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Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

What's the alternative? I mean that seriously, not sarcastically or in a defeatist way; try to explore what the alternative might actually be.

On the one hand, academia has become rather harsh and intimidating and there is room for all kinds of improvement.

On the other hand... there is no world where whoever just wants to study math can just go study whatever they want for as long as they want, regardless of how well they do it. Of course, when I spell it out, that probably seems obvious, but I suspect this may be the unexamined assumption in a lot of people's heads.

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Would you say the same about exercising and sport?

"There is really no point in doing any exercise unless you're aiming for Olympics level performance. Yes, it's somewhat harsh and intimidating. But there is no world where whoever just wants to can just go do sports and exercise what they want as long as they want, regardless of how well they do it."

I think that was the point of the article - doing maths as a way of life (like exercise), not just for your career with the aspiration of being the best.

There isn't a world where you can just go do sports and exercise as long as you want, regardless of how well you do it. Eventually you're going to have to eat something.

I'm speaking in a context where we're talking about academic life and academic life being harder than it needs to be. I think that's the only way to read this context, because nobody is making self-study "harder than it needs to be", so reading this thread as being about "life in general" doesn't make any sense to me.

When you have a decent work-life balance, you can certainly engage in sport and exercise, even if it is not jour job.

I think the article is precisely not about professional mathematicians in academia. To quote: "If mathematics is a medium for human flourishing, it stands to reason that everyone should have a chance to participate in it." (my emphasis).

I solve Project Euler problems for fun. The article presents an argument that more people should do something similar, and more mathematicians and maths teachers should support it.

"there is no world" - wasn't that what University was like before the 80s and still is in many other countries? minimal fees and some casual work and you can stay for as long as you can stand the conditions of the average student flat ;-) I think you are conflating the reality of your current culture with what was/is in other cultures.

If what you describe was even remotely the case, which I don't know, then there was some other filter in place preventing "everybody" from doing it. I can tell, because not "everybody" did.

Plus I suspect you missed my "regardless of how well they do it" clause. I doubt that you can flunk every math class over and over and just keep attending. Loopholes that big get noticed, exploited, and closed very quickly.

In German universities in the 80's and 90's you had people studying for decades. It wasn't a "loophole", either, it was a feature. Universities were there to teach, basically everyone could go and study.

In recent times, the pressure to finish or drop out has increased, and studies have become more rigorously structured (or infantilised...), particularly with the introduction of the Bachelor/Master system.

There was a very strong filter. It used to be very difficult to get into university before they expanded tremendously from the 70s to now. You needed excellent grades. Now good grades are enough to get a spot somewhere.

there is no world where whoever just wants to study math can just go study whatever they want for as long as they want, regardless of how well they do it.

Certainly in Sweden, once you're in, you're basically free to hang around at University and study for as long as you want. It's not like they're going to kick you off campus.

Yes, but you can only get student subsidies/loans for a couple of years.

Sure, but if you live in cheap student housing and keep other expenses modest, you can probably manage to get by with working part time

An alternative would be a system where publishing isn't as important as obtaining results. Let small journals take care of everyday research and let only the big works end up in something that really define someone's carreer. There would be a lot less people with a "valuable" publication, but we do have other ways to judge people and assign spots as researcher. The problem is the way jobs in academia are assigned: the more you published, the more you get paid. This shifts the attention from knowledge to publishing. Just value people with the usual attitudinal tests unless thay discovered something truly remarkable.

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