sometimes want to be locked up in a room, studing phylosophy, physics, whatever, and relating with people that make me want to study even more.

This would be paradise for me.

I’ve been in a “bubble” for a long time (most part of my life) and suddenly found myself in the “real world” (out of academia, but at technically demanding job: developing embedded software for rockets). Now I’m in the process of somehow “getting back”. I’m eager to have this opportunity soon.

I simply don’t see how one can live a life without dedicating herself (professionally) to the fundamental questions of nature. So when I am “forced” not to do this, it is… painful.

Christine (also from Brazil).

Going down to the local for a pint it not any better, say the wrong thing to some people and they will ether kick hell out of you or buy someone a pint to stamp on your head until blood comes out of your ears.
I confronted some people in my garden the other night, I ask them to get out and the just said to me “You best just go back in side mate!”

“The real world!” it’s just a place were most people are trying to escape from!

Qubit

The University of Chicago is a bubble. And I mean that in a loving way. We were aware of the world outside Hyde Park–we protested against the war and helped political campaigns–but after long immersions in the warm bath of intellectual debate, it’s difficult to make small talk at the Thanksgiving table with extended family members whose concerns are more pragmatic–the need to pay the cable bill, feed the dog, get the kids to school, and finish the status report before Tuesday. Add to that the fact that I majored in mathematics but found my true passions in the intricacies of politics and public policy and the somewhat related field of intellectual history/ history of science… and the fact that I never watched TV… I found that asking about people’s children was safe.

So I’ve graduated. And I’m typing this at a workstation at the job I’ve had for the past six months but which I’ll be leaving tomorrow (project work, don’t you know). I’m currently looking forward to staying in the “real world” of relatively non-intellectually-challenging work for about eighteen to twenty-one more months (as soon as I find a new job… and then law school. It’ll be good to engage in intellectual play again.

Maybe that’s why people accuse academia of not being “the real world”–because research and learning are play, of a sense. Most people are forced to enter jobs that don’t allow the full exercise of their mental faculties, and they envy those who have the resources to choose to do otherwise.

There is also the half world, the world of courtesans, questionable gentlemen and those not quite respectable. The French call it the demimonde, and presumably it has spin of 1/2. I have no idea of how members of the half world refer to the real world, which presumably has a spin of 1.

Maybe i’m hybrid real/unreal. )

Happy Hollidays

Zero

Second Life?

World of Warcraft?

Have you read much Rousseau? I would think that you would connect with his type of social contract theory a lot more than the much more Lockean Paine.

So what does any of this have to do with the “real world” discussion? Well, it tugs on my heart strings any time I am talking with another person, whatever their profession and background, who seems completely concerned with paying their taxes, avoiding conflict in their family/relationships, and working their job to keep food on the table. This is the daily struggle that most people refer to as part of the “real world,” and in many respects it is a result of the social contract we all subscribed to when we were born. Most people’s daily thoughts and concerns are focused on issues that are largely social constructs, and that mental activity in and of itself exhausts most to the point where they don’t see or care to see reality beyond that afforded by their roles in their respective societies. Most non-scientists don’t care to take note of anything going on in science because they are too busy working 50 hours a week to feed their families, and that’s the real world.

Now I’m not saying I resent our social organizations, because without them there wouldn’t be any academia, or any of the comforts we as a society have grown accustomed to. And we should be concerned about paying our taxes, and working our jobs so that money flows in, because after all, much of that is directly tied to our ability to provide ourselves and our loved ones for the basic means for survival (food, water, shelter, safety, etc). But I think as physicists we are afforded the opportunity to actually look into the “real world,” beyond our daily concerns manufactured largely by our societal organizations rather than any fundamental natural forces. We see the big picture, the picture that says that if we choose not to pay our taxes, the resulting perturbation will be negligible throughout the vast majority of the universe and things will continue going on the way they do. We realize that no piece of modern technology would exist if we hadn’t taken the time to ponder over how the natural world, independent of social or biological concerns, behaves and evolves. We are part of nature, our formation of societies and cultures was part of the natural process, and thus our day to day concerns are most definitely *part* of the real world, but there is so much more to it, and most people don’t even get the chance to consider whether or not they even *should* care about it, because those societal concerns have entirely preoccupied them and cast a veil over their eyes.

What more unreal than the blogosphere?

…it is nearly impossible to argue how your work matters to your mother.

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Douglas,

My mom does have a vague idea of my work – because she edited a scientific journal. Some of my friends even have mothers who are – gasp – actual research scientists and heavily influenced the academic choices made by their offspring.