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gwern comments on [LINK] 2014 Fields Medals and Nevanlinna Prize anounced - Less Wrong
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Given the sterility of a lot of physics and sex appeal to nerds, the unpopularity of petroleum engineering, the very low pay for physics grads vs very high pay for petroleum engineering grads, the crucialness of petroleum products to the global economy which pays for all research, and of course the lamentable influence of 'the devil's excrement' & resource curse on regions like Iraq, I could more easily make the case that the professor was right than the student.
I actually agree with you, as evidenced by the fact that I got all my degrees in that area. But I feel like the professor would have said the same thing in the same tone of voice if he were a professor of butterfly taxonomy. I think experts tend to think what they are doing is the most important thing.
Didn't know that.
I think there is a definite tendency that way, for the obvious self-selection reason, but I don't think the tendency is necessarily that bad. A fair number of my professors did do a little spiel justifying the value of their particular field, but I don't remember any of them which were that grossly out of whack in their assessment - eg the cognitive psychology prof argued it was important and interesting, which I don't disagree with, but he didn't say it was 'what was really important'; the philosophy professors generally tried to justify the field, but they were satisfied if you saw some value to philosophy at all and didn't try to claim it was the most important field, etc.