
How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist - tokenadult
http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~gadda001/goodtheorist/
======
mindcrime
I love this kind of site. Not that you can't scour up the content yourself
using Google, but here's the thing... when you're trying to "teach yourself"
something complex, one of the challenges you run into (in my experience) is
understanding the order of the dependencies for prerequisites and sub-topics.
And nothing is more frustrating than trying to read a book or a paper and
feeling totally lost because you're missing _something_ that you should have
learned first, but you don't even know exactly what the "something" is. :-(

As someone who considers himself something of an autodidact and who is always
trying to learn new stuff, I really appreciate a resource that can point at a
bunch of stuff and say (even in an approximate sense) "do this in this order".
It really does make a difference.

~~~
ioeu
I totally agree! If anybody knows of something similar for artificial general
intelligence I'm all ears, currently in the process of reading up on it.

~~~
titanomachy
To borrow Prof. 't Hooft's imagery, I imagine that GAI would be right at the
top of a skyscraper whose lower levels consist of mathematics, cognitive
science, and computer science at increasing levels of sophistication.

Beginning your study of cognitive/computer science with GAI could be
frustrating and fruitless, just as would be beginning your study of physics
with superstring theory.

There are probably well-written and interesting GAI books/articles for
laypeople, though, analogous to Brian Greene's excellent books on string
theory.

~~~
ioeu
Your response is totally understandable given my (very clumsy) comment. Let me
make myself more clear; I'm in the process of reading up on what material one
should study to set oneself up to ultimately be able to consider AGI research
as a career choice.

You say "mathematics, cognitive science, and computer science at increasing
levels of sophistication.". That's probably true, I'd recon a fair bit of
biology, chemistry and physics is most likely also needed.

My question, though, is what specific branches of said subjects?

------
bronz
The most profound thing that the internet can do for the world is create a
single monolithic repository of documents that is designed to take a dedicated
reader from basic principles of math to a high degree of understanding in any
subject. This is such an easy task compared to all of the other projects that
happen on the internet, it is astonishing that we don't have anything like it
yet. Wikipedia comes close. Khan Academy might become what I just described
after they add more content. But nothing really hits the nail on the head yet.
If Facebook spent a few billion on it then we would have it. It's so fucking
simple. I would trade in Instagram many, many times over in exchange for such
a repository. It is one of the easiest things to do and out of all the things
we could do has the greatest impact on society and yet it has not been done.
Amazing.

~~~
abstrakraft
I think you drastically underestimate the difficulty of putting together
quality curricula.

~~~
amelius
But the point is that we only need to do it once. (As opposed to the current
way, where every school/university creates one anew).

------
musgravepeter
The most important part of this is to do the problems!

After a PhD in theoretical physics then 20 years as a s/w developer I decided
to get some of my chops back. You can read and nod about stuff but until you
face a blank sheet of paper you don't know if you really understood.

+1 for Penrose's "Road to Reality"

Also a huge fan of Eric Poisson's lectures (basically free textbooks)
[http://www.physics.uoguelph.ca/poisson/research/notes.html](http://www.physics.uoguelph.ca/poisson/research/notes.html)

Short description of getting my chops back:
[http://nbodyphysics.com/blog/2015/02/28/learn-physics-
with-t...](http://nbodyphysics.com/blog/2015/02/28/learn-physics-with-this-
one-trick/)

------
jawbone3
Man, t'Hooft is upping his design game! It looks mutch nicer than the previous
versions which looked like they predated his nobel prize.

~~~
jessriedel
Yep. For everyone interested, this is the old version:

[http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html](http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html)

~~~
brainflake
Wow! That reads like a Dr. Bronners bottle.

------
rifung
I'm happy to see that there is someone who is trying to help those who don't
want to or can't go the traditional route of undergrad => grad school.
Certainly I'm sure there are many others like me who have a strong, but
amateur interest in a subject. Here I mean amateur in the sense that it is
unpaid and done only out of love, as opposed to some measure of skill.

Sadly I have no intention of studying theoretical physics. If anyone could
point me towards something for theoretical computer science and algorithms I
would be most grateful

~~~
T-A
> If anyone could point me towards something for theoretical computer science
> and algorithms

Cheap trick: google up university course pages like [1], look at the syllabus
and get the books listed. MIT's OpenCourseware has lots of stuff [2].

