I have been pondering about this for a while and have developed a hypothesis as to why Indian parents (and those from similar nations) tend to overvalue college degrees.
It is mostly due to the parents having low self-esteem. It comes down to the following two facts:
(1) While there are plenty of exceptionally capable young individuals like OP who have been proving everyone wrong, it usually takes a lot of parental skill and know-how to produce a wunderkind with social skills necessary to navigate the adult world in a foreign country.
(2) Parents who are recent immigrants (especially from poorer nations or from nations with significant cultural differences from the host nation) do not see themselves as capable of providing that know-how. Note that I did not say they can't provide it -- just that they do not see themselves as capable to (it turns out that more often than not they underestimate themselves).
Therefore, if you are a parent in a similar situation, it (often wrongly) appears to you that the only way your children stand a fighting chance is if you they spend as much time in school as possible. Then, of course, is the social pressure from family friends.
I'm not an expert on Comp Chem, but you might want to rephrase your question. If the simulation is "chemically accurate", of course it will match the real-world, by definition of "accurate"...
Haha, sounds like you've met a Lacanian (Lacan was famous for saying, among other things, that "the unconscious is structured like a language"). Such reductionist intellectualizations (aka "man, everything is a pineapple!") are neat to meditate on, but they alone won't give you tangible results or something you can use to forecast events and test hypotheses.
The point pg is trying to make is that seeking relative material wealth with respect to others is akin to seeking pure status/power without having to do the work required to get it. It is all too easy to move to Costa Rica or wherever and live like a king for $10 a day.
What surprises me is that the same people who complain about patents and intellectual property are often the first to bring up the discussion of how market tends to undervalue fundamental research. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
There is another way to look at it. "Manipulation" is sometimes necessitated by poor targeting.