Above my head, but what mysteries has she solved?
this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2025
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Science
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There are plenty of people skilled enough to build an airplane at 14. Most of them are not rich enough to afford the parts.
Eat the billionaires, implement universal basic income.
While these kind of people are important and have their place, i think progress comes from cooperation mostly, not individual excellency, especially nowadays. The problems left to solve are just too large and complex for individuals. Prove me wrong tho
Nobody works alone nowadays, also nobody starts from zero. But you cannot replace one of these rare brilliant minds with 1.000 "normal" minds. I think it is about a different setup of their brain, they can see where/what others can't, the speed of thinking is also totally different.
I think it's maybe a bit more nuanced, but at the core of it you're right. There's lots of stuff that will never happen unless someone has the initial idea, but that's rarely a refined thing out of the box, bouncing it around finds a better solution. Actually seeing a thing through to realisation and completion needs a focused effort from a group of people.
Brilliant science man -> "yeah! My dude is once in a generation saving science from all the incompetents"
Brilliant science woman -> ... whatever parent comment 👆🏼 is.
First law of science on the internet: great women are always "just one part of a team."
No,.... just no. This actually offends me a lot. My opinions on individual excellency and its role in science dont really have much overlap with any political agenda and whatever. Especially as a privilidged cishet white male i feel a lot of moral pressure to be as accepting as possible. Instead of engaging with the discussion and saying "i believe more in individualism", which would be fine, you had to throw arround character critiques. But enlighten me if im not a feminist, which i like to believe i am, but a misogynist.
she dont care she has a license in Piracy (Fencing, sailing ...)
To those who sometimes feel bad by comparing themselves to "more accomplished" peers, the one-page CV on her website is clickable, it's actually six pages. Then realize your peers or you will never match Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, so be kind to yourself. You do matter too, firefly: https://ncase.me/fireflies/.
She's a one-in-a-century human such as Leonhard Euler: brilliant scientifically, ethically, and most importantly, still kind.
Quote from her talk Exploring Many Worlds at 35:31:
Q: “Graduate school is hard. I was once told by my dissertation advisor that it's not how smart you are, it's really how disciplined you are. And I was wondering if you could give us your reflections about persistence and tenacity in the context of advancing in your field.”
Sabrina: “I think the craziest thing is that you actually get advice like that. You get told things that no one should be telling you, that you're doomed or whatever. So if I wasn't happy doing this more mathematical research, that I should leave, and not that there's, maybe, ways to change it. So I think that persistence is a tricky thing because, again, it's like this cost-benefit analysis of where do you want your future to be, who do you have to deal with in the meantime to get there and whatnot. I think that maybe the sociology needs to change in that it shouldn't be like "this is the way things are", kind of that tough advice [tough love] type of thing. I don't like it because it sucks, it gets rid of diversity of thought.”
PS Sabrina didn't actually say "no" to Jeff "the unethical" Bezos, because she wanted to work for Blue Origin and held an internship there. Choosing theoretical physics instead doesn't mean she flipped him off—however nice that would've been indeed.
Her response to that question reflects one of the most damning things about MIT as a graduate school — the institution recruits the best and most promising minds it can, but the profs there spend much of their time actively discouraging and demoralizing students, not least by asserting that the only way to “make a contribution” is through an exclusive commitment to a narrow set of mathematical approaches.
That youtube link has a link to Grokopedia article of her in the description. why would anyone do that?
What the fuck indeed. I asked why in the comment section, because that's her YouTube channel.
>~<
Look it's the science squiggle
Who tf downvotes this?
MIT has a gpa scale that goes to 5?
Yeah, for some reason they count A as 5.0 instead of 4.0.
I'll make my own university and turn the GPA up to 11. And with blackjack and hookers.
makes em feel smarter
Hey, don't poke holes in these undisputable "facts"!
How dare you.
I actually have no idea and I don't even live in the USA and I've never heard of this person before now so I have no idea what I'm actually talking about.
GPA scales make no sense here, but usually the top varies somewhere between 4.0 and 5.0.
At the university I went to, I believe it went to 4.0 with honors, but I only knew one person who got remotely close to that. Honors was a separate process where they make you miserable in your last two years for no discernable benefit.
This triggered my shitpost Spidey senses. But what do I know. I never studied in the US.
But... Physics Girl is Dianna Cowern?
Cool saying no to Jeff Bezo
She looks way older than 14 in that picture.
This is too cool. Thanks!
She’s a pirate!
Incredible!