[1]
[http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~aho/cs3261/](http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~aho/cs3261/)

[2] [http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-
comput...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-
science/)

~~~
rifung
Hey thanks for the suggestion. I actually use this strategy already, but the
issue is that this only tells you what the general stuff most people will
learn is. As far as I know this doesn't help with finding what the current
problems are in the field.

However, I think that professors generally are very willing to help people who
are interested, even if you aren't a student. Actually as far as I can tell
usually they don't even ask if you are a student.

------
emmelaich

        Greek letters are used a lot. Learn their names,
        otherwise you make a fool of yourself when giving
        an oral presentation
    

One thing that surprised the heck out of me is that we don't pronounce Greek
letters like the Greeks do.

Example: tau sounds something like taf in Greek.

(that's all I got :-)

~~~
titanomachy
I speak reasonably fluent Greek (family language), and took a course in
Classical Greek when I was in school. My professor explained that the
pronunciations used in mathematics (tau, beta, mu...) differ from the Modern
Greek versions (taf, veeta, mee...) because the former are the (conjectured)
pronunciations used in the classical language. A large source of evidence for
the pronunciation of Classical Greek is the transliteration of Greek words in
to other languages during that period, especially into Latin. The whole
language is pronounced very differently, not just the alphabet.

As a side note, that class was absurdly easy because I already knew almost all
the vocabulary. The classical grammar is quite different though, and more
complicated.

------
lawpoop
Has anyone here ever read or worked through Hrabovsky and Susskind's _The
Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics_? Same
premise as this, I gather, but a whole book.

~~~
kriro
For anyone who wants to read this. The book was rebranded. It's "Classical
Mechanics - TTM" (this used to be called TTM only) now and there's also a
"Quantum Mechanics - TTM". I have both of them on my nightstand but only
browsed so far. Seems good at first glance. Susskind's Stanford classes for
laypeople were great so I expect the books to be good as well :)

------
lagudragu
A classic; but still a very recommended series are the Feynman Lectures on
Physics:
[http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/](http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/)

------
neutronicus
Unfortunately, the section on Plasma Physics is rather sparse.

Introduction to Plasma Physics by Francis F. Chen and Fundamentals of Plasma
Physics by Paul Bellan are good next-step texts, and this crowd in particular
might enjoy Birdsall and Langdon's Plasma Physics Via Computer Simulation

Also on the computational topic, Kane S. Yee's 1966 paper "Numerical
Solution..."

------
mkadlec
Wow, I originally clicked on the article thinking it was tongue-in-cheek, but
it's fantastic! Glad to see that someone is taking time to help others (like
me)

~~~
mgalka
Same here. It's actually a really good post!

Regarding his comment about hearing from amateurs who think they've solved the
world, that is something I've heard from a lot of physics professors, that
they get a lot of emails with crazy stuff like this:
[http://i.imgur.com/QTt6ZTq.gif](http://i.imgur.com/QTt6ZTq.gif)

