Alan Guth and Eddie Farhi, Bill Press and George Field at Harvard, and also other students at Harvard, rather than just picking one respectable physicist advisor and sticking with him. The title was, if I'm remembering it correctly, Cosmological Consequences of Topological and Geometric Phenomena in Field Theories. And guess what? Why Did Sean Carroll Denied Tenure? but academe is treacherous. This is not what you predict in conventional physics, but it's like my baby. And then, even within physics, do you see cosmology as the foundational physics to talk about the rest of physics, and all the rest of science in society? This turns out to work pretty well in mathematics. When it came time to choose postdocs, when I was a grad student, because, like I said, both particle physics and cosmology were in sort of fallowed times; there were no hot topics that you had to be an expert in to get a postdoc. My teacher, who was a wonderful guy, thinks about it a second and goes, "Did you ever think about how really hard it is to teach people things?" The world has changed a lot. You don't get that, but there's clearly way more audience in a world as large as ours for people who are willing to work a little bit. Was that the case at Chicago, or was that not the case at Chicago? I've forgotten almost all of it, so I'm not sure it was the best use of my time. So, there was a little window to write a book about the Higgs boson. So, that was a benefit. This is a very interesting fact to learn that completely surprised me. There was Cumrun Vafa, who had been recently hired as a young assistant professor. So, it was a coin flip, and George was assigned to me, and invited me to his office and said, "What do you want to do?" They basically admitted that. If you've been so many years past your PhD, or you're so old, either you're hired with tenure, or you're not hired on the faculty. I know the field theory. [8][9][10] In 2007, Carroll was named NSF Distinguished Lecturer by the National Science Foundation. Abdoulaye Doucoure has revealed how he came 'close to leaving Everton ' during Frank Lampard 's tenure at the club. Maybe you hinted at this a little bit in the way you asked the question, but I do think that the one obvious thing that someone can do is just be a good example. But research professor is a faculty member. I talked to the philosophers and classicists, and whatever, but I don't think anyone knew. So, my interest in the physics of democracy is really because democracies are complex systems, and I was struck by this strange imbalance between economics and politics. If they do, then I'd like to think I will jump back into it. And that's okay, in some sense, because what I care about more is the underlying ideas, and no one should listen to me talk about anything because I'm a physicist. And I love it when they're interested in outreach or activism or whatever, but I say, "Look, if you want to do that as a professional physicist, you've got to prioritize getting a job as a professional physicist." And I wasn't working on either one of those. I said, well, what about R plus one over R? I guess, the final thing is that the teaching at that time in the physics department at Harvard, not the best in the world. So much knowledge, and helpful, but very intimidating if you're a student. He was another postdoc that was at MIT with me. And I have been, and it's been incredibly helpful in various ways. So, by 1992 or 1993, it's been like, alright, what have you done for me lately? Now, look, if I'm being objective, maybe this dramatically decreases my chances of having a paper that makes a big impact, because I'm not writing papers that other people are already focused on. I like her a lot. I knew relativity really well, but I still felt, years after school, that I was behind when it came to field theory, string theory, things like that. it's great to have one when you are denied tenure and you need to job hunt. Then, of course, the cosmology group was extremely active, but it was clearly in the midst of a shift from early universe cosmology to late universe cosmology at the time. So, I would become famous if they actually discovered that. So, yeah, we wrote a four-author paper on that. But of course, ten years later, they're observing it. I never had, as a high priority, staying near Lower Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Sean Carroll, bless his physicist's soul, decided to respond to a tweet by Colin Wright (asserting the binary nature of sex) by giving his (Carroll's) own take in on the biological nature of sex. I was very good at Fortran, and he asked me to do a little exposition to the class about character variables. I want it to be okay to talk about these things amongst themselves when they're not professional physicists. It doesn't sound very inspired, so I think we'll pass." [31][failed verification][third-party source needed]. So, even if it's a graduate-level textbook filled with equations, that is not what they want to see. You have an optimism that that's not true, and that what you're doing as a public intellectual is that you're nurturing and being a causative effect of those trend lines. [32][33][34] Some of his work has been on violations of fundamental symmetries, the physics of dark energy, modifications of general relativity and the arrow of time. When you come up for tenure, the prevailing emotion is one of worry. She could pinpoint it there. [13] He is also the author of four popular books: From Eternity to Here about the arrow of time, The Particle at the End of the Universe about the Higgs boson, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself about ontology, and Something Deeply Hidden about the foundations of quantum mechanics. And I didn't. It was certainly my closest contact with the Harvard physics department. I explained it, and one of my fellow postdocs, afterwards, came up to me and said, "That was really impressive." Like, when people talk about the need for science outreach, and for education and things like that, I think that there is absolutely a responsibility to do outreach to