Is our generation's Gauss too busy making billions in some hedge fund instead of proving theorems for minimum wage?
Serious question. I can almost guarantee that the best analysts are quants, and some of my algebraist professors used to work at Chase and such. Odds are today's academics are just what finance won't hire. This actually explains why most scientists today are so mediocre. They are the ones who couldn't cut it for high finance. Tao is perhaps the odd exception given that he was brainwashed since he was child, and gets paid more than the average quant regardless. But universities can't afford to hire even 10 people at Tao's compensation level. Those other 9 Tao's are working where they are compensated at the level their intellect commands: high finance. And think about how many theorems in analysis are now under NDAs given that they were discovered specifically to be applied in propietary models.
This is it. Science is over unless universities start cutting the fat until they can afford to pay a starting compensation of 200k a year for postdocs.
Serious question. I can almost guarantee that the best analysts are quants, and some of my algebraist professors used to work at Chase and such. Odds are today's academics are just what finance won't hire. This actually explains why most scientists today are so mediocre. They are the ones who couldn't cut it for high finance. Tao is perhaps the odd exception given that he was brainwashed since he was child, and gets paid more than the average quant regardless. But universities can't afford to hire even 10 people at Tao's compensation level. Those other 9 Tao's are working where they are compensated at the level their intellect commands: high finance. And think about how many theorems in analysis are now under NDAs given that they were discovered specifically to be applied in propietary models.
This is it. Science is over unless universities start cutting the fat until they can afford to pay a starting compensation of 200k a year for postdocs.