Why does that happen in physics and not chemistry, bio, econ, comsci or any
other subject?

~~~
lint_roller
Everyone's an armchair economist so I wouldn't count econ out.

I think that math/physics are more accessible to the layman. I know where to
go if I want to get deeper into this subject.

I really don't know how to start becoming an amateur chemist or biologist.
I've wanted to learn more about synthetic biology and gene therapy, but it's
not as simple as cracking open a math book or going to a dev bootcamp. I wish
these resources existed though! My best guess is because exploring chem and
bio have bigger resource requirements like lab space.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
I think math/physics are _less_ accessible to the layperson, but _more_
subject to Dunning-Kruger. There are so many popular accounts of quantum this
and string that in the media that a lot of the population seems to feel
qualified to hold an opinion on anything quantum-y. ("It's on TV" => "I'm
encouraged to have an opinion about it.")

In reality it's literally impossible for most people to imagine how hard the
math is - because an undergrad physics or engineering degree is barely even a
warm-up for it.

I'd love to see a TV show that made it clear just how challenging the math is
without reducing it to the usual storytelling.

Popularisation can be great, but maybe it would be good to get a realistic
appreciation for the raw version into the public narrative.

------
RobertoG
Very cool project.

Another interesting resource would be Penrose's book: "The road to reality".

It starts with basic maths and go all the way up to relativity and the
standard model.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Reality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Reality)

------
cicloid
As a Philomath, this site is an oasis on the Internet. True, you may be able
to grasp what this page tries to accomplish with enough determination.

But, someone sharing their knowledge and path in a no-nonsense approach, sure
helps a lot.

Are there any other similar guides for other fields?

~~~
rpgmaker
I'm personally interested in a guide like this for economics... if anyone
knows of one. It can be a book I guess...

~~~
trentmb
Consider looking at this-

[https://sayloracademy.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/20904185...](https://sayloracademy.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/209041857-Archive-Majors-Courses-Requirements#econ)

------
JamalS
Is there a site anything like this for mathimatics?

~~~
swehner
Somehow "mathematics" seems much broader than "theoretical physicist."

But here's a simple starting point:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Mathematics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Mathematics)

------
sawwit
Off topic: This seems to be an odd emphasis on the word "good". Can a native
English speaker confirm?

~~~
dchapp
I agree that use of "good" is questionable here. One would think that without
the skills mentioned, one wouldn't be a theoretical physicist _at all_. (Is
every person who lacks these skills a "bad theoretical physicist"? Only in a
vacuous sense.)

That said, I think we should interpret "how to become a good theoretical
physicist" as "how to gain the competencies that are expected of s theoretical
physicist."

~~~
Retra
That's is what he means by good: one with enough competence in the field to do
actually useful work. If you manage to do useful work in physics, that work
could translate into a Nobel Prize just as easily as any other useful work.

A bad theoretical physicist is one who only understands enough to sound smart
to their friends. AKA, a crank.

------
csguy22
That is something else, really love this idea. Is there anything _exactly_
like that but for Computer Science?

------
dstyrb
I find it strange that no one in this discussion seems to notice the dripping
sarcasm...

~~~
oafitupa
What do you mean? :(

~~~
dstyrb
Basically the entirety of paragraph 3...

"set up only for those who wish to become theoretical physicists, not just
ordinary ones" \--- use of 'ordinary' instead of 'experimental' is
intentionally condescending, hopefully for sarcastic effect

"very best, those who are fully determined to earn their own Nobel Prize. If
you are more modest than that" \--- I'm not sure if this is actual
encouragement or a joke. But the following:

"finish those lousy schools first and follow the regular routes provided by
educators and specialized -gogues who are so damn carefully chewing all those
tiny portions before feeding them to you." \--- Must be a joke. Nobel prizes
are not awarded to individuals these days, they go to collaborations. There is
no way to get into a collaboration, or likely a PhD program without an
undergraduate degree in Physics. Legally not allowed in many European
countries to join a PhD program...

"More than rudimentary intelligence is assumed to be present, because ordinary
students can master this material only when assisted by patient teachers."
\--- if this isn't sarcasm, then this guy is a monstrous prick who just
decided to insult the 'rudimentary' intelligence of all Physics undergrads who
deigned to actually attend college. Again with the 'ordinary'.

The opening paragraph continues the authors apparent disdain for school in
general:

"But what if you are still young, at School, and before being admitted at a
University, you have to endure the childish anecdotes that they call science
there? What if you are older, and you are not at all looking forward to join
those noisy crowds of young students?"

