The Universe Is Not Locally Real

[Jehanne]

Fantastic article!  Without derailing this thread, it is interesting that one could get a PhD in physics, "have fun for five  years, and then...be jobless."  That outcome, of course, would feel very real, not to mention, painful.

It was less than 5 years after Ph.D. for me, and it is still painful.

Although I think the meaning of the fun 5 years in the article was the time doing the Ph.D., not the time afterward.

You only live once. I would rather have a PhD and be poor than be rich without one. Assuming that I could have ever been admitted to a PhD program (improbable but not impossible), my likely, perhaps only, major accomplishment would have been to have made the top half of my graduating class possible. Still, math & science are fascinating enough subjects to have made such a journey fun!