John McPhee: Annals of the former world, Simon Winchester: The Map that Changed the World, Lutgens et al.: Essentials of Geology

This is somewhat similar to how scientific articles are typically read.

The first link points to Aki Vehtari's personal page. He is one of the co-authors.

Thanks for clarifying this! I did not realize the domain name will cause skepticism :)

Ah my mistake. Didn't recognize the domain.

Trading helps the society to determine various prices and therefore makes it possible to allocate resources more efficiently.

It does, but I get the distinct feeling that we're putting cart before the horse. I mean, we ought to be able to correctly price wheat and steel better than through ever-growing financial industries and having people use satellites to spy on CEOs.

Quant here. I used to be a seismologist but switched to finance one year ago. This year I earned well below 100k€.

That's likely because you work somewhere that pays in € not $.

Out of curiosity how did you switch to being a quant?

Because the west is collapsing as rentier work dominates over true wealth creation!

Would you rather that resources be allocated blindly? The fact that some people can live comfortably off their investments does not mean that the very investments themselves do not create wealth. Hedge funds do the latter, it's up to the government and society to decide on the former - i.e. how to distribute this wealth.

Resources are being allocated into a bubble, because every time the market falls the Fed prints money via QE.

Hedge funds aren't looking for companies doing valuable work, they are trying to figure out if Powell will print more, or gaming Bank of England APIs.

The system is not functioning.

I'm not the OP, but it's a switch I'm strongly considering making. I'm looking at doing it by going back to get a Masters in Quantitative Finance, so that's one possible option.

I worked as a software developer before I got the seismologist position. It was not too difficult to interview for various data science positions.

Use this as your application, don't write anything else:

My summary: 35 years in Silicon Valley; 3 STEM undergrad degrees, MS in AI from Stanford, PhD in AI from a top-10 program; ICPC champion; always considered to be an elite programmer; very current knowledge; constant employment; wide variety of skills; management experience with small teams; very stable life; no vices; very healthy and energetic; I get along with everyone and like working in teams.

So a few impressive but outdated credentials alongside a dozen completely subjective opinions.