It's really not an attainable career for almost anyone. Not even the vast majority of professors, who juggle the actual research with grant writing, mentoring students, lecturing, organizing and participating in conferences.
No, you're mistaken. It's not attainable to make MONEY doing it, as a rule.
I've been doing just that and still am, in my own field. It doesn't make money but it sure does eventually lead to influence and results. The money gradually creeps up (for instance Patreon, once you have enough influence to pull some patrons) but it never becomes comparable to normal work.
If you want to do this but also have some fancy resources, inherit money. That's literally what happened to me, and it's returning to baseline with a moderate boost from having invested what I inherited in tools and materials.
People can often take on more than they think. It just requires tradeoffs or sacrifices. Plenty of people that have kids, health issues, multiple jobs, still find the time to better themselves by going back to school or working out to improve health, or volunteering and or building a community program in some way. It just is rare to make that choice relative to our wealth of leisure options. It is easier (and very understandable) to just choose to find some enjoyment in your life by taking what joy you can. Which is why people that "go beyond" are celebrated in media. But it isn't unattainable in the same sense that, say, loosing weight isn't some magical thing that only the few can do. It instead is something hard, something that incentives conspire against, but nevertheless still accessible to most.
Worth noting it seems like didn't always used to be this way. My impression is researchers had much fewer distractions in the early 20th century. It's not surprising how much ground-breaking progress was made at the time when you see it this way.
If you stay out of the “news stream” you can pursue your ideas deeply and even if someone else is working on something similar, you will have your own unique take on it.
They stood on the shoulders of giants just like we do.
It seems naive to think that getting on those shoulders in this modern age won’t create a brand new batch of low hanging fruit to pick if you’re willing to put the effort in
Eventually the tree is picked clean, it doesn't matter how high you go. There's just very little left and all the pickers are trying to get the same fruit.
People thought the same one hundred years ago, and they will likely feel the same in the next hundred years when we all have our own AI assistants and probably stuff like ocular implants to replace monitors and other unfathomable discoveries
Everything we know about modern physics was being discovered at that time. Math formalism was really taking a foothold. Neither field has seen major advancements since roughly the 70s. Computer science is the same. Now we're computer plumbers, not scientists. I'm not suggesting there won't be advancements, but we solved most of the fundamentals in that time period
> we solved most of the fundamentals in that time period
Arguably this is just one interpretation, the other being "we haven't made fundamental progress since that time period".
In my limited understanding as a mathematician, there's definitely room for progress: settling the measurement problem, or formulating a theory of quantum gravity, say.
It just makes a lot of sense to me that if you give researchers several hours more deep focus time per day, they'll make more progress. I appreciate the low hanging fruit argument, but it depends on an assumption about what's left to solve.
Grant funding has gotten more and more focused on direct applicability to publishable findings or patentable research over time. Metrics rule everything around us. Which means researchers have to spend ever more time "proving" the "value" of their work.
I have the theory that this is due to digitalisation. We are now at the stage where "everybody" needs to know Tech, and everybody now wants to work in the hip Tech companoes, regardless of own technical skills or mindset: Project managers, legal, accounting, etc. nowadays all want to have a say in Tech aspects, and this creates pressure on the actual tech departments of a corporation to create reports and documentation and explain themselves much more than it used to be.
It's a bad situation for tech people to have to deal with the FUD of all other departments because those departments want to present themselves as knowledgeable and contributing to the technical aspects, when they are not able to at all.
Yes, exactly. It's a rare thing and for people that have wealth and are involved in wealthy circles.
On the other side of things, I could never hire someone to help me. I have to spend my time worrying about trivial things like optimizing my food budget so I don't starve. I don't have the ability to pull away the distractions.
And yes, I am a tech worker in the USA. I still have to do this kind of thing.