get the message out, especially if the kind of work you do has no immediate economic or technological impact. So, the density goes down as the volume goes up, as space expands. I think all three of those things are valid and important. I've been interviewing scientists for almost twenty years now, and in our world, in the world of oral history, we experienced something of an existential crisis last February and March, because for us it was so deeply engrained that doing oral history meant getting in a car, getting on a plane with your video/audio recording equipment, and going to do it in person. In fact, that even helped with the textbook, because I certainly didn't enter the University of Chicago as a beginning faculty member in 1999, with any ambitions whatsoever of writing a textbook. This is what's known as the coincidence problem. Certainly, I would have loved to go to Harvard, but I didn't even apply. So, we had some success there, but it did slow me down in the more way out there stuff I was interested in. So, even though these were anticipated, they were also really good benchmarks, really good targets to shoot for. I was still thought to be a desirable property. And, yeah, it's just incredibly touching that you've made an impact on someone's life. No, no. That group at MIT was one, and then Joe Silk had a similar group at Berkeley at the same time. So, the paper that I wrote is called The Quantum Field Theory on Which the Everyday World Supervenes. Supervenience is this idea in philosophy that one level depends on another level in a certain way and supervenes on the lower level. It is interesting stuff, but it's not the most interesting stuff. Of course, once you get rejected for tenure, those same people lose interest in you. That's just the system. And he said, "Absolutely. Given how productive you've been over the past ten months, when we look to the future, what are the things that are most important to you that you want to return to, in terms of normality? So, you can see me on the one hand, as the videos go on, the image gets better and sharper, and the sound gets better. But it gives lip service to the ideal of it. I had great professors at Villanova, but most of the students weren't that into the life of the mind. Well, one ramification of that is technological. Tip: Search within this transcript using Ctrl+F or +F. I'm the kind of person who would stop writing papers and do other things. We'll get into the point where I got lucky, and the universe started accelerating, and that saved my academic career. Did you get any question like that? Reply Insider . But I think I didn't quite answer a previous question I really want to get to which is I did get offered tenured jobs, but I was still faced with a decision, what is it I want to maximize? Remember, I applied there to go to undergraduate school there. Let me ask you that question specifically on the topic of religion. However, you can also be denied tenure if you hav. So, like I said, we were for a long time in observational astronomy trying to understand how much stuff there is in the universe, how much matter there is. As long as I thought it was interesting, that counted for me. Sean, given the vastly large audience that you reach, however we define those numbers, is there a particular demographic that gives you the most satisfaction in terms of being able to reach a particular kind of person, an age group, however you might define it, that gives you the greatest satisfaction that you're introducing real science into a life that might not ever think about these things? A lot of people focus on the fact that he was so good at reaching out to broad audiences, in an almost unprecedented way, that they forget that he was really a profound thinker as well. Someone like me, for example, who is very much a physicist, but also is interested in philosophy, and I would like to be more active even than I am at philosophy at the official level, writing papers and things like that. And I think it's Allan Bloom who did The Closing of the American Mind. Right. If the case centers around a well-known university, it can become a publicized battle, and the results aren't always positive for the individual who was denied. Phew, this is a tough position to be in. I can't get a story out in a week, or whatever. It's sort of a negative result, but I think this is really profound. You're really looking out into the universe as a whole. Sean, before we begin developing the life narrative, your career and personal background trajectory, I want to ask a very presentist question. For one thing, I don't have that many theoretical physicists on the show. So, then, the decision was, well -- so, to answer your question, yes -- well, sorry, I didn't quite technically get tenured offers, if I'm being very, very honest, but it was clear I was going to. Theoretical cosmology was the reason I was hired. People like Wayne Hu came out of that. It was so clear to me that I did everything they wanted me to do that I just didn't try to strategize. I started a new course in cosmology, which believe it or not, had never been taught before. Harvard taught a course, but no one liked it. I think that's much more the reason why you don't hear these discussions that much. I'm an atheist. Tenure denial, and how early-career researchers can survive it Like, a collaboration that is out there in the open, and isn't trying to hide their results until they publish it, but anyone can chip in. In some extent, it didn't. It was like cinderblocks, etc., but at least it was spacious. Let's put it that way. Roughly speaking, I come from a long line of steel workers. Stephen Knight on Sean Carroll, Colin Wright, and the binary of sex As a ten year old, was there any formative moment where -- it's a big world out there for a ten year old. So, I wonder, in what ways can you confirm that outside assumption, but also in reflecting on the past near year, what has been difficult that you might not have expected from all of this solitary work? Intellectual cultures, after all, are just as capable of errors associated with