analog31

Many policies don't cover flooding. You're expected to get supplemental flood insurance, which is not cheap.

I work in industry, developing scientific measurement equipment. So I'm right in the thick of things.

There are still plenty of problems in theoretical physics that are not quantum gravity. A better understanding of superconductors would be welcome right now. Likewise, nuclear fusion. Many interdisciplinary problems such as climate science and batteries.

But in terms of sheer numbers, the life sciences dwarf physics, and have been racing to automate lab work for decades. There's real money involved, not puny government grants. Larger commercial bio labs have already centralized management of technicians and data. The vendors of products in that space have all announced AI features.

In terms of my own career (at age 62), the most likely scenario is that people pay me to invent tools that make other people more productive. There's no economic reason to come after my job... yet.

Meanwhile, don't overlook the value of a "technician" who has a situational awareness of subtle conditions in the lab, and a personal stake in success of the experiment.

Anecdotally, I had an adjunct teaching gig at a state university many years ago while I was in between jobs. My mom is a retired public school math and science teacher, and was on her district's union negotiating team. I described my gig to her, and her response was: "Now you know why teachers have a union."

Indeed, and they're already better in a sense. I would never try to compete with the robots at basic manufacturing such as CNC machining and automated circuit assembly.

But for stuff that needs really quick turn-around, as a prototype or experiment evolves, I can take care of custom tasks and repairs in minutes that would otherwise take days. And it doesn't take many of those kinds of delays to utterly cripple a project.

However, I'm under no illusions, and have a "never say never" mindset. I don't claim to have a "safe" job. I'm already using AI heavily myself. The computer that's next to each lab bench is running the latest coding agents or whatever you call them. I'm not as deep into it as the coders are, but I'm not all that far behind. My token burn is respectable. ;-)

An odd thought keeps running through my mind.

We don't yet know if AI has replaced mathematicians.

But if AI can do homework and exam problems, then it means AI has replaced students.

Indeed, to support your point, I had a teaching assistantship for my first two years of grad school, meaning that I worked on an as-needed basis for things like supervising labs, proctoring exams, grading papers, etc. It was funded by the department. Where I went to school, the TA workload was pretty light.

Then I got a research assistantship, which was funded by my advisor's grant. I meant that I got paid to do my thesis research, and no longer had to teach. This was a precondition for joining his group.

I'm still better at soldering, and machining. ;-)

True, but secondary school teaching requires additional training, so it's not an option for most students thinking about applying for graduate programs. And it's a very high-attrition occupation.

Without novel proofs. If AI can churn out proofs, then anybody's work can get "scooped." I've seen this happen to students in other fields, where it has reached the point that students refrain from giving conference talks in order to avoid revealing their research topic.

My thesis project, 30+ years ago, was protected by a unique assemblage of expensive equipment, some of it purpose-built. The people who wanted my result were perfectly happy to wait for me to finish it. I even shared my shop drawings, circuit diagrams, and source code with them as I progressed.

I think at the very least students need to know what to expect. Maybe it will settle down and we'll be OK.

I'm also a physicist. But I think the next 5 years are going to be a rough ride for math. I'm struck by the following observation, mainly from following HN links to Terrence Tao's blogs.

Novel proofs are the coin of the realm for junior mathematicians. They figure into training, career advancement, and indirectly, teaching. The reason I include teaching is because it requires tenure, which requires proofs. Teaching without tenure is gig work, not a career. But proofs can be devalued to zero.

The application deadline for grad school is a few months away. For a student considering a math career, they have to deliver a thesis in a few years, that their professor is willing to sign. Nobody knows what that will look like without proofs. "We will have to do something different" is weak sauce.

They certainly are, but the question is about the adoption of washing machines. It required a lot of things to come together: Electricity, plumbing, space, money, availability of comparative services, etc.

Great user name. ;)

I read Robert Caro's biography of LBJ. The first volume talks about conditions in rural Texas. He describes the nonstop, grueling labor for women supporting a farm family. One of the chores was washing clothes. In Caro's view, rural electrification changed womens' lives dramatically, and the electric washing machine was a nontrivial factor.

Now, that happened starting in the late 1930s, so there wouldn't have been any use for electric washing machines before that. And installing a wash machine in a city probably required being able to afford a detached house. Maybe the people who could afford that could also afford to have their wash done for them.

Maybe urban women had easier lives. That wouldn't shock me. My middle class grandparents in Europe had servants. When I lived in a house with no wash machine, while in grad school, I took my wash to the nearby laundromat, and picked it up the next day, folded, ironed, the works. It cost me just a few bucks.

I'm just an old industrial physicist, but as I understand it, quantum gravity has yielded no testable predictions so far, and neither have multiple-worlds theories.

The place where quantum and gravitational effects are thought to become significant to one another is at energy levels that cannot be obtained in our experiments, either in the lab or through astronomical observation.

In addition to knowing how much stuff is released by one particle, we have a decent handle on how much is needed in order to be dangerous, due to us being constantly bombarded by various cosmic rays. That's how we can say that it's not dangerous.

The article is behind a paywall, but it seems likely that the bigger safety concern is whatever produced the large quantity of particles needed to have a chance of trapping just one. And those kinds of experiments are conducted in regulated facilities for good reason.