/sci/ - Science & Math

>>12462254
Desperately trying to be better than "your friends" sounds like a horrible motivation.

Anyway, it's hard to quantify how hard something is since in cutting edge research, you essentially by definition have a low chance of being the one making progress. Achievement is always relative to your competitors. Is chess harder or throwing a coin into a glass from far away? Well in either discipline you'll compete against people who do that thing 8 hours a day in competitive training, so either is extremely hard. So we're left with not with how easy it is to make progress, but kinda how many people would manage to get good to a certain degree: You set a goal and harder means a smaller fraction of people even get there. But then it's difficult to find statistical data on disciplines. Because to be on a certain level on topos theory or niche semiconductor physics needs a certain person with a certain interest, it's not something everybody is equally likely to enjoy and persure.

>>11754372
>It is unironically a hydra. Every time you learn something, new questions pop up. Then you keep chopping the new heads and more grow to replace them.
But that's not bad.
Unless you think you should know everything.
In this case, just read Faust!

>>11753860
>but if physics is a part of math
Not what he's saying - read the sentence again.

I don't think the
>did we "lose anything" by switching over to an axiomatic foundation?
has a clear cut answer.
The Begriffsschrift is 140 years old today, the breadth of mathematics is also much broader. Math is different, and formalization surely was a big part of it. We gained things - e.g. the field of computability and naturally specialized and also broadened the views on math. And old perspective and specialization and back-then-relevant knowledge is not present anymore.

>>11654746
I have a PhD in physics and a job in robotics (or rather closer to drones, really).

Just learn what interest you, unironically yolo. Waging is a meme. Being /lit/ is based and more based than STEM stuff, imho. I might be romanticising it, tho. Grass is greener, etc.

>>11428470
Yeah but how big is [math] 2^{ \alpha_0 } [/math] . Let's say in comparison to the second uncountable ordinal [math] \omega_2 [/math]?!? Thanks.

To categorize universities as places that should product something useful is a capitalist subversion of Humboldts ideals.

A university isn't a job education or a new-concept factory. It's an institute that should aid a person in growing him or herself.