moral and political inertia as administrative cultures are. No, tenure is not given or denied simply on the basis of how many papers you write. I don't think it has anything to do with what's more important, or fundamental, or exciting, or better science, but there is a certain kind of discipline that you learn in learning physics, and a certain bag of tricks and intellectual guiding stars that you pick up that are very, very helpful. But within the physical sciences, there are gradations in terms of one's willingness to consider metaphysics as something that exists, that there are things about the universe that are not -- it's not a matter of them being not observable now because we lack the theories or the tools to observe them, but because they exist outside the bounds of science. They chew you up and spit you out. I was really surprised." Evolutionary biology also gives you that. What Is It Like To Be Denied Tenure as a Professor? Why is the matter density of the universe approximately similar to the dark energy density, .3 and .7, even though they change rapidly with respect to each other? It's sort of the most important ideas there but expressed in a way which was hopefully a lot more approachable and user-friendly, and really with no ambition other than letting people learn the subject. Now, can I promise you that the benefit is worth the cost, and I wouldn't actually be better off just sitting down and spending all of my time thinking about that one thing? Sean, in your career as a mentor to graduate students, as you noted before, to the extent that you use your own experiences as a cautionary tale, how do you square the circle of instilling that love of science and pursuing what's most interesting to you within the constraints of there's a game that graduate students have to play in order to achieve professional success? It was really hard, because we know so much about theoretical physics now, that as soon as you propose a new idea, it's already ruled out in a million different ways. And he says, "Yes, everything the Santa Fe Institute has ever done counts." Some people are just crackpots. Even if it were half theoretical physicists and half other things, that's a weird crazy balance. My grandfather was a salesman, etc. Carroll provides his perspective on why he did not achieve tenure there, and why his subsequent position at Caltech offered him the pleasure of collaborating with top-flight faculty members and graduate students, while allowing the flexibility to pursue his wide-ranging interests as a public intellectual involved in debates on philosophy . Actually, this is completely unrelated but let me say something else before I forget, because it's in the general area of high school and classes and things like that. So, you didn't even know, as a prospective grad student, whether he was someone you would want to pick as an advisor, because who knows how long he'd be there. We'll see what comes next for you, and of course, we'll see what comes next in theoretical physics. It's not just you can do them, so you get the publication, and that individual idea is interesting, but it has to build to something greater than the individual paper itself. I'm not quite sure I can tell the difference, but working class is probably more accurate. So, dark energy is between minus one and zero, for this equation of state parameter. As a public intellectual who has discussed, I mean, really, it's a library worth of things that you've talked about and [who you have] talked with, is your sense first that physics being the foundational science is the most appropriate place as an intellectual launching pad to talk about these broader topics? As I was getting denied tenure, nobody suggested that tenure denial was . Now, you might ask, who cares? November 16, 2022 9:15 am. Would I be interested in working on it with him? Sean Carroll, a physicist, was denied tenure by his department this year. Sean Carroll is a tenured research physics professor at Caltech with thousands of citations. But the thing that flicked the switch in my head was listening to music. Do you ever feel that maybe you should just put all of that aside and really focus hard on some of the big questions that are out there, or do you feel like you have the best of both worlds, that you can do that and all of the other things and neither suffer? Bob Kirshner and his supernova studies were also a big deal. Because the ultimate trajectory from a thesis defense is a faculty appointment, right? They hired Wayne Hu at the same time they hired me, as a theorist, to work on the microwave background. I sat in on all these classes on group theory, and differential geometry, and topology, and things like that. We are committed to the preservation of physics for future generations, the success of physics students both in the classroom and professionally, and the promotion of a more scientifically literate society. But, you know, my standard is what is it that excites me at the moment? So, I gave a talk, and I said, "Look, something is wrong." There were some hints, and I could even give you another autobiographical anecdote. Would that be on that level? Sean, I wonder if you stumbled upon one of the great deals in the astronomy and physics divide. It was fine. Sean Payton addresses Russell Wilson's private office So, they just cut and pasted those paragraphs into their paper and made me a coauthor. Benefits of tenure. Literally, I've not visited there since I became an external professor because we have a pandemic that got in the way. Harvard is not the most bookish place in the world. Someone said it. I was on the advanced track, and so forth. In other words, if you were an experimental condensed matter physicist, is there any planet where it would be feasible that you would be talking about democracy and atheism and all the other things you've talked about? They'd read my papers, they helped me with them, they were acknowledged in them, they were coauthors and everything. They also had Bob Wald, who almost by himself was a relativity group. I thought I knew what I was doing. I'm