute, except for the administration.

[...] I’m not just telling you this because it’s entertaining, it was also a rather rude awakening. It made me realize that this institute wasn’t about knowledge discovery. It was about money making.

And the more I saw of academia, the more I realized it wasn’t just this particular institute and this particular professor.

It was generally the case. The moment you put people into big institutions, the goal shifts from knowledge discovery to money making. Here’s how this works...

My dream died, and now I'm here

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/LKiBlGDfRU8

[Yazata]

It's sad but true.

And it's one reason why I would like to see Elon start his own research university. (He's toyed with the idea.) Create a haven, a think-tank, without all the activist politics, without the weird competitive academic careerism, without the constant battles to get grant funding - then attract the best-and-brightest in their fields to just be creative, productive and mutually-stimulating. Make it free for students, who would be highly selected.

It could have insider pipelines to all of Elon's enterprises, from aerospace engineering, to robotics and AI, to neuroscience. And potentially planetary science as humans venture to the Moon and Mars. Just think of the incredible internship opportunities!

It could be put together quite nicely for a few hundred million dollars, perhaps 0.1% of Elon's net worth. It wouldn't need a beautiful campus, just something functional. There's massive amounts of commercial real estate currently available, half-empty class-A office towers with whole floors available for lease on bargain terms.

[Syne]

If you could get government funding out of higher education, you'd remove a lot of the incentive to go after that "free money" and return to having to entice students who can foot their own bill... likely at lower costs.

[confused2]

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabine_Hossenfelder

Between 2015 and 2023, she [Sabine] was employed at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies,[citation needed]

And the Franfurt Institute ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_...ed_Studies )

is a private-public institution for basic theoretical research in various areas of science focusing on interdisciplinary research.

And what is a private-public institution? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public%E2%...artnership (this would be the UK model but may be more general)..

A public–private partnership (PPP, 3P, or P3) is a long-term arrangement between a government and private sector institutions.[1][2] Typically, it involves private capital financing government projects and services up-front, and then drawing revenues from taxpayers and/or users for profit over the course of the PPP contract.

The moment you put people into big institutions, the goal shifts from knowledge discovery to money making. Here’s how this works...

Aside from the 'how' it makes money .. the 'why' may well be that this is precisely what the institutions were set up to do.

[C C]

Her employment stint with FIAS seems far too late for whatever "institute" also on Goethe University Frankfurt grounds that she was referring to with respect to the textbooks tyrant (either the 1990s or the early 2000s), while still on a university scholarship for women. She didn't fully finish her education with the university until 2004, and wasn't married until her mid-30s which would have been at the end of the 2000s or start of the 2010s (if born in 1976).

But given that Goethe University Frankfurt turf is loaded with research facilities, whichever ones she was at in the earlier period would likewise be profit oriented. She worked at public universities in Arizona and California somewhere between 2004 and 2009, so she had exposure to other academic environments than just Goethe.

And any rate, if she wanted interesting debates then she should have taken up philosophy of science or something. Or become a physicist who writes books (which in a related sense is what she finally did become: a science communicator). Those actually working in it, getting their hands dirty in a lab or a math shop (theoretical physics) and publishing papers, would be as she describes below (including herself after she finally got over the idealized expectations of youth):

I expected rational debate. But that never came. No one was interested. No one is interested.

They were interested in writing more papers. And that’s what they need all these particles and other wild ideas for.

To write papers. To get grants. To get postdocs. To write more papers. And round and round it goes.

[...] And at some point you just accept the constant moving as normal because the only people you know also do it.

It’s incredibly hostile to personal life, detrimental to mental health, and women suffer from it because our reproductive reality is that we need to start families earlier than men.

By my mid-thirties, I had somehow miraculously managed to get married and have two children.

But I couldn’t find a job anywhere near my husband. So for several years I commuted from Frankfurt to Stockholm. And yes, those cities are actually in different countries.

After 5 years of my murder commute, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I constantly felt guilty for not working more and not spending more time with my kids.

My mental health was worse than ever, I was permanently stressed out, I had several nervous breakdowns, I was constantly ill.

I decided I’d go back to Germany and not move out of country again, until the kids were out of school.

Instead, I applied for research grants on projects that lasted one two or three years and that could be located in Germany.

[...] At this point I’d figured out what you need to put into a grant proposal to get the money. And that’s what I did.

I applied for grants on research projects because it was a way to make money, not because I thought it would leave an impact in the history of science.

It’s not that what I did was somehow wrong. It was, and still is, totally state of the art.

I did what I said I’d do in the proposal, I did the calculation, I wrote the paper...

[geordief]

Her employment stint with FIAS seems far too late for whatever "institute" also on Goethe University Frankfurt grounds that she was referring to with respect to the textbooks tyrant (either the 1990s or the early 2000s), while still on a university scholarship for women. She didn't fully finish her education with the university until 2004, and wasn't married until her mid-30s which would have been at the end of the 2000s or start of the 2010s (if born in 1976).

But given that Goethe University Frankfurt turf is loaded with research facilities, whichever ones she was at in the earlier period would likewise be profit oriented. She worked at public universities in Arizona and California somewhere between 2004 and 2009, so she had exposure to other academic environments than just Goethe.

And any rate, if she wanted interesting debates then she should have taken up philosophy of science or something. Or become a physicist who writes books (which in a related sense is what she finally did become: a science communicator). Those actually working in it, getting their hands dirty in a lab or a math shop (theoretical physics) and publishing papers, would be as she describes below (including herself after she finally got over the idealized expectations of youth):

I expected rational debate. But that never came. No one was interested. No one is interested.

They were interested in writing more papers. And that’s what they need all these particles and other wild ideas for.

To write papers. To get grants. To get postdocs. To write more papers. And round and round it goes.

[...] And at some point you just accept the constant moving as normal because the only people you know also do it.

It’s incredibly hostile to personal life, detrimental to mental health, and women suffer from it because our reproductive reality is that we need to start families earlier than men.

By my mid-thirties, I had somehow miraculously managed to get married and have two children.

But I couldn’t find a job anywhere near my husband. So for several years I commuted from Frankfurt to Stockholm. And yes, those cities are actually in different countries.

After 5 years of my murder commute, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I constantly felt guilty for not working more and not spending more time with my kids.

My mental health was worse than ever, I was permanently stressed out, I had several nervous breakdowns, I was constantly ill.

I decided I’d go back to Germany and not move out of country again, until the kids were out of school.

Instead, I applied for research grants on projects that lasted one two or three years and that could be located in Germany.

[...] At this point I’d figured out what you need to put into a grant proposal to get the money. And that’s what I did.

I applied for grants on research projects because it was a way to make money, not because I thought it would leave an impact in the history of science.

It’s not that what I did was somehow wrong. It was, and still is, totally state of the art.

I did what I said I’d do in the proposal, I did the calculation, I wrote the paper...

I remember a friend of mine giving me advice at age  16/17.

I said any job I might have to get was going to be a mental straight jacket that I couldn't imagine committing myself to. or being able to endure.

He said  "Look .You get a job and you do the hours.Then you get home and start to live"

Don't know how realistic that advice was but I think that is how some  people get on with living.They don't identify  with the job.It is just a tool to facilitate their existence proper.

[confused2]

Good advice from Geordief's friend.

He said "Look .You get a job and you do the hours.Then you get home and start to live"

After (with luck) years of free food it can be a shock to find that most of the 7 billion people on the planet don't care whether you live or die.