In a real free-market scenario, would'nt those PhD programs be drastically reduced?
I suspect this is because this physics PhD program is providing an implicit signalling function, that the fellow out of this program is worth more than the ave college guy - doing the same programming job - because he proved himself on more complex study materials.
Academic physics research is not very useful economically, since we've figured out most of the stuff that will ever contribute to engineering needs -- building stuff that real people benefit from -- in our lifetimes. Not all! But most.
Mechanical/structural/chemical/etc. engineering on the other hand (a.k.a. physics and chemistry applied to real world problems) are very well-compensated skill-sets.
I mean, take a look at the next "who's hiring" page. Ad supported webapps seem pretty well represented.
> Academic physics research is not very useful economically, since we've figured out most of the stuff that will ever contribute to engineering needs -- building stuff that real people benefit from -- in our lifetimes. Not all! But most.
My phone lasts a day on a battery because we've managed to turn off the CPU as much as possible - we've got a supercomputer in our pocket that we can't use at its full capacity because battery technology isn't advancing. Academic physics research is not very useful economically because we've defined "useful economically" as "able to be converted into profits within 2-5yrs", and unfortunately we did that about 20 years ago, so the whole thing's sorta running on fumes right now.
This is hackernews. The organization that founded this site has mostly made its billions by investing in web properties. They are branching out these days, but that's the demographic.
> battery technology isn't advancing. Academic physics research is not very useful economically because we've defined "useful economically" as "able to be converted into profits within 2-5yrs", and unfortunately we did that about 20 years ago, so the whole thing's sorta running on fumes right now.
If I'm understanding the claim, we aren't doing enough battery R&D, so battery technology advancement is slow? First off, I don't think most physics labs are researching anything even remotely useful to improving batteries. But for the ones that are, let's do fund them.
Second, battery technology is and has been advancing rapidly. See for example the slide in the presentation on the following website ("Battery cell energy densities have almost tripled since 2010 [as of 2020]"):
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years...
That being said, it's far from clear that we are spending less than the optimal amount on battery R&D (the current amount is many billions of dollars per year -- Samsung alone spend ~$1B on research and development for just electric vehicle batteries in 2020). How much do you think we are spending? How much more should we spend?
The problem is, we don't know which ones those are. We won't know, until the discoveries and advancements they make are refined to the point where they can produce batteries.
That's my point - the actual work that needs to happen to make something new that can be put into an "economically useful" product happens 20-30 years beforehand. That's what we need to fund.
> "Battery cell energy densities have almost tripled since 2010 [as of 2020]"
We have a different definition of "rapidly", and a different definition of need. Battery density is the single largest brake on the day-to-day usefulness of electronic devices right now. 3x is nothing. 10x is better, 100x is what we probably need.
I think we probably disagree on two points. First, it seems unlikely that it is even physically possible to beat current lithium ion energy density by 100x. That would imply batteries that are 2x as energy dense as gasoline. I think there's pretty good reason to believe that is not possible -- i.e. there is no easily reversible configuration of atoms that will yield that level of density.
Even if it were physically possible, I doubt that we'd be there today even if we had bent the entire productive capacity of the planet to this problem excluding all others for the last thirty years. You can't make a baby in a month even if you have nine willing mothers to be.
If you're inclined to strengthen the argument you're presenting here, I have one suggestion. If there is widespread underfunding of battery or precursor research, experts in the field are probably talking about this fact. You should be able to find some talk by a respected academic showing that particular worthy ideas likely to add value that aren't being researched for lack of funds. Another option would be to demonstrate that recent advances in battery technology resulted from blue-sky research in the past of the kind that 1. isn't being funded today and 2. could not reasonably have been foreseen to lead to improvements in battery energy density.
(I should also just point out that the whole thesis that we have stopped funding basic research is not even true, see here: https://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/2020-05/FunctionNON... -- general science funding, after adjusting for inflation, has increased substantially over time.)
I also question your estimate of the importance of energy density, but that's a secondary issue, since I think your views on how fast the technology could be developed are unrealistic under any spending scenario.
Just looking at some quick stats, a little more than half of all STEM occupations are outside of "Computer Occupations", though that one chunk is by far the largest single chunk. And far from the entirety of "Computer Occupations" is ad-supported web apps.
https://www.rclco.com/publication/2021-stem-job-growth-index...
There are a lot of fucking engineers (traditional engineers - based on the definition of 20-30 years ago) out there, and a great many of them make a solid living off it. Most of them simply do their job in relative obscurity compared to the computer workers these days.