I found the conversation because it’s relevant in a different way.
Part of an offlist DD email from 2005 (link is dead now but I think it’s the 5th Solvay Conference – @alanforr also received this email so there’s a chance he remembers):
http://216.120.242.82/~greensp/video.html
Historically interesting movie. 1927. In those days there were such things as great physicists. Several of them met on that famous occasion.
They all look so drab. No casual observer could tell that many of them were smarter than Deep Thought on steroids and that underneath those hats there was such beauty.
DD did not reply to my email asking “how do u mean there were great phys but aren’t now?” so I asked it in IMs:
curi42 (6:51:11 PM): how do u mean there were great phys but aren’t now?
oxfordphysicist (6:51:30 PM): Literally.
curi42 (6:51:44 PM): no1 is good now?
curi42 (6:51:54 PM): why? how did this happen?
curi42 (6:52:00 PM): u r not great?
oxfordphysicist (6:54:17 PM): I am arguably one of the best currently working. A handful such as Martin Rees are arguably a bit better than me. All of us are third rate. Possibly low second rate, if one is charitable, on a scale where at that conference there were at least six first rate physicists.
oxfordphysicist (6:54:54 PM): (I have qualities in addition to being a good physicist, though.)
curi42 (6:55:02 PM): you sure do! :)
curi42 (6:55:15 PM): but how did this happen?
curi42 (6:55:24 PM): how did they become great, and why does that process not work anymore?
oxfordphysicist (7:02:05 PM): Feynman said it’s because of the system of science education.
curi42 (7:02:21 PM): what did the system used to be like?
curi42 (7:02:24 PM): i know it is bad now
oxfordphysicist (7:02:50 PM): Basically, neglect. Other things were considered important. No one knew physics was anything until after WW2.
oxfordphysicist (7:03:17 PM): I have been told then when Einstein came to America, the newspapers called him a “famous mathematician”.
curi42 (7:03:28 PM): haha
curi42 (7:03:36 PM): and now that the schools are trying
curi42 (7:03:38 PM): it’s a mess
curi42 (7:03:39 PM): lovely
oxfordphysicist (7:03:46 PM): Whether that’s so or not, it was the attitude.
curi42 (7:03:55 PM): :(
curi42 (7:04:00 PM): do we need great physicists?
oxfordphysicist (7:05:10 PM): Well, I have a separate theory – just a wild guess really – that in the long run there won’t be geniuses. That being a genius is like being one of those calculating prodigies.
oxfordphysicist (7:05:41 PM): No, we, society, doesn’t need them. It is enough if we have creative people who love what they do.
curi42 (7:07:01 PM): i’m glad i didn’t try to become great at chess
curi42 (7:15:25 PM): i think ppl will get good enough at things that, at least by present day standards, they will be geniuses
curi42 (7:15:30 PM): sometimes at multiple things at once
oxfordphysicist (7:16:08 PM): That would be nice.
curi42 (7:16:33 PM): why not?
curi42 (7:16:44 PM): you are very good at a variety of things. so am i, and i’m young.
oxfordphysicist (7:17:29 PM): You could be right
Also, in 2010 DD told me:
17:53:15 oxfordphysicist: No one is a Feynman, but Penrose is pretty high up among the geniuses of our age.
17:53:21 curidotus: i don’t agree
17:53:47 curidotus: i went to his talk. i thought it was magical thinking.
17:55:45 oxfordphysicist: Yes that doesn’t mean he’s not a genius. Gödel was flat-out bonkers. But his proofs were still genius…
Note how DD agrees with me that Penrose’s talk (that I attended IRL) was magical thinking, but still thinks Penrose qualifies as a genius by current standards. He sees Penrose as having huge flaws but thinks Penrose also had some very high points. Related, DD said mean things about Penrose to me, including that he has “silly ideas about quantum theory” – but DD still considers him “one of the great minds of the day”.
Also from the 2010 IM conversation:
17:49:52 oxfordphysicist: BTW Al Schild one explained to me, when I was a grad student, his plan for improving science publications: (1) abolish the PhD degree, and (2) make all submissions to learned journals anonymous.
17:50:04 oxfordphysicist: So I eagerly went and told this idea to Dennis Sciama.
17:50:19 oxfordphysicist: And he persuaded me otherwise, as follows:
17:52:07 oxfordphysicist: If I’m a referee and I get a paper that defends an absurd position with poor arguments, I want to reject it after reading the first paragraph and so do the readers. But if Feynman wrote it, I want to read it whatever the hell it says, and so do the readers.
Note: That was a rebuttal about (2) but not about (1).
So, lmf, you seem to have a higher opinion of the physics education you’ve experienced than DD (or Feynman or I) does.
You probably think you are or will be better than a fourth rate physicist, but DD probably disagrees, and considers most or all of your professors fourth rate or lower.
Being fourth rate or lower means you have lots of errors in your physics and math knowledge. There are problems with how you understand stuff. Stuff is going wrong in your learning and thinking processes.
I think you also don’t think you have such big low points like a Godel or Penrose, which could be an indication of not seeing them. It could also be due to being early career, not fully formed yet, strengths and weaknesses still under development. It could also be related to being well rounded and fairly consistent with low variance, so nothing really great or awful, which is realistically the good outcome of university science educations now (so basically all medium, as against the other outcomes of being a mix of medium and bad or being all bad, since our universities don’t create greatness).
DD/Feynman/me think, basically, that our science education system is so bad that it can’t produce a first rate physicist. I think maybe you have a significantly higher opinion of it than they do.