Old physicists fade away
<p>A commenter writes, replying to my previous post on <cite>Eric and the Quantum Experts</cite>:</p>
<blockquote><p>
>Eric, you may still have a chance to revolutionize physics, since decoherence by itself may not completely solve the problem.
</p></blockquote>
<p>Alas, I am probably too old now.  There is a way outside chance I could do it, yes, but,&#8230;hmm&#8230;how to explain this&#8230;</p>
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<p>There&#8217;s an observed pattern in math and physics that most people do their best work very young.   The brighter you are, the longer you get before you&#8217;re useless for anything but teaching, but it&#8217;s rare to see real breakthroughs from people past their early thirties.  Only a very few <em>exceptionally</em> talented workers get to be creatively productive over their entire lifetimes; in physics that means being at the Einstein or Hawking level.  (A few people slightly less talented seem to get a second wind &#8211; as synthesizers, rather than innovators &#8211; in their sixties.)</p>
<p>It&#8217;s almost as though creativity in these fields is an isotope with a half-life that varies by field and rises with individual level of IQ or native talent or something.   Nobody understands this very well, it&#8217;s all unquantified folk knowledge.</p>
<p>The half-life of programming talent seems to be longer than for physics talent, which in turn seems to be longer than for pure math &#8211; but still, I used to worry that I&#8217;d become a useless lump as a programmer after forty.  This does not seem to have occurred; in fact, I&#8217;m more productive now than I was at twenty-five (and I was pretty damn good then). It&#8217;s an interesting question whether the half-life for programming is longer than I thought or whether I&#8217;m in the tiny lucky minority of supertalents that jump off the exponential decay curve entirely.  I don&#8217;t know the answer, and don&#8217;t even have a guess I&#8217;m confident about.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, because the half-life of physics creativity seems to be shorter than for programming, my success in the field I&#8217;m in does not predict that I&#8217;d still be able to do original physics.</p>
<p>I just turned 51.  That means, in order to believe that I could do really strong and original physics work now, I&#8217;d have to start with a justified belief that I&#8217;m as talented as Hawking or Einstein.  This is almost certainly not the case.  I would say &#8220;certainly&#8221;, except that my general track record of creativity and insight is far enough off the mean to raise just the tiniest smidgen of realistic doubt about this.  And I was, after all, ahead of the physics literature on something conceptually important at least once &#8211; even a lot of physicists never manage that.</p>
<p>Rationally, though, it&#8217;s not enough of a doubt for me to gamble on, at this point. I like what I do, and I&#8217;m good at it, and it has made me as famous as any sane person would want to be.  I don&#8217;t have any great need to go off and try to conquer physics as well.</p>
<p>Though I will admit, semi-relatedly, that I feel a continuing temptation to try to write a disruptive, field-upending outsider book on the application of analytical philosophy.  The tools I used to spot the hole in the Schr&ouml;dinger&#8217;s Cat story are way underutilized.</p>