Which is a bit humerus considering the importance he himself places on
fundamentals with:

"solid foundations in elementary mathematics and notions of classical
(pre-20th century) physics. Don’t think that pre-20th century physics is
“irrelevant”"

If it isn't sarcasm, then I have no idea why the author has decided to be so
acerbic in his notation. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that he
doesn't actually mean to insult basically the 99% of physicists who don't show
up in "Brilliant Mind"-esque movies.

edit: From his CV:

* Gymnasium-Beta, Dalton Lyceum, The Hague, 1964 * Physics and Mathematics, University of Utrecht * Kandidaatsexamen N1, 4 July 1966 * Doctoraal examen Theoretical Physics, 10 October 1969 * Promotie (PhD thesis) on the subject "Renormalization Procedure for Yang-Mills fields", 1 March 1972

i.e. He did basically all this stuff he is brushing off as worthless. As in
going to classes, with teachers, at an undergraduate university, before
applying for a PhD program.

~~~
gohrt
You are misreading anger where there is slightly ascerbic honesty:

> "set up only for those who wish to become theoretical physicists, not just
> ordinary ones" -> \-- use of 'ordinary' instead of 'experimental' is
> intentionally condescending, hopefully for sarcastic effect

If you'd finished the sentence, you'd see: "but the very best, those who are
fully determined to earn their own Nobel Prize. "

He is constrasting "ordinary" with "the very best". He isn't talking about
experimental physics -- that's not his field.

> "finish those lousy schools first and follow the regular routes provided by
> educators and specialized -gogues who are so damn carefully chewing all
> those tiny portions before feeding them to you." \--- Must be a joke. Nobel
> prizes are not awarded to individuals these days, they go to collaborations.
> There is no way to get into a collaboration, or likely a PhD program without
> an undergraduate degree in Physics. Legally not allowed in many European
> countries to join a PhD program...

The beauty of theoretical physics (and math) is that you don't need any
expensive equipment or overpriced tuition. Just books and people to talk to.
Both of these are available free (except some books cost $$$), on the
Internet. That's enough to get started.

> "More than rudimentary intelligence is assumed to be present, because
> ordinary students can master this material only when assisted by patient
> teachers." \--- if this isn't sarcasm, then this guy is a monstrous prick
> who just decided to insult the 'rudimentary' intelligence of all Physics
> undergrads who deigned to actually attend college. Again with the
> 'ordinary'.

It's a simple fact: Smarter folks can get farther without as much guidance
from teachers.

> The opening paragraph continues the authors apparent disdain for school in
> general: "But what if you are still young, at School, and before being
> admitted at a University, you have to endure the childish anecdotes that
> they call science there? What if you are older, and you are not at all
> looking forward to join those noisy crowds of young students?"

Common K-12 schools in many countries generally teach science and math very
poorly. This is not a controversial statement.

Colleges are full of 18-22-yr-olds, many of whom are there to party; not a
comfortable environment for some 30+ year olds.

> Which is a bit humerus

You seem to have a bone to pick.

> considering the importance he himself places on fundamentals with: "solid
> foundations in elementary mathematics and notions of classical (pre-20th
> century) physics. Don’t think that pre-20th century physics is “irrelevant”"

What does that have to do with the high school and college learning
experience?

>i .e. He did basically all this stuff he is brushing off as worthless. As in
going to classes, with teachers, at an undergraduate university, before
applying for a PhD program.

The into goes to lengths to explain the sort of person who doesn't fit into
school, and would benefit from an autodidactic alternative. For everyone
else...there's school. I don't know why you have such a chip against the
possibility of thriving outside of college... too much student loans got you
sour grapse?

~~~
dstyrb
I'm an experimental physicist who did an undergraduate before my PhD and had
to fight tooth and nail for my grades and did all that petty nonsense like
going to class and after school tutoring and such. I'm not a rockstar, but I'm
not a joke either -- I would give myself a "B" rating -- I definitely don't
struggle for fellowships, but I'm not Nobel material.

