second post
Speaking as someone who has been following Sabine for about two years and am generally a fan, I just watched this video
yesterday that made me a bit more skeptical of her views. And I mean a bit, like 10%. Prof dave explains raises a good point that just doing mathematics in theoretical physics is not a bad idea per se. I think it does take a bit of glamour out of physics for those new to the field but it’s obviously extremely fundamental.
As a “failed academic” myself though I do not empathize with Sabine. This is because I was terrible at my PhD program because of my inherent absolute disinterest. I saw brilliant people around me delve into world class knowledge levels from scratch in lasers, synthetic biology, RNA etc and they had the cajones (male and female) to push themselves to learn and in fact love math behind these fields. ( example of paper we had to read )
Sabine may be right that she disagrees with the direction of particle hunting, and she may be an incredibly smart person maligned by one particular academic institution, which is sad. But like math, I would love for her to fix the system not as an outsider but as a take-no-prisoners insider.