this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2024
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chapotraphouse
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This is very true. Was just talking to a friend the other day who went back to China after running a lab for nearly a decade in the US.
Some interesting tidbits:
The attitude between American Gen Z and their Chinese counterparts is night and day. He complained about the fact that the quality of his graduate students has gotten significantly worse over time. Even a decade ago, the millennial kids were still rather passionate about science and put in an effort to impress, these days the Gen Z kids straight up showed very little passion about what they’re doing, one of his students literally left the lab during the middle of the day to “go home to play video games”. Incidentally, the best students were foreign students who came from outside of Western countries.
In China it couldn’t have been more different. Young graduate students would work 6-7 days a week, many are full of curiosity, all very keen to learn more about the science they are doing. Some labs in China have their lab meetings held on Sunday! Imagine doing that in the US lol.
There is no way the US can catch up with China over the next 1-2 decades. In fact, it is already falling behind in terms of scientific output. Like, how are you ever going to compete with them?
Ask your friend about the literal state of American university labs versus everywhere else. They’re dirty, disorganized, dysfunctional, and everything comes down to potential profitability
It's funny because back in the day you had all the "gentlemen scholars" who had the free time to read and invent new science. Sleep all day because they spent all night watching the skies etc. Nowadays you pair every lab endeavor to the question of making maximum profit in the shortest time and then the people at the top of the pyramid wonder why other countries are catching up or overtaking us in science and tech.
It's like the same shit as them asking about why kids have short attention spans while you can't even watch a 3 minute video on youtube without it being bookended by ads shouting at you and blasting you with light and color so that the people who make Mt Dew Cheeto Taquito Chewing Gum can make 1.2% more next year.
Like goddamn, guys. If I was younger I wouldn't give a fuck about perpetuating the misery machine, either.
What’s sad is I’ve met some of them and they do care but they obviously feel overwhelmed by it all just like I did when I was a dumb ass teenager.
They lack experience and education on the matter. Given what they do know I'd say they're making the best choice possible. They don't know how to make things better so they're choosing not to contribute to making it worse. That's fantastic! I am proud of these young people.
I met one who was a nice kid who even liked working he was just drinking himself to death. I told him to drink a little less and I’d tell him about an awesome strip Club in Atlanta he could go to (I think Bryan from the guys podcast) mentioned it once. I bet that dorky white kid would love it there.
I went down the NEET path and society predictably fucked me. Almost nobody is there to look out for you so as I said I don’t blame the kids regardless of what they choose to do. We all collectively let them down.