>>13978546It's not self-idolization since its undergrads who know little to nothing about the field idolizing it, but I agree. I think this has to do with the huge push to kids and teenagers that 'science is fun and if you like what we show you you should absolutely make it your career', while in reality the popular representation of science that masses see is nothing like the real thing, which is why you get people spewing self-contradicting claims like "I love physics but hate maths", because they were never shown that one is fundamentally interconnected with the other, and that blowing cars up like mythbusters isn't what people in this field actually do. So then you get these pushes for people to be 'more involved in science' and for 'more women/gays/blacks in science' because it brings money to the departments and also because of a hypothetical prospect that one of the people that was attracted by these campaigns might become a genius scientist who changes the world, while ignoring the reality that 90% of students will either drop out or finish with a bachelors and go work in some completely unrelated industry because what they were sold through popular science is not what they actually got, having wasted 3 years, their sanity and a lot of money studying very specific skills in a narrow field which are practically useless outside of it. That's my take on it anyway.
Oh, and I never got the 'change the world' thing. Even as a highschooler I kinda thought that people who say that are deluded about their actual abilities. My excuse for getting a higher education was because of the culture that I grew in and my parents who expected it of me, and my reason for getting into stem specifically is simply because I love solving analytical problems. Were it not for these two things I would happily live a kaczynskian farmer lifestyle, and I still wish I could fulfill this dream of mine someday