crystal clear that this other stuff that I do hurts me in terms of being employable elsewhere. It's not a matter of credentials, but hopefully being a physicist gives me insight into other areas that I can take seriously those areas in their own rights, learn about them, and move in those directions deliberatively. I just did the next step that I was supposed to do. That's a very hard question. When you're falling asleep, when you're taking a shower, when you're feeding the cat, you're really thinking about physics. It's actually a very rare title, so even within university departments, people might not understand it. Even though we overlapped at MIT, we didn't really work together that much. I have group meetings with them, and we write papers together, and I take that very seriously. So, it's not quite a perfect fit in that sense. So, I thought, well, okay, I was on a bunch of shortlists. Washington was just a delight. He was a blessing, helping me out. Our Browse Subjects feature is also affected by this migration. To be perfectly honest, it's a teensy bit less prestigious than being on the teaching faculty. In part, that is just because of my sort of fundamentalist, big picture, philosophical inclinations that I want to get past the details of the particular experiment to the fundamental underlying lessons that we learned from them. The U of Chicago denied his tenure years ago, and that makes him damaged goods in the academic world. I have enormous respect for the people who do that. Not for everybody, and again, I'm a huge believer in the big ecosystem. But I do do educational things, pedagogical things. They are . We can both quite easily put together a who's who of really top-flight physicists who did not get tenure at places like Harvard and Stanford, and then went on to do fundamental work at other excellent institutions, like University of Washington, or Penn, or all kinds of great universities. So, I'm really quite excited about this. It falls short of that goal in some other ways. In fact, I got a National Science Foundation fellowship, so even places that might have said they don't have enough money to give me a research assistantship, they didn't need that, because NSF was paying my salary. So, that appeared in my book as a vignette. They don't quite seem in direct conflict with experiment. You sell tens of thousands of books if you're lucky. However, Sean Carroll doesn't only talk about science, he also talks about the philosophy of science. So, I raised the user friendliness of it a little bit. No one has written the history of atheism very, very well. I want to say the variety of people, and just in exactly the same way that academic institutions sort of narrow down to the single most successful strategy -- having strong departments and letting people specialize in them -- popular media tries to reach the largest possible audience. I was there. The other is this argument absolutely does not rule out the existence of non-physical stuff. [18][19], In 2010, Carroll was elected fellow of the American Physical Society for "contributions to a wide variety of subjects in cosmology, relativity and quantum field theory, especially ideas for cosmic acceleration, as well as contributions to undergraduate, graduate and public science education". They're a little bit less intimidated. Bill Press did us a favor of nominally signing a piece of paper that said he would be the faculty member for this course. I like teaching a lot. Institute for Theoretical Physics. Doing as much as you could without the intimidating math. It was Mark Trodden who was telling me a story about you. So, temporarily, this puts me in a position where I'm writing papers and answering questions that no one cares about, because I'm trying to build up a foundation for going from the fundamental quantumness of the universe to the classical world we see. Yes, it is actually a very common title for Santa Fe affiliated people. Having said that, they're still really annoying. So, these days, obviously, all of my podcasts interviews have been remote, but I'm thinking most of them are just going to continue to be that way going forward. Sean, just a second, the sun is setting here on the east coast. For example, Sean points out that publishing in more than one field only hurts your chance, because most people in charge of hiring resents breadth and want specializers. Or, maybe I visited there, but just sort of unofficially. In many ways, I could do better now if I rewrote it from scratch, but that always happens. I don't know whether this is -- there's only data point there, but the Higgs boson was the book people thought they wanted, and they liked it. He turned down an invitation to speak at a conference sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation, because he did not want to appear to be supporting a reconciliation between science and religion. The problem is not that everyone is a specialist, the problem is that because universities are self-sustaining, the people who get hired are picked by the people who are already faculty members there. Then, okay, I get to talk about ancient Roman history on the podcast today. Actually, your suspicion is on-point. I had this email from a woman who said, literally, when she was 12 years old, she was at some event, and she was there with her parents, and they happened to sit next to me at a table, and we talked about particle physics, and she wrote just after she got accepted to the PhD program at Oxford in particle physics, and she said it all started with that conversation. Maybe not even enough to qualify as a tradition. Sean, I'm curious if you think podcasting is a medium that's here to stay, or are we in a podcast bubble right now, and you're doing an amazing job riding it? And I'd have to say, "Yes, but maybe the audience does not know what a black hole is, so you need to explain it to us." So, that's physics, but also biology, economics, society, computers, complex systems appear all over the place.
Brightstar Device Protection Boost Mobile, Wee Meme Original, David Waller Priscilla, Articles W