I know from the inside that _these_ actions are the most probable path to
success. If some hot shot high school student reads his note, I can see them
deciding that they are "brilliant mind" material and then start pursuing this
course of action seriously. In my opinion that is a borderline surefire path
to failure. College campus is _the_ place to learn physics: you learn physics
from casual bar discussions about the fluid dynamics of beer, telling a pretty
girl why stars twinkle and planets don't, explaining to stoners why cigarette
smoke is blue off the cig and then grey when you exhale, pre-exam pizza
binges, adding strobe settings to your dorm lights, and late night campus
laser graffiti with your mates and professors. Not from lone wolfing down a
textbook with a blackboard.

It's perfectly possible for him to convey his message without "ordinary",
"childish", "noisy", "rudimentary", "tiny portions" etc. And if he's just
putting together a guidebook for entertaining your interest in Physics, then
that's cool. But saying this is the way to get a Nobel is ridiculous... hence
my original comment about dripping sarcasm.

Also my original comment was just getting down voted (and someone asked for
clarification) so I expounded.

And no, I got a ride through college.

~~~
lucozade
You're right that Professor 't Hooft is being sarcastic but you've got the
wrong target.

He's not aiming this at practicing physicists. He says early on that, if you
want to be a physicist, you should enroll at a University. He says in the
Questions section that you'll eventually need a degree.

This is aimed at people who can't or won't. The sarcasm is intended to appeal
to the "well intended but totally useless" amateur physicists that regularly
send him crackpot theories. It's a common refrain from such individuals that
they are held back by the establishment.

What he's trying to convey is the amount of information that one needs to
master to be taken seriously as a theoretical physicist. His intention is both
to put off those that have read a popular science book and now know it all as
well as encouraging those that are actually serious by giving them some
structure to their learning.

------
santaclaus
I'm surprised to see no explicit mention of differential geometry.

~~~
ajkjk
Agreed. But there are many implicit mentions. Lots of physicists pick it up on
the side in other subjects, which probably isn't ideal.

~~~
selimthegrim
Probably the book by Nakahara is most people's first stop.

------
timwaagh
this is a great site. it really makes a good case why no one should want to be
a (good) physicist. reading this stuff takes decades i should think.

~~~
Synaesthesia
Well I want to be a good physicist and I appreciate that it will take me
years, maybe decades of reading. That's what's necessary to catch up to what
we know. It's tough going but equally rewarding to learn.

------
reillyse
This is awesome. I like his no-nonsense approach.

------
JamalS
Is there a site like this for mathimatics?

~~~
trentmb
How to Become a Pure Mathematician (or Statistician): a List of Undergraduate
and Basic Graduate Textbooks and Lecture Notes - the blog

[http://hbpms.blogspot.com/](http://hbpms.blogspot.com/)

For a lot of other stuff check out Saylor.org's old 'major's page:

[https://sayloracademy.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/20904185...](https://sayloracademy.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/209041857-Archive-Majors-Courses-Requirements)

------
RodericDay
I prefer the way Facebook parses the title, as originally written: GOOD
Theoretical Physicist.

Reminds me of GOOD Music [0]

[0]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOOD_Music](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOOD_Music))

------
eveningcoffee
Wow!!

I can tell you of _my own experiences_. I had the extreme luck of having
excellent teachers around me. ... It helped me all the way to earn a _Nobel
Prize_.

But I didn’t have _internet_. I am going to try to be _your teacher_.

It is presently set up _only for those_ who wish to become theoretical
physicists, not just ordinary ones,

but the very best, those who are fully determined to earn their own _Nobel
Prize._

This is a site for _ambitious people_.

I am sure that _anyone can do this_ , if one _is gifted_ with a _certain
amount_ of _intelligence_ , _interest_ and _determination_.

